5. Bob James, David Sanborn & Al Jarreau - Since I Fell For You
Farewell then to Al Jarreau, who passed away on Sunday, aged 72. I won't pretend to be the biggest expert on his work (I'm not going to attempt a Top Ten), but there are two recordings of his I will treasure forever. Both are from the soundtrack to the TV show Moonlighting, and I've explained my teenage obsession with that show in previous posts. Of course, Al recorded (and co-wrote) the Nile Rodgers-produced theme tune, which brings memories flooding back whenever I hear it. But there's another, lesser-known song he also recorded for the soundtrack which I love even more.
Since I Fell For You was written in 1945 by Buddy Johnson and has been recorded many, many times since by everybody from Van Morrison to Glen Campbell, Fontella Bass to The Rascals. But though I've heard a number of other versions, nothing comes close to this collaboration between Al Jarreau and jazz heroes Bob James and David Sanborn. And that's all down to the first time I heard it...
Towards the end of the third series of Moonlighting, the "will they, won't they?" dynamic between Cybil Shepherd and Bruce Willis was reaching its peak. Episode 11 was titled Blonde On Blonde, and it is possibly my favourite episode of any television show ever. A bold claim, perhaps, but I vividly remember the first time I watched it, my reaction to the final scene, and how fortunate I felt to have recorded it on VHS so that I could watch it again and again and again... until the tape wore out and I had to buy the series on DVD.
In the episode, David Addison (Willis) becomes insanely jealous when he realises his business partner Maddie Hayes might be heading off to find a stranger for a one night stand. He follows her all across town to "protect" her, but ends up following the wrong blonde and gets arrested for a murder he didn't commit in the process. Willis has never been funnier and Glenn Gordon Caron's script is bursting with cracking one liners I now know off by heart. While in the police station holding cell, David meets the "wrong" blonde he's accidentally been following who confesses to the murder herself and also persuades David to tell Maddie just how he feels. Released from custody, David hot foots it over to Maddie's house late at night, in the pouring rain, to profess his love. As he knocks, he - and the viewers - feel the weight of three season's build up... and then, Mark Harmon opens the door.
This is the moment teenage Rol sat up in bed and screamed at the TV: "Nooooo!"
Fade up Al Jarreau over the closing credits...
Moonlighting ran for another couple of seasons and I loved every episode, even the duff ones, but it was never as good as this again.
This week, ten songs that'll get you home in a hurry.
Special mentions to the band Death Cab For Cutie (named after a Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band song) and Rick Springfield & Randy Crawford's Taxi Dancing, which was another contender for my Bickering Couples Top Ten.
Sorry, Joe le Taxi fans, I was 15 in 1987... and even then, I was too old for 14 year old Vanessa Paradis.
The theme from Taxi: simple as that. Jazzy but cool. If you're of a certain age... even if you didn't watch the sitcom that gave us Danny DeVito, Andy Kaufman and Christopher Lloyd (not to mention Judd Hirsch, Marilu Henner and Tony 'Who's The Boss?' Danza)... this will likely bring back warm and fuzzy memories. I was ever-so slightly too young for it myself - Cheers was more my era - but it still makes me feel good.
Sweden's answer to the Magnetic Fields (via Jonathan Richman) isn't too fussy who he picks up in his cab...
They might be psycho-killers, But tonight, I really don't care...
Still in Scandinavia, check out Jens' Norwegian equivalent Sondre Lerche, with his Airport Taxi Reception. Taxi songs are big in Europe. You're still not getting Vanessa Paradis.
Like a lot of struggling songwriters, Tim Buckley moonlighted as a taxi driver, which was probably the inspiration for this song about picking up a crazy Viet Nam vet on a scary night in L.A.
The final track on Zevon's penultimate album, many saw it as him preparing to shake hands with the reaper following his diagnosis with terminal cancer. By all accounts, the song was written well before that though... which makes the whole taxi-death metaphor eerily prescient.
I was staying at the Marriott With Jesus and John Wayne I was waiting for a chariot They were waiting for a train The sky was full of carrion "I'll take the mazuma" Said Jesus to Marion "That's the 3:10 to Yuma My ride's here..."
6. Prince - Lady Cab Driver
8 minutes of funky jam from the 1999 album; here, Prince gets taken for a ride by the eponymous lady and then she joins him in the back seat. You can guess the rest... but who the hell's driving the cab?
5. Bruce Springsteen - City Of Night
Another one you won't find on youtube, this is an outtake from the Darkness On The Edge Of Town sessions, finally released a few years back on The Promise collection. It begins with Bruce hailing a cab but then heads downtown into a deeper meditation on how we survive the darkness...
Another epic story song from the Raymond Carver of popular music. Here Harry is a taxi driver who picks up an old flame on a rainy night. After she initially pretends not to recognise him, they eventually get to talking about old times and the space in between.
You see, she was gonna be an actress, And I was gonna learn to fly. She took off to find the footlights, And I took off to find the sky.
When the ride's over, the guilty woman overtips her former lover and he pockets the change without further comment. But as with many Harry Chapin songs, this one has a sting in its tail. It seems both of them achieved their ambitions in life... metaphorically, at least.
It starts and ends as a conversation in a taxi cab, and sandwiched in between is some of Paul Simon's finest witty wordplay. Although it's ultimately a song about very little (the Seinfeld of pop songs), Gumboots has always been one of my favourite tracks from Graceland.
I was walking down the street When I thought I heard this voice say "Say, ain't we walking down the same street Together on the very same day?" I said, "hey senorita That's astute," I said "Why don't we get together and call ourselves an institute now?"
Of course, the words are pure Paul Simon, but the tune is based largely around a melody by South African musicians Lulu Masilela and Jonhjon Mkhalali. It appeared on an unlabelled cassette compilation called Accordion Jive Vol. III which somebody gave Simon in the early 80s. It took him a while to hunt down the music's origins, but when he did, Graceland was born. Of course, there's controversy over how much credit (or money) those original artists received, but popular music as a medium has been ripping off its own roots for decades: Paul Simon didn't invent that practice. Elvis, Lennon & McCartney, the Stones, Led Zep... it's been going on for years. (And still is, as Ed Sheeran and Sam Smith can attest.)
Graceland is 30 years old this year. Just to make you feel ancient again.
I've liked a lot of what the Arctic Monkeys did next, but that debut album is close to perfection. It was written by a bunch of chancers who had no idea how big they'd become... and as soon as they became that big, they'd never write anything like it again.
Red Light... is Alex Turner's stream-of-consciousness ramble about trying to get a taxi home with his mates on a Saturday night in Sheffield. It's full of the kind of everyday lyrical minutiae only people who aren't pop stars can write, while also managing to reference both the Stones and Springsteen during a drunken altercation at the taxi stand. Brilliant.
1. Joni Mitchell - Big Yellow Taxi
"They paved paradise and put up a parking lot..." has to be one of the greatest opening lines ever (I must try to remember it when I do Volume 2 of My Top Ten Opening Lines). Alliteration doesn't always work in lyrics, but here it provides Joni's pop opus with the prerequisite punch.
This ecological protest song was written after Joni visited Hawaii and opened her hotel curtains to see acres of parking lots, but what's most interesting is that the eponymous taxi may not even be a taxi at all... it might be slang for the big yellow police cars in her native Toronto. Which gives us a slightly different way of interpreting what might be happening when said taxi takes away her old man...
The song's been covered by a number of people, including Bob Dylan, Amy Grant and the Counting Crows... who annoyingly destroy the big yellow taxi line by changing the lyrics to say "took my girl away" which neither rhymes nor scans like the original and annoys me every time I hear it. Janet Jackson also used the hook for her hit 'Got 'Til It's Gone'.
Big Yellow Taxi is also the second best song in the history of pop to feature a slamming screen door. But I'll hold onto that for my Top Ten Screen Door Songs...
