RAGGED GLORY
Ragged Glory is the nineteenth studio album by Canadian musician Neil Young, his sixth with Crazy Horse, released in 1990. It was voted album of the year in the annual Pazz & Jop critics’ poll and in 2010 was selected by Rolling Stone as the 77th best album of the 1990’s. The album was very well received by critics with Kurt Loder in Rolling Stone raving that it was “a monument to the spirit of the garage – to the pursuit of passion over precision” and calling it “a great one”. (More from Wikipedia)
There about midway through the fourth side of Nuggets: Original Artyfacts from the First Psychedelic Era, 1965-1968 was a song that I didn’t think quite fit in: “Farmer John” by the Premiers. It was earlier than any of the other tracks, dating from 1964, and it sounded like it was recorded live at somebody’s picnic. The lyrics were simple – “Farmer John . . . I’m in love with your daughter . . . whoa-oh-oooh” – as was the beat and the slow, loping groove; but it just kept growing on me. Eventually Neil Young recorded a cover of the song in the same style on his excellent 1990 album Ragged Glory. The songwriter is Richard Berry – he is not related to Chuck Berry but has some seminal songs to his credit nonetheless; “Louie Louie” heads the list, but “Have Love, Will Travel” is almost as good. (See below).
(January 2011)
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I’m not sure where I got the idea that “Farmer John” was written by Richard Berry, but I was mistaken about that; the song was actually written by Don “Sugarcane” Harris and Dewey Terry, who originally recorded the song in the mid-1950’s under the name Don and Dewey. Sorry about that. I’m still glad that I had something to say about Richard Berry though; he wrote some great songs, and not just “Louie Louie”.
(January 2014)
