25 Essential American Songs

A semiquincentennial countdown

Happy July, gentle readers! I spent the last couple of weeks traveling to London (and subsequently recovering from said travels) where I had a whirlwind time of networking around not one but two conferences. As last year, I’ll be writing up a travel diary of my various adventures in conferencing, sightseeing, and people-watching. Unfortunately, it was logistically difficult for me to get much writing done around said adventures, hence the quietness around here. To my subscribers old and new, including those I met in London, thank you so much for your readership!

As our nation’s 250th birthday approaches, I’ve felt bad that I haven’t had the bandwidth to come up with more content appropriate to the occasion. As I lay around sniffling from an airport cold the other day, I came across a little news special in which various celebrities chose favorite American songs in honor of the occasion. (The celebrity lineup included some people who made sense and others who didn’t, like Neil deGrasse Tyson.) This inspired me to think about what my own list of definitive American tunes would look like. If I was putting together a capsule for the aliens that said, “Hey aliens, this is America!” what tracks would I include? (A slightly different question from “What are my personal favorite American songs ever?” though some overlap is inevitable.)

Sick and wan as I was, I still had the energy to browse around YouTube listening to music, and pretty soon a playlist took shape: 25 songs, consisting of five picks each from the five genres of Gospel, Great American Songbook, Rock and Roll, Country/Americana, and Pop. I now present it to you, dear readers, mostly for those of you who are paying me, but for those still loitering in my free tier, I’ll open up my thoughts on the top pick from each genre. Please join me in this musical celebration of the greatest country on earth. And should any of my inclusions or omissions make you upset, readers with comment privileges are welcome to lodge their protests below. You can even lodge your protest at my genre choices, though I wouldn’t recommend spending much time trying to convince me that hip-hop is music.

Essential Gospel Songs, #1: Swing Low, Sweet Chariot, Fisk University Jubilee Quartet

Our best guess as to the composer of this tune is Wallace Willis, who was among the “Choctaw Freedmen” emancipated in the Choctaw Nation after the Civil War. He was hired to teach at a Choctaw boys’ school, where sources say that he taught the children this song. We apparently owe its preservation and circulation to the headmaster who wrote it down.

Like all great standard tunes, this can be interpreted in a myriad ways and lose none of its power. It can be slow or rollicking, a plaintive lament or a celebration. It can be raw and bluesy or carried up in the clouds by an ethereal soprano or tenor. It can be carried by a lone voice or by a chorus of harmonies. There is really almost no way to go wrong with it.

I could put any of these interpretations into “the capsule.” There’s the great B. B. King’s exuberant take, blending it with “Swing Down Chariot” (echoed in The Plantation Singers’ version). There’s Joan Baez’s acapella take. There’s this stunning interpretation by the classical soprano Afrika Hayes (introduced back in the day when the phrase “Negro spiritual” was still politically correct).

In the interests of historical preservation, I would probably settle on the first known recording, by the Fisk University Jubilee Quartet. I have always had a weakness for male quartet singing, and I find something especially moving and dignified in the work of early black “conservatory” vocalists—classically trained, but still distinctive.

Essential Great American Songbook Songs, #1: God Bless America, Irving Berlin

The great Jewish-American songsmith Irving Berlin (formerly Israel Baline) first wrote a version of this tune in 1918, then dusted it off 20 years later and gave it to the now-forgotten Kate Smith, who made it a standard. You can read all about its fascinating history at La Wik, including the trivia bit that it opens with a fragment from a Jewish novelty song called “When Mose With His Nose Leads the Band.” As one might imagine, it was not a favorite with the KKK. I can’t think of a song more emblematic of the Jewish immigrant’s indelible stamp on our culture. I hear it and I think of every great musician, every great comedian, every kid who decided that if baseball was America’s national sport, he would not be outdone in his love for it.

With apologies to Miss Kate, I prefer to hear Berlin singing his own creation—a little quavery, but full of patriotic fervor.

Essential Country/Americana Songs, #1: Wayfaring Stranger, Rhiannon Giddens

Properly, country should be separated from bluegrass, which in turn should be separated from folk, but if I tried to give all these genres their full due, this post would become even longer than it’s already going to be, and I would lose the numerical neatness of 25 tunes to mark our 250th birthday. So hopefully the reader will forgive some handwaving here.

The precise origins of this song are lost to time. Since its emergence in the 19th century, it has been performed with different lyrical variations, dressed in different styles. Like the best American folk classics, and like the Negro spirituals with which it shares DNA, it is a song of deep yearning for a home beyond this land of sickness, toil, and danger. We look back on songs like this as the children of an affluent age and realize with some shame that we no longer understand what it’s like to live these lyrics, really live them. Then again, it is not as though in our general affluence we have solved depression, or loneliness, or for that matter even poverty.

I like the simplicity of Rhiannon Giddens’ take, but if you have another preference, do share.

Essential Rock and Roll Songs, #1: Piano Man, Billy Joel

Billy Joel was among a number of living songwriters pointedly snubbed in a recent New York Times list of “greatest living songwriters.” Thankfully I wasn’t the only one to notice and protest the snub. It’s always been a bit of a mystery to me why Joel can’t get no respect, but when you’re as loved as he is, you don’t really need it.

A number of Joel songs make a case for their inclusion in “the capsule.” I very nearly picked “Scenes From an Italian Restaurant,” which considered purely as a piece of rock music I don’t think Joel ever topped. “New York State of Mind” is a strong contender here too, as is “Miami 2017.” But in the end it really has to be “Piano Man.” The lyrics have that sardonic edge that would become Joel’s calling card, but where I think songs like “Scenes” tilt a bit into meanness, “Piano Man” has a sympathetic eye for its characters. Apparently they were based on real characters Joel observed in his early days of bar pianist obscurity. (“And the waitress was my first ex-wife…And Davy was in the Navy…and probably still is…”) And they are all of them very American, each playing out their dissatisfaction with the American dream, including the piano man himself.

Essential Pop Songs, #1: Walking in Memphis, Marc Cohn

Marc Cohn burst onto the pop music scene with this record, winning Best New Artist at the 1992 Grammies. When you look at who he beat out — Boyz 2 Men, Seal, etc. — he stands out as the folksy Jewish white boy who doesn’t belong. But this white boy had soul. He also had class, on display in an acceptance speech that ran too long because he wouldn’t stop until he had thanked everyone who in his opinion deserved to be thanked.

For whatever reason, Cohn never made another record that caught fire on this level, and he would pass into the industry’s collective memory as a one-hit wonder. But if one had to be known for just one song, what a song to be known for, and what a story behind it. A late bloomer, Cohn drifted into Memphis in his late 20s, wondering why he still hadn’t been struck by creative lightning. That was where he encountered a seasoned black church musician named Muriel Davis Wilkins, who really did play every Friday at the Hollywood Café, where there really was catfish on the table and gospel in the air. Her son, himself a musician, would later recall that she never charged a church for her talents. Sensing that Cohn was lonely and depressed, Muriel took the budding young talent under her great maternal wing and invited him to join her on stage. Cohn likes to joke that she had been playing “His Eye is On the Sparrow,” “Nearer My God to Thee,” and other “greatest hits of Hebrew school.” But “Amazing Grace” was one he knew, and they sang it together. When they were done, she said, “Child, you can go home and write those songs you been meaning to write.”

You couldn’t write a more quintessentially American origin story for a song: a wandering Jewish kid, finding himself in the heart of black gospel country, singing “Amazing Grace.” Although Muriel didn’t live to see this tune become a hit, she was able to hear the record it came from when he came back to Memphis to give her a private listening party. She liked them all, but “The one where you mention me? That’s the best one you got.”

When I saw Cohn live a few years ago, it seemed to me that in some sense he was still wandering, still searching. I hoped he would find what he sought, one day.

And now, below the fold, please enjoy the rest of the best!