songs 1-9

♬ ¹ [This page: Songs on Carl Oglesby’s first LP, some arranged in PDF & JPG formats.]
♬ ² [For songs from his 2nd LP, click “songs 10-19” here or in top right Navigation menu.]
✔ [For site intro & Oglesby info, click “Carl Oglesby’s Songs” here or in Navigation menu.]

All lyrics reproduced on this site and in its files are by Carl Oglesby.
All rights of the owner of the works are reserved.

∙∙∙∙∙ From the LP “Carl Oglesby” by Carl Oglesby – side 1: ∙∙∙∙∙

∙∙∙∙ (tracks 1 - 5 on the CD “Carl Oglesby + Going To Damascus” by Carl Oglesby) ∙∙∙∙

To the right of each title are audio links.

Or, songs 1 - 9 (entire first LP, with tracklist links to start of each song): youtu.be/9XcV-S77wBA

In the 1970s I talked with someone who’d known Oglesby. He described a drunken chorus of Carl’s friends loudly singing this song. To me it’s always been a fun song with such, uh, “fun” topics as sexual tensions, the mystique of virginity and the sacrificial virgin, painful defloration and emasculation... But each listener pieces together their own story from the dramatic images in his songs: I played this recently for a friend, and to her it was a sad song about stillbirth. For Carl Oglesby’s songs – as for a Rorschach test – there are no wrong answers.

You may remember my surprise, when right before my eyes,
You abandoned your disguise, revealing to me
That you were not the little virgin. I had thought you were the surgeon,
Poised knife in hand to deliver another little man.

In the suburbs of Eden, the far outskirts of Paradise, way over yonder.

Download: .PDF .PDF [print-area] .JPG [print-area]

And the winner for best opening line or couplet in the entire history of music:

Your houseboy’s body, floating facedown in the river; does anybody dare to speak his name?
Your Shanghai baby says – what … will you give her for an inside tip on the villain’s game?
Playing solitaire there with your marked deck, that little pistol in your vest.
You claim the game’s been rigged, & even though you’ve lost your touch, you’re still the best.

Although elaborate, dark and full of intrigue, this is actually one of the more straightforward narratives in Oglesby’s song‑stories: An American in China circa 1949 finds his imperialist world falling apart all around him. It’s interesting to note that the 1949 revolution was not ancient history when he wrote this song. The revolution happened only 20 years before this LP was released, when Oglesby was turning 14. A major thread in the ’60s anti‑war movement grew from Oglesby’s analysis of the Vietnam conflict – and an understanding of Vietnam’s and China’s revolutions formed a part of that analysis.

Until recently this was the only song of his I played. I played it on guitar many years ago and it’s a good song for guitar. A tricky arrangement for fretted dulcimer (it uses my 4½ fret, sometimes a partial capo and as I play it there’s one chord voiced with four different notes -- tricky on a dulcimer), but I do kinda like it on dulcimer.

Download: .PDF .PDF [print-area] .JPG [print-area]

• Staring At The Sunshine

03-StaringAtTheSunshine.mp3
or youtube.com/watch?v=9XcV-S77wBA&t=421s

For more than thirty years I said this would be the second Oglesby song I’d learn – just as soon as I understood it... Well, that never happened. Then I read in Oglesby’s memoir, Ravens in the Storm, that he didn’t always understand his own songs. So, freed from a need to understand them, I started learning other songs of his. This became number 7 for me.

I chose the right time to learn it. I was catching up on watching season 4 of the popular TV show Scandal. In typical Oglesby‑song user‑generated understanding, it all became clear. I realized that in the 1960s he wrote a song about the fourth season of a TV show which would premiere almost half a century later, half a year after his death. Now it doesn’t quite completely fit: We’ve seen Olivia Pope in a mini‑dress, but not a mini‑skirt with white plastic boots (as far as I recall, although I can certainly imagine it). And if she does have an imprisoned son (who – like Olivia’s parents – has, well, lost an illusion of grace), we just don’t know about him yet...

The complex song eerily matches the complex TV show, except for the above two points. So I’m still convinced that if you perform it after introducing it as a song about Scandal – most of your audience would believe it...

She tries to smile, but it looks like he’s seen through her style. So it takes her a while.

Off with her mini-skirt, boots of white plastic, she nakedly ponders her hopes so fantastic
That a time will arrive when just to survive she’ll finally say what she means.
...

She begins the parade of assassins she has not yet paid. Such a sweet little maid.

Download: .PDF .PDF [print-area] .JPG [print-area]

The story in “Black Panther” makes one of the most powerful anti‑racist statements ever in a song. The simple driving chord progression makes it a good jam song (perhaps a bit more suited for guitar than dulcimer, but still easy to play on dulcimer). Yet it’s a song I find difficult to perform.

Oglesby’s daughter Aron (in a YouTube comment, dead link below) is in one sense correct that “the lyrics are disturbingly current.” But in another, the story does now need to be set in the past. The days when the wealthy commonly had black servants (and could remain totally oblivious of the implications) do seem more like a bad memory today, making the song seem to me a bit dated – and thus its strong statement seems a bit more like a “straw (wo)man” argument now. (To me, it’s more dated than a story song set clearly & intentionally in a [recent] historical period, i.e. “Le Chinois.”) But I do agree that the breeding of violent confrontation in ghettos is still a disturbingly current topic.

But it is difficult for me to sing. Performing this song is a tricky balance: express that you understand a character’s violence – without sounding like either ➀ justifying it, or ➁ stereotyping African-American males as inherently violent. And how do I sing an intense story culminating in rape, telling how an unaware racist woman made mistakes leading to it (and could learn from it) – without implying she “deserved it”? Perhaps a woman could sing this without that possible problematic implication... (Note gender switches for female singer, i.e.: “...bring this woman’s cape.”)

[Edit: Maybe my problems with it seeming dated were just a California perspective. Having barely survived a recent Republican administration which included white supremacists does make the song a bit easier for me to sing now...]

Listen to Vinnie Bell’s brilliant electric guitar part. Near the start of the song he plays a brief, delicate figure after the word “debonair,” letting you know subconsciously that electric guitar is part of the arrangement. You don't hear it again until it violently explodes after “knives” at 3:32, playing constantly (even behind lyrics) until the end. [I consider this a rock song, but you may need to listen to that ending, to hear it this way...]

YouTube audio links I’d originally put to the right of song titles here (2014 uploads by Believe SAS) have gone missing. A small number of Oglesby’s songs were on YouTube earlier, some even prior to his death. I believe the earliest was “Black Panther” uploaded by AFoggyBrain at youtube.com/watch?v=yjELc_YQPs0 (also gone now). It was the Oglesby song on YouTube with the most visits and comments (including Aron’s, mentioned above).

I told you things were crumbling, you could smell the storm in the air.
You just showed me your Japanese umbrella, so cool, so debonair.
Ice cubes tinkled. The conversation strayed
To cocktail party observations on the one who was trying to pray.
...

Ah, but the footman he just stands there, he just looks you up and down.
You tell him “Boy, don’t get insolent,” and you try not to notice his frown.
And then you feel your silver growing weary, and you hear strange breathing at your side.
Maybe you better hurry up, baby, better find yourself a place to hide.

Download: .PDF .PDF [print-area] .JPG [print-area]

∙∙∙∙∙ From the LP “Carl Oglesby” by Carl Oglesby – side 2: ∙∙∙∙∙

∙∙∙∙ (tracks 6 - 9 on the CD “Carl Oglesby + Going To Damascus” by Carl Oglesby) ∙∙∙∙

• Portrait of a Lady

06-PortraitOfALady.mp3
or youtube.com/watch?v=9XcV-S77wBA&t=1287s

This is shorter and has, perhaps, a less complex story than most of Oglesby’s songs. Not quite as many deliciously‑worded lines or images of intrigue and, well, inter‑personal failings. Even so, I always liked its sound. Livelier than most of his songs, it has a feel matching its imagery of dancing and playfulness. But ultimately it’s a story of abandonment, to which an upbeat sound is a deliberate contrast. It had been one of my favorites of his – but I didn’t really fully appreciate it until I started to sing it. Currently, it’s the most fun Oglesby song for me to play.

The PDF has two pages: Page 1 has an arrangement in Oglesby’s original key of Em. This was how I first played it. Page 2 has an arrangement in the key of Dm, the way I play it now. (I’ve also experimented with matching its story with a slower, slightly more somber sound.)

Out beyond the plains, where dragons play, the sight
Of dancing shadow things has caught your eye tonight.
The fine and distant song the dragon gives the wind
Will leave my simple dream behind where your begins.

Download: .PDF .PDF [print-area] .JPG [pg1,print-area]

☞ video of “Dragon Song” performed by myself, Jim Burrill, in Em. (Is that wind noise, ...or is it a dragon?):

http://youtube.com/watch?v=KfoZ1xGbrIo

• Cherokee Queen 08-CherokeeQueen.mp3
  or youtube.com/watch?v=9XcV-S77wBA&t=1822s

☞ audio of “Cherokee Queen” performed by Mad River (from their “Paradise Bar and Grill” LP):

http://youtube.com/watch?v=y5D3i1hsouw

• Lemon Light 09-LemonLight.mp3
  or youtube.com/watch?v=9XcV-S77wBA&t=2030s