Songs For Fall's Arrival, An Equinox 13
Lou Donaldson Quartet, Marie Laforet, Lee Hazlewood, Bobby Goldsboro, Bridget St. John, Jerry Jeff Walker, Linda Hoover, Curtis Mayfield, Robyn Hitchcock, Buffalo Tom, The The, Bobbie Gentry
Note: This is an updated version of a post I did on September 22, 2022, (before the format became “Ten For Today”) which you would not have known unless I told you! But I am telling just in case you’re that one guy.
Today is September 22, so summer ends and fall begins in the Northern Hemisphere. Fall is the best season, if you ask me, because New England, where I live, is very colorful, and who doesn’t love a comfy sweater and a smart light jacket? They look good on everyone, whereas summer shorts do NOT look good on everyone. And I feel compelled to say, the right to bare arms is NOT guaranteed in the Constitution. Anyway, since summer’s end and fall’s onset can be a powerful metaphor for lots of things, most of them bittersweet at best, there are LOTS of songs. I give you An Equinox 13. Grab the tissues!
This one is a classic, recorded hundreds of times. Here’s Lou Donaldson’s lovely 1958 version.
It’s autumn in France too. This is Marie Laforet’s Au Coeur de l’automne (In the Heart of Autumn) from 1963. Ah, mature love. I wouldn’t be surprised if this one has been used in a viagra commercial in a French-speaking country.
One might arugue that Lee Hazlewood’s voice sounds like fall. And one would be correct. This is from 1966.
In this 1968 clip, a young guy with an unnaturally full head of hair sings about getting old.
Here’s a haunting 1969 song by Bridget St. John,
and “You must understand/Everything throughout the land will be another color soon,” sang Jerry Jeff Walker, also in 1969.
Linda Hoover was signed as a teenager, and made an album with the guys who would become Steely Dan, but it was shelved over a publishing dispute, according to her bio. It didn’t come out until 2022, but it’s timeless. This plaintive number is from 1970.
Here’s a smoking 1983 performance of a 1975 song, by Curtis Mayfield. “Time makes you suffer – when seasons change.”
“The leaves have never looked as good/As now they're going to die,” sang Robyn Hitchcock in 1984,
and here’s Buffalo Tom in 1995, I think, singing about summer’s end. Plus you get to see Conan O’Brien mispronounce Boston in a botched attempt to mock our mellifluous accent, which was also at one point his accent, one assumes, so he should know better.
Here’s The The in 2000. I can’t tell you much about this song, because googling “the the weather” is a bit of a fool’s errand. But it’s a good one! “And it's the first and last time/We'll ever meet/Just falling leaves/Dropping from winter trees.”
Like Buffalo Tom above, Grandaddy laments the end of summer with this nice 2005 number.
But as Bobbie Gentry reminds us, Seasons Come, Seasons Go. Nothing you can do about it.
Enjoy the day and the shift. Hope to see you soon. Be kind to everyone you meet.
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