El Coquito/Born in Puerto Rico

[Readers: We have come to Simon's musical, The Capeman. There are, by my count, 40 songs in this musical, and I write on one song each week. Ordinarily. I do not wish to write about this one musical for the better part of a year, and I am fairly certain you do not want to read about it for that long, either, wonderful as it may be. So I have broken the musical down into 16 sections, most with more than one song, and will write about one of those sections each week; it is not uncommon to find an album with that many tracks. So we will visit with this musical for four months instead of ten.

As for the album Songs from The Capeman, since I will be discussing all of the songs in the musical altogether, I will of course cover those in the process. However, the songs on that album do not follow the order of their presentation in the musical itself. As the musical tells a story in a particular order, including  flashbacks, I will preserve the song order of the musical. If you have listened to the album, perhaps listening to the songs in the "right" order will help you appreciate the musical in another way. In 11 of the 16 weeks, I will be writing about a song from the album; as there are so many more songs in the play than on the album, there cannot be an album song covered each week. However, as Simon highlighted these songs by including them on the album, I will only cover one album song in any given entry, to give it its proper due.]

The first song in the musical is an innocent one called "El Coquito." The Lyrics book explains that it is a Puerto Rican folksong by one Olcutt Sanders. It is about a "Little Tree Toad," named for its cry, and in the song the children imitate it. My limited Spanish indicates that the toad sings at night, and the children imagine it sings them a lovely lullaby. The notes also indicate that the song is sung by children who are offstage. 

Then Salvador, our protagonist, sings a brief verse about being free-- we soon learn, from jail. But then he adds, ominously: "But there's the truth that still needs to be spoken."

The first full-length song, "Born in Puerto Rico," is the second track on the soundtrack album. The first verse is pure biography. Sal relates where he was born, that he moved to New York City as child, and that "before I reached the age of sixteen/ I was running with a gang, and we were wild."

The book and the soundtrack differ on the next line, which changes the meaning of the lines that follow. The book has Salvador remembering his own youth and the sights and smells of the barrio evening. The album has the more eyebrow-raising: "He keeps looking but he don't recognize me," as if "he" should. 

Then the chorus, which addresses "you," a party we are yet to meet, unless he or she is onstage; I only have the lyrics, not the "book" of the musical with stage directions. "No one knows you like I do/ No one knows your heart the way I do/ No one will testify to all you've been through, but I will." Again, it would help if we knew whom was being addressed.

The refrain is sung by Salvador and his gang, The Vampires. They repeat the title, then add "And my blood is Taino" (say: tah-EE-no) which the liner notes correctly capitalize (the book does not). This is a proper noun; the Taino people are the natives of Puerto Rico. 

Salvador then picks up the biographical thread, noting how unprepared they were as immigrants (yes, Puerto Rico is part of the US politically, but culturally, significantly distinct)-- "We came here wearing summer clothes in winter"-- and yet, equipped with "hearts of sunshine in the cold." The thrust of the musical, we will see, is how the "cold" won and conquered Sal's spirit, and how he tries mightily to get his "sunshine" back.

The "you" is now revealed to live on the upper floors of a certain apartment building, and to be the stepchild of a Pentacostal preacher. And then again the chorus of "No one..." this time ending "...but this will."

Salvador ruminates: "Small change and sunlight, then I left these streets for good." So he was poor, yet hopeful, and then left. For where? And why?

First, the other Vampires introduce themselves. Salvador says all that is left of them is "blurred... grainy photos" in the newspaper. Then we get a partial answer. Salvador lists the places he was incarcerated; in the book, we get the length of each stay in each place, but in the soundtrack just a list of places, starting with a "school for criminal children" and including infamous prisons like Sing Sing and Attica.

"Twenty years inside, today we're free." The "you" is his partner in crime, then? Salvador says that there was so much written about the case that he did not have a chance to read it all before lights-out in jail... "The night you took The Capeman for your name."

Well, Salvador is The Capeman. So who is he speaking to? To "Sal"... his younger self. In the musical, two different actors play this character at different ages. They are differentiated on the page as 'Sal,' the young punk, and 'Salvador,' the middle-aged ex-con he matures into. 

The older self promises his younger self he will remember him, testify for him. The book's version hinted at this structure with the line "I see myself, those summer evenings..." And so he alternately sings in the first person, and to his younger self as "you." So his own stepfather was a preacher, and so forth.

The newspaper stories "pile up in shame," but there is a note of hope: "...the words release you." But which words? Are these the words of the judge commuting his sentence? Some words Salvador writes? We shall see.

The song ends, in the liner notes with a coda, sung in Spanish: "I was born in Puerto Rico/ My heart... My dear is Puerto Rico." This is attributed to a character named Lazarus, and this is the first time we meet him.

Simon artfully introduces us to his main character(s), Salvador/Sal. In Salvador promising Sal he will "testify" on his behalf, we begin the musical with curiosity and some compassion.

Note: While the CD of Simon's versions of some songs was distributed as the CD Songs from The Capeman, a full original-cast soundtrack, I am told, is available on iTunes.

IMPACT: This is one of Simon's most ambitious projects, and sadly, possibly his biggest professional disappointment; the movie One Trick Pony at least spawned the hit "Late in the Evening." Despite a tremendous cast and production team, whom I will introduce in subsequent posts, the musical was met with protests (which usually fuel ticket sales!) and poor reviews, and closed shortly after it opened. 

My understanding is that it was a major financial loss, more than $10 million. Afterward, Simon did many things I would never have expected. He reunited and toured with Garfunkel, releasing a CD and DVD of that tour. He re-released all of his solo material, with bonus tracks. And more. 

While this material is welcome to all his fans and probably won him many new ones, I cannot wonder if these maneuvers were meant to cover some of his losses. It is simply unlike Simon to look backward like this for so long. It makes me think of Willie Nelson's efforts to pay back the IRS, including the album Who Will Buy My Memories? While Simon never used such an obvious title, these efforts feel to this writer like his asking that question. I say this only as an observation, not a criticism; if Simon did do these things for this reason, thank goodness he had tremendous quantity of outstanding material to do it with!

Next songs: In Mayaguez/ Carmen/ Santero/ Chimes/ Christmas in the Mountains

You Can Call Me Al

A priest, a minister, and a rabbi walk into a bar. The bartender looks over and says, "What is this, a joke?"

"Call Me Al" is the song that put Simon back on the map-- all over the globe. And yet it is not only one of the sunniest, but one of the funniest songs in his entire catalog.

It starts off like a hundred other songs, from Fats Domino's "I'm Walking" to Huey Lewis' "Do You Believe in Love"... to "The Street Where You Live" from My Fair Lady. It could also be the set-up for a joke: "A man walks down the street..." (Probably the most common song opener is: "Well, I woke up this morning...")

The song then continues with a question the man asks himself about his physique: "Why am I soft in the middle?" The question contains the answer; "soft in the middle" is a phrase that might appear in the ad for a snack food. Then there is a pun on the word "hard" in its dual meanings of "not soft" and "not easy."

A "photo opportunity" is a staged setting in which photographers are invited to come take pictures of a celebrity, often of a politician or candidate, making a speech, opening a mall or kissing babies. And then another pun: "shot" means both "chance" and "photograph." "I want a shot at redemption," refers to the idea that such a redemption, actually a private spiritual matter, now takes place at photo opportunities, through public apologies and grand gestures meant to assure the public that a new leaf has been turned over. This is to avoid ending up as a "a cartoon/ In a cartoon graveyard,” presumably a political cartoon showing that his career is dead.

The next word, "bonedigger" can either be a metaphor for the kind of journalist that digs up old scandals and finds skeletons in closets of celebrities... or a kenning for the "dogs" in the next line (a kenning is a kind of metaphor found in such poetry as Beowulf, in which the sea is called a "whale-road").

Yet, it does not seem that the man is actually famous. He lives a building superintended by, or at least located past beyond, a man who is even softer in the middle, who does not have pastries to thank but alcohol ("Mr. Beerbelly") and also has a whole pack of noisy, pushy dogs.

"You know, I don’t find this stuff/ Amusing anymore." This can be a continuation of his comments his alcohol-loving neighbor, or a "this stuff" can be the kinds of shenanigans he feels he has put up with too many of already in life.

The chorus seems to be a conversation not involving the "man" at all. The song started with a narrator, who now seems to turn to the listener and draw us into a closer relationship: "If you’ll be my bodyguard/ I can be your long-lost pal." This role-playing is indicative-- the speaker seeks protection, and in turn offers friendship. One can't offer protection in return, if one already feels vulnerable.

Then the speaker reveals more-- he is talking to a woman, and he suggests they take on pet names: "I can call you Betty/ You can call me Al." According to Simon, the names come from a mistake the French composer Pierre Boulez made at a party, calling Paul "Al" and and his then-wife Peggy "Betty." So even this line is an in-joke.

The next verse kicks off with another pun, this time on the word pair "short" and "long." (Simon's website is again incorrect. The line is "whoa, my nights are so long," while the site has it as "woe.") The man (which could be the same one or not) now has a problem, a "short little span of attention" but "long" nights to fill.

"Where’s my wife and family?" It's odd that he doesn't know, even if he is divorced. If they had in fact run off or been taken away by surprise, he would have contacted the police! So a better interpretation is neither "Where is the family I have" nor "Where is the family I once had" but "Where is the family I should have by now?"

And what if he never finds love? What if he should "die" before it happens? And worse, he has no one to turn to for guidance, as his "role model is gone." Panicked, he grabs the first opportunity at any sort of relationship or connection, with no standards or thought for consequences: "He ducked back down the alley/ With some... girl." Something that happens too often with politicians and others, one might add.

Well, the consequences happen anyway, even to the non-famous: "There were incidents and accidents... hints and allegations." His reputation, whatever it was, is ruined. (The phrase "Hints and Allegations" has since become the title of a poetry collection, a novel, and a Collective Soul album.)

The final verse takes the man away from familiar streets and local alleys. It sets him down "in a strange world." There is the Old World, or Europe... there is the New World, or the Western Hemisphere (which is old, too, but not to Europeans) and then there is the "developing world"-- mainly Africa and southern Asia-- which used to be called "The Third World" until that expression was determined to be demeaning. ("Maybe it's his first time around" could be a reference to reincarnation, in that he is a new soul, one with no past lives and so no experience.)

This time, the man is entirely out of his element-- "He doesn't speak the language/ He is a foreign man." Wait, where's the pun? In the second line: "He holds no currency," which means that he has no local form of money... but this is also an expression that means he "has no importance" here, no weight or influence.

The man is not surrounded by the concerns of notoriety or self-fulfillment that he was at home. No, he is "surrounded by the sound" of this new-yet-older place, with its "cattle" instead of cars, "orphanages" instead of families, and "angels in the architecture" instead of corporate logos or gargoyles.

His response? To be received in grace-land, actually. His head starts "spinning." Then he has an epiphany, a religious awakening: "He says, 'Amen!' and 'Hallelujah!'"

The word "scatterlings" also appears in the song "Scatterlings of Africa," by South African singer-songwriter Johnny Clegg. The album Third World Child came out the year after Graceland did, and the song hit England in 1987, then was used in the 1988 American movie Rain Man. It is possible that Clegg picked up the word from Simon, or that they both took it from a third source, or the local dialect. Most likely, the word means "rootless people, exiled from their land." Clegg uses it to mean all of humanity, which began in Africa and scattered from there.

Back to our speaker, who is a foreign man, yes... but so is every one else! Here, he is just another one of the "scatterlings," not like in his home country where everyone has to live under the twin pretenses of stability and upward mobility. He finally comes to a place where no one has a place, and so everyone does. Even him.

There is a wonderful song by Dar Williams called "What Do You Hear in These Sounds?" about therapy. In it, her realization feels like this: "The wall came down/ And there, they stood before me/ With their stumbling and their mumbling/ Just like me."

The secret is that there is no secret. The epiphany, what he has found, is that everyone is lost. Everyone is "soft in the middle" and vulnerable. Everyone is "short of attention" that they can pay, and that is paid to them.

The last verse can be seen as Simon's version of "Amazing Grace"-- A sweet "sound" brings salvation and inner peace to a lost wretch. As for Simon himself, he had forever been searching for the origins of the music he loved as a child-- early rock, doo-wop, and gospel-- and he seems to have found it. Amen and Hallelujah indeed.

IMPACT:
This upbeat song remains one of Simon's most popular, a quarter-century on. It is used as a fanfare for everyone from athletes named Al to once-VP-candidate Al Gore.

The musicians are from his South African ensemble, made of up members of several local bands. The famous bass solo is by Bakithi Kumalo, first played forward then backward.

Also, Adrian Belew sits in on guitar synthesizer, Randy Brecker plays one of the driving trumpets, and jazz flutist Morris Goldberg has a solo on penny whistle.

It went to #23 in the US charts and #11 in Canada, but all the way #6 in New Zealand, #4 in the UK, #2 in Australia and also #2 in Ireland, where they know a well-played penny whistle when they hear one. The song has been covered by a few acts, but none whose names I recognize.

The seemingly offhand line "hints and allegations" has become something of a catch-phrase. It is used in the title of an album by Collective Soul, as the title of two books of poems-- one each by William M. Kunstler and Amanda J. Bradley-- and a book by Kimberly Dascenzo. Even more books use the phrase "Incidents and Accidents" in their titles.


Next Song: Under African Skies

Graceland

While a trip to Elvis Presley's (in)famous Graceland estate is the set-up for this song, it's more about a state of grace than an actual, geographical place. Like Graceland itself, it is a place in which all are welcomed. (I even know the couple who had the mansion's first Jewish wedding; the skullcaps given to guests where made of-- what else-- blue suede.)

The trip that sets off the stream-of-consciousness lyrics seems to proceed northward from the "Mississippi Delta," perhaps down Nawlins way (that's "New Orleans," with the local accent), upstream along the river itself, through the former Confederate States, to "Memphis, Tennessee." So the word "down" in "down the highway" is to be taken as "along," not "southward"; perhaps it should be "up the highway," but in songs it's always "down the highway."

National is a brand of guitar. The maker specializes in the "dobro" a guitar with a steel plate mostly covering the soundhole (You can see one on the cover of the Dire Straits album Brothers in Arms). This guitar can be played vertically or horizontally, usually with a slide and thimble-like picks (called "plectrums") and is known for its tremolo, or warbling, twangy sound. Simon is comparing the sunshine reflecting off the Delta wetlands to the shiny steel plate on this guitar, favored in country music.

"Poorboys" could be taken as "poor boys," simply "needy people," the kind that throng to a shrine like "pilgrims." But a "poorboy" is also local slang for a kind of large sandwich elsewhere known as a "hero" or "submarine" sandwich (or a "hoagie" or "grinder"). By adding some local slang, Simon is trying to evoke a sense of place. As it happens, the "Civil War" is in this area known as "The War Between the States"... but "Civil War" rhymes better with "National guitar."

Another way Simon proves his Southern bona-fides on the track is including The Everly Brothers themselves on high background harmonies (called "descants," technically). Don Everly was born in Kentucky... then Phil in Chicago, but still.

Who are the pilgrims in thos speaker's car? Himself and his son, who-- if the speaker is Simon-- is Harper, the "child of [Simon's] first marriage," to Peggy Harper. I have not done the math, but "nine years old" seems reasonable.

"But I’ve reason to believe/ We both will be received/ In Graceland." There could not have been a doubt about his son, an innocent child, being thus received. The doubt, which is here brushed away, must have been about himself, now a double divorcee.

This thought leads to its source, the memory of his love's leaving: "She comes back to tell me she’s gone." She seems to come to collect her things and let him know that her leaving is, in fact, permanent. He fumes at the insult to his intelligence: "As if I didn’t know my own bed." He knows her so well, he knows what "the way she brushed her hair from her forehead" means.

Then she makes an interesting observation-- a divorce, the loss of a love, is a public matter. As if being able to peer through "a window in your heart," everyone will know that you are devastated, "blown apart." Furthermore, those people will also feel the impact and shock wave: "Everybody feels the wind blow.”

Here, the website, liner notes, and book dispute the line. These first two sources have "Everybody sees the wind blow," which would imply people appreciate the impact but are not affected by it, which the Lyrics book says they are. Here's how this dispute breaks down, also taking the repeat of the chorus into account. The website has "Everybody sees the wind blow" both times; the liner notes have "sees" and then "feels"; the book has "feels" both times!

So we listen to the song. Simon sings "sees" the first time and "feels" the second time. The liner notes win. And this makes sense. The first time thinking the incident through, a person might only focus on himself: "Everyone sees my devastation, and I am exposed." The second time, he might see what impact his sadness and anger have had on those around him: "Everyone feels my devastation; I should be compassionate toward them, too."

And, on the second time through, the speaker realizes that he has more in his car than himself and his son. He has the skeletons from his closets, "ghosts and empty sockets."

The throw-away line that repeats changes "empty [eye] sockets" to "empties," usually a reference to empty cans or bottles of beer, as in "We should return these empties for a refund at the store." The sight of all the empties of beers consumed during a period mourning over a lost love, strewn around the floor the following morning, is a sobering thought. (Don Henley has a song with the lines: "If you still want to hold her, you must not be drinking enough.")

What else might keep someone out of grace, aside from losing love, and so now having no love? What about too much love? We'll have to find someone who has that issue and ask them. How about a girl who is, um, "bounced" on so often even she calls herself "The Human Trampoline," as if she were a circus sideshow attraction?

The speaker, who does not have that sort of chaos in his life, nevertheless knows "turmoil" of the kind a trampoline causes: "falling, flying... tumbling" in uncertainty. Yes, yes-- even someone that tumultuous can, um,  "bounce" into grace.

And now the speaker is ready to admit that he was not the only one impacted by the explosions in his life. To be fair, when his former lover told him this to begin with, she may have been speaking about herself, or telling him what to expect, from her own experience.

Simon, in interviews, has said that, when he was a teen, he wanted to be Elvis (Simon has admitted to the song being influenced by Presley's "Mystery Train"). So the idea of making a pilgrimage to Graceland, the source of his artistic inspiration, at a time of reassessment, should not surprise him so much: "For reasons I cannot explain/ There’s some part of me wants to see Graceland." Isn't this album, recorded on a trip to Africa-- the ultimate source of even Elvis' music-- just a further exploration on that same journey?

So what does grace mean? The word "unconditional" often precedes the word "love," but we have just seen that romantic love is not necessarily unconditional. There are everything from divorces to one-night stands. And what if "I may be obliged to defend/ Every love, every ending," worries the speaker, so used to-- so conditioned to-- conditional love. "What if I can't justify or excuse my actions well enough-- won't I be refused?"

And then the key realization dawns and the beginning of grace is achieved. "Or maybe," he wonders, "maybe there’s no obligations now." Maybe love is conditional when it is human love, and only God's grace is pure, obligation-free, and unconditional.

If that's true, it's true for everyone: "Maybe I’ve a reason to believe/ We all will be received/ In Graceland." All. Everyone. Even him.

IMPACT:
The song won the Grammy for Record of the Year, which goes to the person or people who performed and recorded the song (as opposed to Song of the Year, which goes to the songwriter. That year, 1988, that went to "Somewhere Out There," from An American Tail.). (Album of the Year is for the entire album. We'll see if that's phased out as downloads take over...)

The song hit charts internationally, going to 81 in the US, 98 in the UK, and 70 in Canada, and all the way to 27 in Ireland. It also cracked the top 100 in Australia and The Netherlands, and the Top 40 in New Zealand and Belgium.

It has been covered by everyone from Willie Nelson and Coldplay's Chris Martin to, inevitably, Elvis impersonators. Also a band with the clever, if sad, name of Casiotone for the Painfully Alone.

Next Song: I Know What I Know

Take Me to the Mardi Gras

This song is so light and slight it is barely there. It recalls, even more than "Feelin' Groovy," its close cousin "Cloudy."

Later, on Graceland, Simon will do a more sterotypically New Orleans zydeco number, "That Was Your Mother."

But, until its closing jam by the Onward Brass Band-- which itself sounds more like New Orleans funeral-procession music than the Caribbean sounds associated with Mardi Gras-- this song is barely the kind of music one associates with New Orleans altogether.

It is not the tumbling piano of Professor Longhair, nor the zydeco shuffle of Clifton Chenier, nor the gospel-inflected harmonies of the Neville Brothers. And it certainly doesn't have the sparkle and throb of a Mardi Gras Carnival parade.

Instead, it is a gossamer breeze, a tall glass of cool iced tea, and a hammock on a beach. It is about escaping to a place of music (the whole first verse) and warmth, both physical-- "You can wear your summer clothes"-- and emotional-- "You can mingle in the street." It almost seems to be more about Aruba or Provence than raucous, randy New Orleans.

The lyrics are very simple, aside from the word "elite"... and the line "legalize your lows." Elsewhere, it seems, one's mad and sad moods are almost illegal, and people are obliged to put up a false front of cheerful professionalism/romance constantly. Here, however, one's "lows" can be hung out to dry openly, having been "washed" by the "music" and bleached clean by the sunshine.

Another interesting turn of phrase is "in the New Orleans," as if it were more a situation than a place, like "in the water" or "in the meantime."

Mardi Gras is a party, but it has religious origins. It is a last hurrah before the self-denial of Lent, which in some traditions includes fasting and confession.

At this point in the song, a gospel-like chorus is sung by the Reverend Claude Jeter, a member of the famous Swan Silvertones gospel ensemble-- and also of the Dixie Hummingbirds, who appear twice on this album ("Loves Me Like a Rock" and the "Tenderness").

"I will lay my burden down," he sings. This refers to one's sins and regrets. Once one's sins are confessed, the belief has it, and repented for-- once one's "lows" are "legalized" for open discussion-- the burden is forever dropped.

Many speak of confession as "getting something off my chest"; and after confession, they describe having "a weight off my shoulders." There is a sense of relief, of "resting [one's] head."

What of the "starry crown"? This is a halo-- the opposite of Jesus' "crown of thorns." The wording is taken from the gospel song "Golden Slippers" about what one will wear in Heaven. It may also be a reference to the shiny, sparkly headdresses worn by Mardi Gras parade participants. If so, it connects the fancy-free feeling of a reveler with the burden-free relief of one who has confessed. Not just compares-- connects. The revelers can achieve a state of bliss the penitent also seeks.

What happens when he is so coronated? "I won't be wanting anymore." This is an interesting idea to find in this context, as it seems more Buddhist than Christian, as the Buddhist ideal is to be free from desire and "want," which induce suffering.

It seems that having "burdens" paradoxically means having "wants." This is counter-intuitive. Maybe burdens are a bad thing, but they are not nothing. If one has possessions, how can one have wants? Ah, but that is the point. It is burdensome to desire. Once one wants nothings and one needs nothing, one is free of the burden of desire itself.

The song concludes wthe the advice that the listeners, too, "take [their] burdens to the Mardi Gras" and let the experience "wash [their] soul[s]." This is the second allusion in the song to water, the first being "the shore," where one rests one's head, presumably after a baptism.

The last line refers to Jelly Roll Morton, a New-Orleans born musician who claims-- with some validity, it seems-- to have "invented jazz." At the very least, he was the first to publish a jazz composition.

The madness of Mardi Gras, which has turned into a combination of Spring Break the size of a downtown and a Las Vegas showstopper on wheels, masks its origins as a last "blowing off steam" season before the somber sobriety of Lent.

Simon recaptures its original meaning as a way to relieve oneself of emotional "burdens," through the cleaning power of song: "Let the music wash your soul." This is why the song is so relaxed and relaxing. It's about finally being able to relax.

Lastly, what does "toomba" mean? Is it just a nonsense, sung syllable, like "tra-la-la" or "sh'boom, sh'boom"? Possibly. But to a Jewish listener, it could call to mind the folksong "Tum Balalaika." A "balalaika" is a Russian lute with a triangular body." The chorus to this waltz-time song goes:

"Tum bala-, tum bala-, tum balalaika
Tum bala-, tum bala-, tum balalaika
Tum balalaika/ Shpiel balalaika
Tum balalaika/ Freilach zol zein"

Which means: "Strum the blalaika, play the balalaika, be festive" (a balalaika is a large lute with a triangular body). The verses form a riddle song, along the lines of "I Gave My Love a Cherry." (I personally think the song also influenced "Chim-Chimeny" from Mary Poppins.) In any case, the chorus does capture the same relaxed ethos "Take Me to the Mardi Gras."

One last note-- this song was recorded at the famous Muscle Shoals studio in Alabama. I urge you to look it up and read a bit about it. It deserves equal recognition with better-known studios like Sun and Motown. There is now a documentary about the studio.

The song has been covered by several acts.


Next Song: Something So Right