Lydia Likes It

Chain of Fools?

Awesome. Wow. Whoopie. She's not Aretha Franklin, who recorded this in 1968; she's Gezel Bardossi, a 12-year-old Australian girl who sang this for her audition for The Voice of Australia in 2023. Close your eyes when you listen to Gezel. You'll swear Aretha is singing in your ear. (Thanks to my husband Ted for finding this.)

Layla, you've got me on my knees. Again.

First recorded by Derek and the Dominos in 1970, "Layla", a hard rock classic co-written by Eric Clapton, was inspired by a love story that originated in 7th-century Arabia and later formed the basis of The Story of Layla and Majnun by the 12th-century Persian poet Nizami Ganjavi -- the tale of a young man who fell hopelessly in love with a beautiful young girl, went crazy, and so could not marry her. The song was further inspired by Clapton's secret love for Pattie Boyd, the wife of his friend and fellow musician George Harrison (yes, that George Harrison). After Harrison and Boyd divorced, Clapton and Boyd eventually married. This recording, from 2016, mellows what was originally a gritty, sexy, almost painful song into a bluesy zen ballad, and I love it.

Iko-Iko

One of the most well-known songs of Mardi Gras is “Iko-Iko,” made popular after an impromptu jam session was caught on tape by songwriting greats Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller. In 1965 New Orleans girl group The Dixie Cups were recording for Leiber and Stoller’s Red Bird Records in a New York studio. They’d finished “Chapel of Love” and during a break the women began singing a song they’d learned from their mother called “Iko-Iko,” a call and response chant of a Mardi Gras Indian tribe. Group member Barbara Hawkins said: “We were just playing around with it during a session using drumsticks on ashtrays. We didn’t realize Jerry and Mike had the tapes running.” Leiber and Stoller later overdubbed bass and percussion along with the drumsticks on ashtrays, released it, and in 1965 it became the Dixie Cups’ final Top 40 record. My husband Ted found this recording, and as soon as he heard it, he said "Lydia Likes It!" And he's right. I do.

Excerpted from The Story Behind "Mardi Gras Mambo" and "Iko Iko" by Lydia Hutchinson on Creative Workshops.

Gordon Lightfoot

If you could read my mind, you'd know how much I miss Canadian singer-songwriter Gordon Lightfoot. His "best of" album, Gord's Gold (pictured above), contains almost all of my favorites from the 1960s and 1970s, with one exception that came out a few years later, in 1976. The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald tells the true story of a shipwreck in Lake Superior -- a kind of documentary song, unlike any other that comes to mind. 

Harry Belafonte, musician, actor, civil rights activist

When I was growing up, my parents often played folk music in our house. (Well, opera too, but I tried not to listen.) I never heard folk music in any of my friends' homes. It wasn't until later, when I moved out after high school, that I appreciated how growing up on a steady diet of Harry Belafonte, The Weavers, The Kingston Trio and others implanted the notion of activism deep in my soul. I listened to the words of Day-O, Belafonte's "banana boat song", and understood that the message was about fair pay and justice, and not just about bananas. Belafonte, a confidante of Martin Luther King, worked alongside him on the 1963 Freedom March on Washington DC, and he never stopped using his platform to fight for human rights around the world. He died earlier this year at age 96. Rest in peace and power, Mr. Belafonte.