The Private Canon: "A Sadness for Things"

Reposted from 2011 to be part of this new series.

One of my favorite so-bad-it's-good songs is Tom T. Hall's "I Love." Favorite non-rhyme: "And onions."

But recently, on a Stax collection, I stumbled across another oldie whose guileless, almost naked directness really blew me away: Calvin Scott Sr.'s "A Sadness for Things." It's not only closer to the bone, but it's a fascinating piece of music (the disorienting opening progression of C, Db, and Dm), the fadeout mid-lyric (a la the Heads' "Life During Wartime"). Indeed, my love for this tune is far less ironic than my devotion to Hall's:

(If that video won't load, go here.)

These lyrics are partly what I hear, partly what someone on Genius seems to hear. Not sure what "old slickin' pieces" are, but damn do I love the lyrics I can decipher:

I have a sadness for things
For houses with children
Where no one sings
For acres of wheat fields
When cupboards are bare
For love being spoken
And no one to care
For trains that are empty
And tables for one
For books seldom opened
And clocks that don't run
And songs soon forgotten
And paths never crossed
For wars that are fought
And all that is lost

I have a sadness for things
For Eleanor Rigby
Whose phone never rings
For intelligent parents
That are sometimes, sometimes completely confused
For words in the Bible
Just said and never used
For old slickin' pieces (?)
And birds that can't fly
Stray dogs and lost kittens
Old people that cry
For the tired and the weary
With little to show
For those who don't listen
And for those who don't know

I have a sadness for things
For houses with children
And nobody there can never sing
For lonely girls
Whose phone never rings

Like Weill and Anderson's "Lost in the Stars," it's a great, melancholy gospel song for nonbelievers.