max abelson's super groovy music video spectacular

#990: elvis presley (with scotty moore & d.j. fontana) - blue christmas (1968)

do you know that look in elvis’ eyes when he’s onstage with his childhood friends in his ‘68 comeback special? when d.j. fontana is thwacking an empty guitar case with his drum sticks, scotty moore is playing the case’s guitar as well as he did in 1955 when the three of them were still called the blue moon boys, and it all makes elvis so happy that he sings a wrong word after the chorus and has to muffle a vibrato giggle? that’s what i hope your holidays are like, friends, and your new year, too.

#983: furry lewis - furry lewis’ blues and other songs (2/2) (1968)

if songs about trains are the best kind, and casey jones is the best train song, and if furry lewis’ version is the best one, and this is his best performance, is this the best video of all time? 

#982: furry lewis - furry lewis’ blues and other songs (1/2) (1968)

when furry lewis says at the beginning of this mysterious and wildly beautiful film, “i’m going to give you furry lewis’ blues tonight,” it’s true for two reasons. the first is that the first song of the twelve wildly beautiful ones he plays is called furry lewis’ blues, not mr. furry’s blues or even furry’s blues from the late-1920s recordings that you know and love. instead it is filthy and sly, like early chuck berry songs—and like chuck berry furry plays furiously: when he really gets going, with four fingers and a slide pulsing on the fifth, the guitar sounds like awestruck. 

“i’ve got a new way of spelling memphis tennessee: double-m double-e great god a y nor z,” he says twice, and both times it’s thrilling. and then he starts hitting his guitar as beautifully as anything that’s ever been hit. 

it’s also funny because “furry lewis’ blues” also means furry lewis is playing his own music, which is as true as joni mitchell played hers. and joni mitchell singing jazz-rock choruses about furry lewis singing the blues isn’t close to furry lewis actually singing it. 

#974: merle travis - midnight special (1968)

i’m the first to admit that bowties do not enjoy an exceedingly rock-and-roll reputation. men who sport symmetrically looped neckwear have been known to sing about cuddly toys, pillows and whispers, abandonment and holidays. and that’s if they get to sing it all—lots of bowties have been worn by the men standing quietly in roy orbison’s early-70s backup band. but the blandness of the bowtie wearer is a crude stereotype. merle travis was america’s most righteous and funny and pure and true guitar player, and the man’s bowties were not just long and bright, they tended to resemble wilted plants and have drooped past the lapel of his sky-blue suits. they weren’t as nice as his jowls, though.

#965: loretta lynn - blue kentucky girl (1965)

as far as blue kentucky girls go she’s no emmylou harris, but she has those eyes with old mountain sadness, a banjo player in neon-colored plaid, a voice that sounds like pollen and pedal steel and tobacco, a husband named doolittle, and she swears this is her favorite song and she’ll love you by the moon above you. don’t leave her for the bright lights, friends. 

#963: ray charles & the raelettes - drown in my own tears (1960, live)

do you know how miserable ray charles is when he tells you here that he’s literally drowning to death because of the secretions of his sadness, in this live version of drown in my own tears that he made while listening to a lot of late beethoven string quartets, duke ellington, and godspeed you black emperor?

he is as sad as i am about the quiet super groovy spectacular late-summer posting lately. it’ll be better in a week, and then maybe by the end of the year we ought to hit video no. 1000, and i’ll throw a party in new york with confetti.

it will take that length time for you to recover from this ray charles anyhow.

#961: lightnin’ hopkins - hurricane beulah (c. 1967)

this is probably the saddest topical natural diaster song from a man named after a natural disaster. to reproduce the sound of lightnin’ hopkins in a cardigan and turtleneck mimicking a hurricane on his gibson at the end here would take a million zz top beards, ten thousand guitar centers, and sixty-six biten-off heads of bats stewed together for infinity.

#951: simon and garfunkel - bridge over troubled water (1969)

“school children sang bridge over troubled water to a crowd that included paul simon, the song’s writer. peek oversaw cit’s expansion into subprime mortgages, leaving the firm after it emerged from bankruptcy protection.” - thain wins best dad award as charities honor bankers!

#949: booker t. & the m.g.’s, brook benton & mar-keys - blues de memphis (1969)

even if you don’t speak french, or english, or if you do and you don’t know what he sounds like, or looks like, or if you’re wearing sunglasses indoors like he is, and three sets of ear plugs, you’ll still be able to notice when isaac hayes and his baritone sax make an appearance in this french documentary. the room gets colder, your mother across the country shivers, and your sister in college cries.

#945: otis redding - lover’s prayer (1966)

the super groovy music video spectacular is thrilled to announce a five-year joint investigation bringing together the metropolitan museum of art’s costume institute, the stax museum of american soul music in memphis, tennessee, and new york’s  paley center for media to begin to determine how otis redding was able to combine high-waisted red pants and the world’s best left hand gesticulations with such pure and gruesome and unextinguished and knee-buckling soul singing in this mid-60s television clip. it’s going to take a lot of imaginary work, but it will be worth it.

#941: the beatles (and billy preston) - dig it (1969)

in this rare* and intriguingly spanish-subtitled footage from the let it be sessions, billy preston smiles like he’s chugged liquid gold on the surface of the sun. lo entiendes?

*or maybe not so rare, according to the comment below from, i think, my genius cousin andy

#932: tina turner - ooh-poo-pah-do (1964, shindig!)

if the twin cancers of american racism and sexism could be cured with a music video, the tempest and melody and ecstasy and soul of a very young tina turner gliding across a mid-1960s television soundstage—in front of the dry-cleaned gentlemen in suits behind her—would do the trick very nicely.

#929: lesley gore (prod. quincy jones) - it’s my party (1963)

even though quincy jones doesn’t turn 80 until next march, the gentleman’s impact on 20th-century u.s. ears is so vast and that it’s totally necessary to get next year’s appreciative juices flowing with an an all-quincy week. here is a person so extraordinary that his middle name is literally delightt, the extra t probably for terrific.

quincy jones, who grew up poor with a schizophrenic mother and semi-professional baseball player father, met ray charles at 14, toured as lionel hampton’s trumpeter by 20, and was arranging songs for duke ellington around the time he was dizzy gillespie’s musical director at 23. over the next few years, when he wasn’t fronting the suavest big band records of the decade or becoming the first black executive at a major record label, he put together such perfectly gleaming pop arrangements that he could yawn out it’s my party for a 16-year-old from long island, leslie gore, by 3 pm on a weekday before going to see charles aznavour at carnegie hall.

on his way there, a man in a purple shirt and cape and sunglasses stepped out of a car. “what’s up phil?” quincy jones said to phil spector—according to quincy, the only member of the pair you should trust. ”i,” said phil, “just cat a smash with the crystals, it’s called it’s my party.” what did quincy jones do? only this: walked backstage, said a “bonsoir” to charles aznavour (that’s a direct quote from a book), ran to the bell sounds studio, cut 100 acetates of his lesley gore party version, licked 100 stamps, sent his version to radio stations, and left for japan the next day toact in a one-hour japanese drama—whose music he did too, with marvin hamlisch.

three weeks later he got a call from his mercury records boss, irving b. green. “didn’t anybody call you?” he said. “quince, the record’s number one.” he won a grammy that year, the first of 27.

#925: gal costa - baby (1969)

caetano veloso’s baby is the simplest of all the baby-based love songs, and gal costa’s version beats out the ronettes’ baby, i love you, the beatles’ baby’s in black, the louvin brothers’ my baby’s gone, joanna newsom’s baby birch, lefty frizzell’s my baby’s just like money, roy orbison’s dream baby, the ronettes’ be my baby, bob dylan’s it’s all over now baby blue, and, by just a hair, both aretha franklin’s (sweet sweet baby) since you’ve been gone and baby i love you for history’s best titularly infantile love song, in that exact order.