Citizen K.: Kris Kristofferson

Showing posts with label Kris Kristofferson. Show all posts

Thursday, March 10, 2011

Two Songs About Rivers

If there's a better American song than this one, I'd like to hear it. Here's a Brit performing an aching rendition. Away, I must away:

Kris Kristofferson looks like singing "i'm gonna sit right here until I die" with Johnny Cash fulfills a bucket wish list. It tore me up every time I heard her drawl that southern drawl:

Thursday, March 3, 2011

R.I.P., Suze Rotolo

They looked so domestic. Just a young couple crazy about each other, strolling a New York City street with the confidence that the world was their oyster. The near mundaneness of the image belied the brilliance of the music within, but once you heard the music within, you took a second look at the cover. Suddenly, it portrayed something else: A portrait of a young man as an artist who had just changed popular music forever and his (somewhat reluctant, it turned out) muse. She clings to him smiling and proud as he whispers something secret -- a private witticism, perhaps, a sweet nothing, or a tale of the Village night. The images of the cars behind them futilely attempt to freeze the image in late 1962 or early 1963, but the music had already demolished the mere temporal pretensions of a camera: It's already immortal. And Suze, you feel, knows it. The smile says, "This record? He couldn't have done it without me."

Suze Rotolo is gone, succumbing to lung cancer at age 67. She inspired Bob Dylan's interest in the political world and became the subject of some of his greatest songs. Here's, Dylan's friend Ramblin' Jack Elliot sings one of them (music begins around 3:30):