Seven Song Spin: American Tunes

For many years on the Fourth of July I've tried to put together a playlist of American music—I say "tried" because I don't think I've ever really finished encompassing the magpie diversity of our nation's musics. As our country and its fate seem on our minds of late more than ever, it seems like a fine time as any to remind us we speak in many languages, musically and otherwise.

This whole playlist can be found here.

Sunny Despair: I was once asked (on Twitter, I think) to name the best band ever from L.A., and without hesitation I said Los Lobos, the East L.A. polymaths who sound like that city's deep multiplicity more than any I know. (I wrote about their masterpiece Kiko here.) Among many career highlights, this song stands out for its sparkling guitar line and major-key shine, underpinning bleak lyrics about the country's broken promises.

Bo Minus the Beat: This deep cut from one of rock guitar's great innovators, Bo Diddley, has a harmonica blues shuffle rather than the famous clave-adjacent beat the man should have copyrighted. I think I bonded to this one in part because I have a soft spot for the Arizona mining town Jerome, to which I went often as a kid, and even though this song has nothing to do with that place, I've always thought the tourist board should adopt a version of it, and/or blast it from their town square every now and again.

A Joyful Noise: When my then-girlfriend (now wife) and I moved to New York 15 years ago, one of our social/cultural activities was to join a new choir that had started up, the New York City Master Chorale, and Leonard Bernstein's smashing Chichester Psalms was our ambitious debut showpiece. I was massively underqualified to sing in a choir (I stuck with it for a few seasons, in which we did Dvorak's Requiem, Beethoven's Ninth, and Lauridsen's Lux Aeterna, among others), but I won't soon forget the thrill of being inside this music.

Rambling Blues: I found one cherished trove of essential American music in the collection of a friend's dad, who had an LP boxed set called America's Folk Heritage, a very mixed bag from which I mostly extracted the blues goodies, compiling a cassette of amazing tunes by Brownie McGhee & Sonny Terry, Lightnin' Hopkins, John Lee Hooker, Leadbelly, and Big Bill Broonzy. This cut by Broonzy, "Ridin' On Down," is a trip, literally.

Guileless Perfection: Gotta include a showtune, and this, from Hair, is one of my favorites, not least for the fact that it was based on a real-life personals ad and possesses not a single rhyme. It's also a quiet respite from its musical's manic hippie energy.

Rock 'n' Roll, Where Love Dies: This is my favorite track from Dirty, Sonic Youth's follow-up to the essential Goo.

Autumn Leaves: Duke Ellington's score for Anatomy of a Murder has many essential tracks but I keep returning to this mournful horn choir with a swan-like clarinet cry at its center. I feel like Tom Waits borrowed some of his aesthetic from this tune, but maybe that's just me.