Song Lyric of the Day (Stevie Wonder, on ‘Precautionary Measures’ We Still Need)

“We all must take precautionary measures
If love and peace you treasure.”—American Grammy-winning singer-songwriter Stevie Wonder, “Love's In Need Of Love Today,” from his Songs in the Key of Life LP (1976)
 
A half century ago, Stevie Wonder was such a force to be reckoned with in pop music that, when Paul Simon won the Best Album Grammy for 1975, he thanked the Motown artist for clearing a path for him to win the award by not releasing a record that year.
 
Wonder made up for that absence from the record stores with his much-anticipated, much-delayed double album (plus a single, four-song 33-rpm disc), Songs in the Key of Life, released 50 years ago this week.
 
The LP went to #1 on the charts that first week, and continued the momentum thereafter with five singles: "I Wish," "Sir Duke," "Another Star," "As," and “Isn’t She Lovely?” The following February, Wonder collected four Grammys: Album of the Year, Best Male Pop Performer, Best Male Rhythm and Blues Performer, and Best Producer.
 
Why did this become my favorite collection of Wonder songs? Was it because there was so much in this collection? Because it was his first album that I could buy from my own work earnings? Or because, as a perfectionist, he had produced 21 songs (including several where he handled all the instruments himself!) in a dazzling variety of styles (including the Latin-infused soul and salsa track “Another Star”)?
 
So many of these tunes address love in various forms: with a current mate, a past love, or a newborn daughter (“Isn’t She Lovely?”). But the one with which he started the album, “Love's In Need Of Love Today,” addressed a different kind: what the ancients called agape or caritas—selfless, universal love that makes life possible at all for human beings.
 
Sociopolitical commentary had informed a couple of Wonder songs before: "Living for the City," about a black youth’s struggle for survival in the inner city and the justice system, and, more pointedly, “You Haven't Done Nothin,'" a scathing critique of President Richard Nixon at the height of the Watergate scandal.
 
But “Love's In Need Of Love Today” took a broader view, beyond politicians, of the ills besetting America in the year of its bicentennial. His warning was stark, aimed at the heart of each of his listeners: “The force of evil plans to make you its possession/And it will if we let it destroy everybody.”
 
The passage of 50 years. The divisions in America continue to distress Wonder, as seen two years ago when, on the brink of the 2024 Presidential election, he appealed for civic understanding with “Can We Fix Our Nation's Broken Heart."
 
That race and the resulting daily chaos at home and abroad has only underscored the moral urgency of Wonder’s message from 50 years ago. Too bad more citizens haven’t heeded the plea for “precautionary measures” urged by Wonder and others who covered this song over the years (notably Joan Osborne, on her 2002 CD How Sweet It Is).

Joke of the Day (Edwin Newman, on a Method for Dealing with Rainy Weather)

“These are The Times that dry men’s soles.”—TV newscaster and language maven Edwin Newman (1919-2010), on using newspapers to absorb moisture from wet shoes, quoted by Margalit Fox, “Edwin Newman, 91, Newsman, Defender of English and Partisan of Puns, Is Dead,” The New York Times, Sept. 16, 2010

I loved this pun anyway, but using it in this space felt mandatory today, considering that this is the third straight day of prolonged precipitation up by me in the Northeast.

Spiritual Quote of the Day (St. Therese of Lisieux, on Deeds and Love)

“Without love, deeds, even the most brilliant, count as nothing.” —French Carmelite nun—and “Doctor of the Church”—St. Therese of Lisieux (1873-1897), The Thoughts of St. Therese of the Child Jesus (1915)

This Thursday, the feast day of “The Little Flower”—a saint of unsurpassed humility and devotion to God—will be celebrated.

Quote of the Day (Robert Browning, on How ‘Truth is Within Ourselves’)

“Truth is within ourselves; it takes no rise    
From outward things, whate’er you may believe.     
There is an inmost centre in us all,    
Where truth abides in fullness; and around,  
Wall upon wall, the gross flesh hems it in,            
This perfect, clear perception—which is truth.         
A baffling and perverting carnal mesh          
Binds it, and makes all error: and, to KNOW,          
Rather consists in opening out a way
Whence the imprisoned splendour may escape,               
Than in effecting entry for a light      
Supposed to be without.”—English poet Robert Browning (1812–1889), Paracelsus (1835)

TV Quote of the Day (‘Yes, Prime Minister,’ In Which a High-Level Leaker Is Not Just Caught Out But Embarrassed)

[Sir Humphrey Appleby makes several highly indiscreet, "off-the-record" statements regarding government policy on unemployment and the media during an interview for a BBC radio documentary. implying the government lacks courage and that the true, harsh nature of unemployment policy is hidden. A tape of this outtake is sent to Humphrey, and the Prime Minister, Jim Hacker, obtains it, using it to blackmail Humphrey, turning the tables on his often-manipulative Cabinet Secretary.]

James Hacker [played by Paul Eddington, back turned in picture]: “How did your broadcast go?”

Sir Humphrey Appleby [played by Nigel Hawthorne, facing in picture] [quickly]: “Oh, very well, very well.”

Hacker [smiling, waiting to pounce]: “What did you say?”

Sir Humphrey: “Oh, nothing in particular. I think I pointed out some of the difficulties in allocating responsibilities as between [waving hands quickly] politicians and civil servants.”

Hacker: “But you were discreet?”

Sir Humphrey [more nervously]: “Why do you ask?”

Hacker: “Were you or weren't you?”

Sir Humphrey: “Yes!”

Hacker: “Yes you were or yes you weren’t?”

Sir Humphrey: “Yes.”

Hacker [prodding, with a cunning smile]: “Humphrey…”

Sir Humphrey: “Oh yes. Well, didn’t you expect me to be discreet?”

Hacker: “Well, yes, of course.”

Sir Humphrey [quickly trying to conclude this]: “Well, there you are, then!”

Hacker: “Well, that's all right, isn’t it?” [Sir Humphrey relaxes and smiles, thinking he’s escaped danger.]

Sir Humphrey: “Why do you ask, Prime Minister?” [He starts to sit down at last.]

Hacker: “Well, it's just that the BBC sent me a tape…” [Sir Humphrey shoots out of his seat, alarmed.]—Yes, Prime Minister, Season 2, Episode 8, “The Tangled Web,” original air date Jan. 28, 1988, teleplay by Antony Jay and Jonathan Lynn, directed by Sydney Lotterby

I wonder if a variation of this scene occurred recently on this side of the Atlantic Ocean? You know how the Trump Administration used a Politico story to justify denying it access to the White House grounds—all because of it having allegedly “threatened national security and/or spread falsehoods”?

Well, guess who the (once anonymous) source of that story was? None other than J.D. Vance, who, according to this Daily Beast article, wanted to put a positive spin on ongoing peace negotiations with Iran.

It all goes to show that when it comes to secrets divulged, Washington leaks from the top. Vance would just be the latest member of what the late great syndicated satirist Art Buchwald, back in March 1983, referred to as “the National Council of Office Leakers,” which meets weekly “and is chaired by a very high White House source.”

Quote of the Day (Jessamyn West, on What Heals or Festers)

“A broken bone can heal, but the wound a word opens can fester forever.”— American novelist Jessamyn West (1902-1984), The Life I Really Lived (1979)

This Day in Jazz History (Birth of John Coltrane, Saxophonist Supreme)

Sept. 23, 1926— John Coltrane, a saxophonist, bandleader, and composer who, after overcoming a heroin addiction in his early 30s, achieved a spiritual awakening that fueled his subsequent jazz masterpieces, was born in Hamlet, NC.

Early on, the musical promise of this country boy was recognized by a bandleader only four months his senior: Miles Davis. But six years of dependence on heroin and alcohol turned Coltrane into an unsteady, unreliable member of the Davis quintet, leading to his abrupt ouster.

The way back nine months later into the good graces of the bandleader he called “Teacher” was harrowing: locking himself in his mother’s room in Philadelphia and, without medication or medical assistance, quitting his chemical dependence cold turkey.

For the decade remaining before he died of liver cancer, “Trane” gave thanks to God for his liberation from drugs, and sought a purity in sound that mirrored his ecstatic spiritual vision.

Particularly in albums like the Grammy-nominated A Love Supreme (1965), listeners discerned a spiritual path of devotion and redemption, open to all. In fact, for more than half a century, the African Orthodox Church, founded by Black Episcopalians critical of what they saw as racism in the larger denomination, has even officially canonized him, naming its San Francisco house of worship in his honor.

Not everyone felt well-disposed towards the even greater religious intensity his work assumed in the last couple of years of Coltrane’s life. Critic Stanley Crouch, for instance, for all his appreciation of the musician’s early work, dismissed his late ventures as “naive submission to actual noise and incompetence.”

But few would deny that Coltrane was relentlessly dedicated to practicing his craft, as well as pursuing a musical question as unexpected as his spiritual one.

“Sheets of sound” is how Downbeat jazz critic Ira Gitler described the vertical improvisational style emanating from Coltrane’s saxophone—dense layers of scales, modes and keys over an entire progression. It proved extremely influential. 

But Coltrane was uninterested in repeating himself, and his devotees could hardly keep up with his innovations over the course of the 25 albums he released as a bandleader in his abbreviated lifespan.

Even with the Great American Songbook, the corpus of popular standards that jazz has plumbed for years, Coltrane created something unique with his 1961 interpretation of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s “My Favorite Things.” He transformed that approximately three-minute chestnut from The Sound of Music into what Sam Stephenson called, in a 2014 blog post for The Paris Review, “a thirteen-minute warhorse of dominion.”

Like Davis, Coltrane was connected to the area of New Jersey where I live: Bergen County, NJ. Together they worked Cookin' with the Miles Davis Quintet in autumn 1956 at the Hackensack home studio of legendary jazz recording engineer Rudy Van Gelder. Leading his own band, Coltrane created three albums in Van Gelder’s later Englewood Cliffs studio, including, most notably, A Love Supreme.

(For a good, concise summary of Coltrane at his zenith, I recommend Patrick Jarenwattananon’s September 2010 blog post on—what else?—“Your Blog Supreme.”)