Music Throwback Saturday: I Can Help
“If your child needs a daddy, I can help.”
For a song that went to the top of both the pop and country charts, I feel that I Can Help by Billy Swan must be one of the most obscure of hit songs.
Maybe it’s because there was a record 36 different #1 songs in 1974 on the US pop charts. It doesn’t show up on oldies stations as much as its contemporaries.
Almost no one of my acquaintances knows the song. I DID hear it used on a commercial in recent years (but I can’t remember for what).
But it was a massive crossover hit, #1 on the Euro Hit 50, plus charts in Australia, Austria, Belgium, Denmark, France, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, and West Germany. It also did well in Canada, Ireland, South Africa, Spain, and the U.K.
As a first-time producer, Swan had reached the Top Ten (#8 Billboard) back in 1969, with Tony Joe White’s Polk Salad Annie; LISTEN HERE or HERE.
Billy later backed Kris Kristofferson on tour after Kris’ first LP was released. From SongFacts: “Kris Kristofferson and Rita Coolidge brought Billy Swan a little RMI organ as a wedding present. Billy was fiddling around with it when the chorus ‘I can help’ appeared and within a few minutes he had written the lyrics.”
The record company [argued what] would be the first single on the album; “Everyone at the record company had actually wanted ‘The Ways of a Woman in Love’ to be the first single,” Chip Young recalls. “I said, ‘No, wait a minute. That’s not the hit. The hit is ‘I Can Help’.’ However, [Monument Records president] Fred Foster then hired a guy who was supposed to know the ins and outs of the business, and he said, ‘There aren’t any hits here. We’ve gotta re-cut a bunch of stuff.’ I said, ‘No, we don’t have to re-cut a bunch of stuff.’ It was a battle from then on.
I think I was so fascinated by it because of the lyric content, which includes:
When I go to sleep at night you’re always a part of my dream
Holding me tight and telling me everything I wanna hear
Don’t forget me baby, all you gotta do is call
You know how I feel about you, if I can do anything at all
Let me help, if your child needs a daddy, I can help
It would sure do me good to do you good
Let me help
Now THAT’S not a casual promise, yet the organ is such a simple riff that it’s a fascinating juxtaposition.
More info on the song HERE.
LISTEN to I Can Help HERE or HERE (album version, with false endings).
Straight outta somewhere in upstate New York
The forces that be designed this Straight Outta Somewhere website.
Jaquandor, that fly guy from the OP (that being Orchard Park), did this. There’s a new movie about NWA, “a Compton, California-based hip hop group widely considered one of the seminal acts of the gangsta rap sub-genre.” I wasn’t a big fan, as I found their music misogynistic. I couldn’t name the members save for Dr. Dre and Ice Cube, and the latter only because of his appearances as an actor.
Anyway, there’s going to be a movie about the group, Straight Outta Compton, opening today. In honor, the forces that be designed this Straight Outta Somewhere website. I took the first few pictures of me I could find and did this:
Steve Martin is 70
For better or worse, Steve Martin helped to popularize the air quotes gesture.
Years back, I found it weird and strange that, in some circles, people decided that Steve Martin was not funny because he wasn’t angry enough, was inauthentic, too oblique, or whatever.
This bit from a February 18, 1982, Ben Fong-Torres Rolling Stone Interview, somewhat explains his humor:
“[College] changed what I believe and what I think about everything. I majored in philosophy. Something about non-sequiturs appealed to me. In philosophy, I started studying logic, and they were talking about cause and effect, and you start to realize, ‘Hey, there is no cause and effect! There is no logic! There is no anything!’ Then it gets real easy to write this stuff because all you have to do is twist everything hard—you twist the punch line, you twist the non sequitur so hard away from the things that set it up.”
Martin further describes the development of his humor in this 2008 Smithsonian interview.
WATCH 1976 Standup Comedy.
Success came early for him, from working as a magician at Disneyland when he was 15 to getting an Emmy as a writer on The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour when he was 23. He also wrote for the shows of Glen Campbell and Sonny & Cher.
On his TV appearances, on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson, and, most notably, on Saturday Night Live, which he’s hosted 15 times, he created catchphrases such as “Excuuuuuse Me.” He was one of the wild and crazy guys with Dan Aykroyd, who played a “couple of bumbling Czechoslovak would-be playboys.” For better or worse, Martin helped to popularized the air quotes gesture.
WATCH Steve Martin Has to Leave – Johnny Carson, 1978.
On JEOPARDY! a couple of weeks ago, there was a clue about King Tut, and the contestant mimicked the hand gestures from the Steve Martin song that debuted on SNL, featuring the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, which only went to #17 on the pop charts in 1978, but ultimately sold a million copies.
WATCH King Tut SNL, 1978 and Live, 1979.
But he really wanted to be in pictures, and I’ve seen him in several films.
1979 The Muppet Movie, as a waiter
1984 All of Me, with Lily Tomlin
1986 Little Shop of Horrors, as the dentist
1987 Roxanne, which he also wrote and executive produced; I was quite fond
1987 Planes, Trains, and Automobiles, by far my favorite John Hughes movie
1989 Parenthood
1991 L.A. Story, for which he was also a writer and executive producer.
1991 Grand Canyon, which has my favorite quote about cinema: “That’s part of your problem: you haven’t seen enough movies. All of life’s riddles are answered in the movies.”
1992 Housesitter
1992 Leap of Faith, as a faux faith healer
1995 Father of the Bride Part II – an awful film
1997 The Spanish Prisoner – a decent drama
1998 The Prince of Egypt (voice)
1999 Fantasia 2000 (introductory host)
2008 Baby Mama
2009 It’s Complicated
2011 The Big Year, about birdwatching
He’s also been writing plays, articles, screenplays, and a very well-received 2007 memoir, Born Standing Up.
More recently, I’ve seen him on TV playing his banjo. In the comedy years, he’d play it mostly as a diversion for the joke. But now he, primarily with the band the Steep Canyon Rangers, has been playing a number of banjo gigs.
WATCH Steve Martin and Kermit the Frog in “Dueling Banjos”, 2013.
He’s won several honors, including the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor, the Kennedy Center Honors, the International Bluegrass Music Association’s Entertainer of the Year, the AFI Life Achievement Award, and an Academy Honorary Award. He became a father for the first time at the age of 67.
The new school year
Because Easter is so early, spring break is not until April 25 – April 29,
When the Daughter was in kindergarten, The Wife worked at that school. The holidays, snow days, etc. were in sync. It was great.
Every school year since, the trick is to see where The Daughter’s school schedule fails to coincide with The Wife’s teaching schedule at multiple schools, plus my work schedule. Then we figure out whether we can trade with other parents in child sitting (optimally), or figure out who’s taking the day off work.
The semester doesn’t begin until September 8, the day after Labor Day. Almost immediately, I see the Daughter has both September 14 (Rosh Hashana) AND September 23 (Yom Kippur) off. In previous years, one or the other of these Jewish holidays would land on a weekend. My wife’s schools, more rural, DON’T have either day off, and neither do I.
On October 12 (Columbus Day) and November 11 (Veterans Day), we all have the holidays, and the two of them have November 26-27 off for Thanksgiving. But November 25 is Parent-Teacher Conferences, which means no classes for the child, but one of us should probably ATTEND said conference and stay home the rest of the day.
They have December 24 – January 1 as holiday recess, and of course, I have Christmas and New Year’s off myself. We all have January 18, Martin Luther King, Jr. Day.
But January 25 is Superintendent’s Conference Day. Another one to suss out.
February 15 (Presidents’ Day), we all have it off, and the rest of the week is winter recess, for the teacher and the student in the house.
This is interesting, though. March 25 (Good Friday), which the Daughter has off, the Wife does not. But because Easter is so early, spring break is not until April 25 – April 29, which, thankfully, meshes for the two of them.
June 23, 24 – 1/2 Days for the elementary schools, but The Wife will figure out what to do.
That’s it, except for May 30 (Memorial Day), which we all have off. UNLESS the district uses none of the three days are provided for snow/emergency closings. “For each day used, the following dates (in order) would become days of instruction: May 31, May 26, May 27.” So I root for snow days for which my daughter’s district and my wife’s districts are in sync.