September Songs

Mt. Hope Cemetery. Photo by Mark Grube.

Here's a typically lovely and slightly inscrutable ode from our friend e. e. cummings, to mark the equinox...

to stand(alone)in some

autumnal afternoon:
breathing a fatal
stillness;while

enormous this how

patient creature(who’s
never by never robbed of
day)puts always on by always

dream,is to

taste
not(beyond
death and

life)imaginable mysteries

How about that? Such a pleasure to have that guy's words floating around in the world. Autumn is my favorite time of year. Everything is just better in it: sleeping, cooking, hikes, the holidays, etc. But for some, it's just a reminder that the supposedly horrible Rochester winter is drawing ever closer. I've expressed my excitement about the arrival of fall a few times this week, only to be met with tedious complaints about the shoveling that's to come. Boo hoo. With that in mind, here are a few September songs on the first day of the new season.

Here's Sarah Vaughan with Clifford Brown from 1955. The best version I know.

Lou Reed here with more of the original lyrics, not exactly workable for Sarah, I suppose. According to Wikipedia, the song originated from Walter Huston's request that he should have one solo song in Knickerbocker Holiday, a 1938 Broadway musical. Huston played the role of an aging dictator. The songwriters, Maxwell Anderson and Kurt Weill, reportedly "wrote the song specifically for Huston's gruff voice and limited vocal range, in a couple of hours."

James Brown puts his stamp on it, from the 1969 album Soul on Top...

And finally, Mr. Nelson...