Music posts #6 & #7 -- The Who and B J Thomas


#6 Magic Bus (Live at Leeds version) 1970 The Who

I’ve just been to the doctor for some kind of eczema or creeping crud, so I’m enjoying a cool one and am in the mood for something loud and upbeat. One of the first song that comes to mind is one of my favorite 1970s songs. Before digital and other augmentations, live, you have a mad guitarist, a mad drummer, a mad bassist (the first bass player to play his instrument like a lead guitar?), and a vocalist with a harmonica, and you have rock perfection.

Pete Townsend wrote “Magic Bus” in 1965, but it wasn’t recorded until 1968. The single never broke 25 on Billboard, but with the unique Latin claves opening and the driving Bo Diddley beat, it became a concert favorite. Bassist John Entwhistle said it was his least favorite song because he essentially plays one note throughout, and guitarist Pete Townsend said it was his favorite song. It can be heard at the beginning of the films Jerry McGuire and at the end of Goodfellas.

The song begins as a kind of call and response between the Rider, who takes the bus to his girlfriend’s house, and the Driver, from whom the Rider tries to buy the Magic Bus (to avoid the daily fare, one might guess). The Driver refuses at first, but finally relents, hopefully not for the last offer of “One hundred English Pounds!” Once the Rider acquires the bus, an instrumental jam begins. With the claves, the drumbeat, and the whining guitar, it sounds like speeding down the freeway – perhaps in one’s own Magic Bus.

A college roomie (who shall remain nameless) had a copy of this album and we KNEW two young women who would alter their consciousness and put on headphones to listen to “Magic Bus,” which I HEAR they referred to, using their last names as the [Blank] and [Blank] Transit Authority. You can’t take this trip on any other version of the song.

Have a listen. Leave a comment!

The Who -- Magic Bus (Live at Leeds)

#7 I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry – B J Thomas cover 1966

During the late 1960s summers, when I didn’t feel any obligation to go to sleep early, I would wait until the sun completely disappeared so I could tune into the 50,000 watts of WLS Chicago AM radio, which had switched to a fulltime rock and roll format in 1960. They built a reputation on playing the newest music, even debuting the Beatles’ “Please Please Me” in 1964. I think it was after the breakup of my first teenage relationship that I discovered B J Thomas’s cover of Hank Williams' “I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry.” Many other artists covered this song, including John Waite, Glen Campbell, Al Green, Yo La Tengo, and Elvis Presley, who introduced it during his Aloha From Hawaii TV special as “…probably the saddest song I’ve ever heard.”

The original recording by Hank Williams was something of a milestone in country music. Released as the B side of “My Bucket’s Got a Hole in It” (1949) – because up-tempo songs were considered preferable for jukebox play – it expresses deep emotional pain, which was something new in country music but which would also forever alter the genre. There’s a story that Williams wrote the music and a 19-year old Paul Gilley wrote the lyrics for it (and “Cold, Cold Heart,” among others), telling Williams he could have the song. Gilley drowned when he was 27.

As a heartsick fifteen-year old, I tuned into WLS late at night and waited for my favorite songs to be played, and when Thomas’s “I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry” came on, that’s what I did. Who feels lonelier than a teenager? And I’d just broken up with my first boyfriend. Like Bob Dylan commented, when he first heard the Hank Williams song, he was too young to know that kind of sadness. “I had never heard a robin weep, but could imagine it and it made me sad,” he said. I had heard that midnight train, though.

Did you hear the lonesome whippoorwill?
He sounds too blue to fly
The midnight train
Is whining low
And I'm so lonesome I could cry

Give it a listen:

B J Thomas -- I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry

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