The annual Kennedy Center Honors event was held on December 8 in Washington D.C. This year’s honorees are Bonnie Raitt, Grateful Dead, jazz trumpeter Arturo Sandoval, filmmaker Francis Ford Coppola, and the historic Harlem venue, the Apollo Theater.
Goldmine discusses three of Bonnie Raitt’s flip sides with British author Louise Poynton, who we interviewed in 2020 about her book about David Cassidy named Cherish, written from the perspective of his fans, and we begin with a David Cassidy/Bonnie Raitt song connection in part one. In part two, we highlight three Grateful Dead flip sides and end the section with quotes from the Grammy winning American progressive bluegrass band The Infamous Stringdusters about their new cover of Grateful Dead’s highest charting single. With the October passing of Grateful Dead bassist Phil Lesh, this is the third recent article on the group, including a tribute from Deadhead Ray Hogan, which we share again in the Related Links section, near the end of this article.
2024 Kennedy Center Honorees, back row: Michelle Ebanks, Kamilah Forbes, and Jonelle Procope (Apollo Theater), Bill Kreutzmann (Grateful Dead), seated: Arturo Sandoval, Francis Ford Coppola, Bonnie Raitt, Bob Weir and Mickey Hart (Grateful Dead), December 2024, Photo by Kevin Wolf, courtesy of kennedy-center.org
PART ONE – BONNIE RAITT with author Louise Poynton
GOLDMINE: Welcome back to Goldmine. I thought of you immediately when I was choosing flip sides for this article, knowing that I wanted to start with Bonnie’s version of “My First Night Alone Without You.” I first learned that song as the opening track of Jane Olivor’s First Night album, and it became my favorite song of 1976, a year after Bonnie’s version which I was unaware of at the time. You, however, must have learned it four years before me in 1972 when you bought David Cassidy’s Cherish album.
LOUISE POYNTON: Yes. That is when I first heard it. “My First Night Alone Without You” is a hugely underrated song. It was first recorded by Lee Greenwood, then David, Bobby Darin, Ray Charles, Dionne Warwick, and others. It is one of those songs that has stood the test of time. It was written by Kin Vassy, who many people don’t know about, and was a member of Kenny Rogers and the First Edition.
GM: Yes. He joined them for 1970’s Something’s Burning album which I bought, and I enjoyed the song he wrote with Kenny on that album, “Stranger in My Place.”
LP: What a talent. I think people should also listen to David Cassidy’s version of “My First Night Alone Without You” because he sang such a powerful version of the song when he was so young, only 21 years old when he recorded it, where most everyone else was more established as artists, recording it later in their careers. On Bonnie’s version, and on every version ever done, the piano is the key instrument. It has a haunting introduction. When you add the vocals, it takes the song up to another level.
GM: On Bonnie’s version, Bill Payne of Little Feat plays piano and Harry Bluestone provides such a wonderful arrangement.
LP: Also, the lyrics are also so powerful. The title alone can almost bring you to tears. I remember when I first heard it on the Cherish album, it was the standout track for me, and the arrangement and use of strings adds emphasis. I think in David’s case and Bonnie’s case, artists who struggle in their private lives know what emotional pain is like and can inject into a song their deep feelings and emotions, drawn from any love lost and demons they had to face. Bonnie had a few demons which she managed to successfully get through. I think artists can also relate to friends and loved ones who are also going through their own periods of upheaval when recording a song like this. This song demonstrates Bonnie’s emotion and empathy for people. I am happy that her fans know this song because of her lovely version.
GM: When my wife Donna and I were dating, we heard Bonnie’s edgy version of Del Shannon’s “Runaway,” which was already cool enough in its original version, but we were impressed and that 1977 single was the first Bonnie Raitt record that I bought. The flip side is your name, “Louise.”
LP: I generally cringe when I hear songs with my name in it, but I like this one. It has a Linda Ronstadt sound to it, and perhaps that’s because Linda recorded it first, early in the decade.
GM: I see that now, on Linda’s Silk Purse album in 1970, which I missed out on as I only bought the Top 40 single “Long Long Time” from it. On Bonnie’s version, I like hearing David Grisman’s mandolin, helping to give the song a country-rock sound.
LP: I think Bonnie Raitt is highly underrated as a singer and it may be unfair to make comparisons of her to other singers, but sometimes you must do that to encourage people to listen to another performer who they may enjoy but be less aware of.
“I think Bonnie Raitt is highly underrated as a singer and it may be unfair to make comparisons of her to other singers, but sometimes you must do that to encourage people to listen to another performer who they may enjoy but be less aware of.” – author Louise Poynton
GM: At the end of that decade, a young Sheryl Crow saw Bonnie in concert. At the Kennedy Center Honors event, she shared, “I would not be doing what I’m doing if I had not seen Bonnie perform when I was seventeen.” She bought her first guitar after going to that concert. The people at Warner Bros. Records had a list of artists in the ‘70s who didn’t sell a lot of records but believed strongly in them, and Bonnie was on that list. At the end of the ‘80s, she left Warner Bros. for Capitol, debuting with the album Nick of Time. Bonnie finally hit the Top 40 in the early ‘90s with “Something to Talk About” reaching No. 5, written by Canadian Shirley Eikhard and originally planned to be recorded by Anne Murray. Her flip side was “One Part Be My Lover,” with the sound of “I Can’t Make You Love Me,” which became her next Top 40 hit the following year. Now she is a Kennedy Center Honoree.
LP: I think she is quite a remarkable singer and a songwriter too, as evidenced by “Nick of Time.” I am so pleased Bonnie Raitt has been honored in this way.
PART TWO – GRATEFUL DEAD with The Infamous Stringdusters
In Warren Zanes’ 2008 book Revolutions in Sound: Warner Bros. Records, The First Fifty Years, he shared a quote from Warner Bros. label executive Joe Smith about the 1966 signing of Grateful Dead in San Francisco, “My wife and I went to the Avalon Ballroom and, wow, it was like walking into a Fellini movie. The music, the lights, the drugs, the people dancing, and the overall craziness was just overwhelming. We watched and listened with our mouths open the whole time. When it was over, we did the deal. The Grateful Dead had its recording contract and Warner Bros. had its first big hippie band. We couldn’t get any AM radio play for them. It was a controlled Top 40 format. When Tom Donahue took over KSAN FM in San Francisco, that’s when we got the Grateful Dead played.” The group’s Bob Weir added, “Back then, the whole deal in the record industry was to get hit singles happening. Joe liked my singing. He thought I had a hit singles voice, which eventually happened a bit with ‘Truckin.’ Joe wanted us to work in that direction, but we were totally uncooperative. If anybody tried to tell us to do anything, most likely we’d head in the other direction. We were fairly contrarian. We weren’t about to be shaped or nurtured. That said, they put up with us and sold the records we gave them, and they did well at that.”
In late 1970, Grateful Dead’s album American Beauty was released. The album included “Truckin’,” which became their highest charting single that decade. Garcia’s “Ripple,” from the album, made the flip side, shuffling along in a bluegrass folk style, joined by David Grisman on mandolin, who we also highlighted earlier as a guest on Bonnie Raitt’s version of “Louise.”
In 2000, on the NBC television show Freaks and Geeks, the music of the Grateful Dead was featured. The school counselor assigned student Lindsay Weir to listen to American Beauty. The episode concluded with “Ripple” playing, “There is a road, no simple highway, between the dawn and the dark of night, and if you go, no one may follow, the path is for your steps alone.”
By the end of the decade, the group had transitioned from Warner Bros. to their own label, briefly, and then onto Arista. Garcia’s song “Shakedown Street” was a disco influenced single, anchored by Phil Lesh’s bass, during the height of that music genre’s era. Its flip side, “France,” had a tropical sound about the South of France, delivered vocally by Weir and Donna Jean Godchaux and heavily backdropped by the steel drums and percussion of Mickey Hart and Bill Kreutzmann, an expansion of their sound. At the Kennedy Center Honors event, David Letterman said, “The Grateful Dead’s music fills the universe.” Both songs appeared on their Arista album Shakedown Street, produced by Lowell George of Little Feat.
In the 1980s, the group’s most successful album was 1987’s In the Dark, with four singles, concluding with Weir’s “Throwing Stones” and its flip side being Garcia’s bouncy “When Push Comes to Shove” featuring the piano of Brent Mydland.
The first single from the album, “Touch of Grey,” became Grateful Dead’s sole Top 40 hit, peaking at No. 9, and was recently covered by The Infamous Stringdusters as the opening number on their Americana Vibe EP Undercover, Vol. 3, in a way which would have fit Grateful Dead’s American Beauty early ‘70s era. The quintet’s guitarist Andy Falco told Goldmine, “The song has a really great message, and I’ve always loved it, especially after seeing the Grateful Dead back in the Jerry years. ‘Touch of Grey’ is an uplifting song. I think about a particular version when Jerry Garcia had come out of his coma and he’s singing ‘I will get by’ and doing windmills. It’s the perfect message that matched when we were coming out of the pandemic.” Bassist Travis Book added, “For obvious reasons it hit us at that post-pandemic time. We found that the world we live in has a song that reaffirms our will to keep going, keep getting by, and continually be relevant.” Dobro player Andy Hall concluded, “Because this song had a video on MTV, some view ‘Touch of Grey’ as being the Dead’s version of pop music. The song’s widespread appeal does nothing to diminish its depth. The chorus is full of hope and easy for anyone to latch onto. Jerry’s solo is stunningly beautiful as well.”
“‘Touch of Grey’ is an uplifting song. I think about a particular version when Jerry Garcia had come out of his coma and he’s singing ‘I will get by’ and doing windmills. It’s the perfect message that matched when we were coming out of the pandemic.” – Andy Falco of The Infamous Stringdusters
Televised coverage of The Kennedy Center Honors event will air on CBS this Sunday evening, December 22.
Related Links:
kennedy-center.org/whats-on/honors/
Goldmine 2020 Louise Poynton interview on David Cassidy book Cherish
Goldmine October 2024 In Memoriam: Grateful Dead’s Phil Lesh
Goldmine Nov 2024 fan tribute to Grateful Dead’s Phil Lesh
Fabulous Flip Sides is in its tenth year
goldminemag.com/columns/fabulous-flip-sides
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