Yes, for your regular Tuesday afternoon music therapy we bring you the rock-solid Johnny Rivers. He never was quite a super rock star, but just one of those talented, working-slug singers who shaped American pop music in the early sixties with the “go go” sound. He was good enough that Bob Dylan gave him props in his mighy fine autobiography Chronicles.
I much prefer Johnny’s later hippie-period stuff like “Summer Rain,” probably because I remember so vividly and sentimentally that summer when everybody kept on playing “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Heart’s Club Band.” But my fave of Mr. Johnny will always be “Poor Side of Town.” Great song and great lyrics that still speak to the small town in me.
(For Jack Lockhart, a mighty fine and pure guitarist and absent friend, R.I.P.)
OK, I admit it. “Poor Side of Town” is a guilty pleasure of mine. Don’t tell anyone. Shhhhh!
I’m clergy–your secrets are safe with me.
J.B.