Late Friday Random Ten Plus Annie's Song

It was almost ten thirty when I finally got around to relaxin' just me, my girl, the lamplight, some hot chocolate, and the Friday random ten. Plus Annie's Song.

I had to throw it in there because I woke up this morning singing it. This happens to all of us from time to time. A song seems to hatch from nowhere in your head (where you been Lionel?) and evolve there until you end up in front of the bathroom mirror with tousled hair, tears streaming down, belting the one verse you actually know the lyrics to. It happens to all of us.

Anyway, today I woke up singing Annie's Song, perhaps because of a dream I had. I was playing the sixties folk circuit with Henry John Deutschendorf Jr. (aka John Denver). The year was '66, and we were sharing a campfire at the Philadelphia Folk Festival. We were sitting there after that day's performances, just he and I, and I decided to play a few things -- some blues stuff I'd picked up in an earlier dream with Son House in it. John was very receptive; I have to say, he was just the nicest guy you'd ever want to have in a dream with you. He even clapped when I finished playing "You Just Know Me Too Damn Well" an original blues that I swear I never heard, and I never played, and that doesn't even exist, yet that somehow I was playing in a dream. Weird. Well, when I finished, John said he'd like to show me some chords he had put together with lyrics that he thought may still be rough. He figured if he could get the song done he would put it in his set the next day. Then he tuned up that 12 string of his and played Annie's Song, a love hymn of ridiculous beauty.

I must have awakened from my dream during the song, because I don't remember telling him what I thought about it. And I don't remember asking him who Annie was to deserve such a sweet number. Turns out, Annie was his first wife and the muse for most of his best work. They separated in 1983 and eventually divorced. Those were Denver's moderately troubled "Behind the Music" years. It occurred to me, even while sitting next to him at the campfire of my dream in 1966, that he would one day achieve immense fame with his singing and songwriting; that he would become the Bob Dylan of the happy, fresh air set. But I also knew, though I don't think I had the notion to express any of it, that he was going to do some really bad acting in some unbelievably bad movies in the late '70's and early '80's; that he was going to get way too involved with the Muppets; and that his cheery, all-natural folk music would get body-slammed by the synthetic schlock that seemed to dominate the recording industry by the year 1984. But worst -- on top of it all, I might have let him know that he would one day plunge to his death in a homemade plane at the age of 53. I might have said something like: "For God Sake don't build your own plane and fly in it! If you do, I'm telling you you're not going to be pleased with the result!"

No -- in my dream, at that campfire with John, it was all about the music, pure and simple. And John had just played the perfect song to wake up to. Here's this week's list plus Annie's Song.

1) Missing The War -- Ben Folds Five (Whatever & Ever Amen)
2) Oh Sister -- Bob Dylan (Desire)
3) The Maids of Cadiz -- Miles Davis (Miles Ahead)
4) Going Down The Road Feeling Bad -- Woody Guthrie (Asch Recordings Vol. 1)
5) From A Buick 6 -- Bob Dylan (Highway 61 Revisited)
6) Junkie Chase -- Curtis Mayfield (Superfly)
7) He Never Got Enough Love -- Lucinda Williams (Sweet Old World)
8) Oj Talasi -- Trebevic Choir (The Planet Sleeps)
9) Six White Horses -- Michael Masley (All Songs Considered Vol. 1)
10) Open All Night -- Bruce Springsteen (Nebraska)
11) Annie's Song -- John Denver (An Evening With John Denver)

You fill up my senses/ Like a night in the forest,
Like a mountain in springtime/ Like a walk in the rain,
Like a storm in the desert/ Like a sleepy blue ocean,
You fill up my senses/ Come fill me again.

From "Annie's Song" by John Denver