At one point I was a songwriter and demo singer. My own music was what someone once called “slash music:” country-slash-folk-slash-pop-slash-rock, but my voice was squarely in the folk/country arena, and I would get gigs in Nashville recording demos of songs written by successful artists’ unsuccessful relatives. There was a reason these relatives were unsuccessful. Some of the songs were just bewildering; one I’m partly remembering had a theme and lyrics about a turtle, specifically “the one who stuck his neck out was the one who really knew,” which is un-singable, especially at the rapid, country-fiddling pace that was requested.
Celine Dion might have done it, but she’s committed a lot of crimes against nature.
The producers would send the songs to me on cassette tapes, and I would play them and try to figure out 1) what they were saying, and; 2) what the tune was supposed to be. This was rarely evident. Then I’d make my version of it on tape as I thought the lyrics and tune were, send it back, and the producers would play it for the client who almost always said, “Yes! That’s exactly it!”
On the occasions I got it wrong it was because I wasn’t fluent enough in Southern and so had misunderstood a word, often due to my own assumptions, say, that “gravy” couldn’t possibly be a word in a love song.
“Marjie, honey, you got that lyric wrong. It’s supposed to say ‘I’d like to be your gravy,’ not ‘I’d like to be your lady.’”
Eventually I’d fly down to Nashville and record the songs with the unbelievably talented hired-gun musicians who’d come in, hear it once, play it right, do the next one, then the next one, and leave. That’s them. I’d spend the day in the isolation booth agonizing.
The producers I did the most work with were the late John and Pandora Denny and their sound man “Dole,” who said to me once, “I like it when you sing, Marjie. I can understand every word.”
And I said, “Well, DOYLE, that’s ‘cause I say all the letters.” And he cracked up and said I sounded just like his wife, who was also from Massachusetts and so talked like me and had the same attitude.
One day I was in the booth putting final vocals on a song that already had all the instrumentation laid down, about 64 tracks as I recall. I was singing but stopped when I heard a phone ring. This was bad - I shouldn’t have heard anything. I told Dole I wasn’t isolated, and there was sound leaking into the booth. He told me a phone hadn’t rung, backed up the tape, and punched in where I’d left off.
I heard it again. And then again. I went into the control room where about five other people were, musicians, engineers, and another singer. They heard nothing. I heard it every time. Dole looked at me and in a very supportive move (every minute was many dollars and you just didn’t waste time on extra takes or nonsense), he started muting the tracks, one at a time until there it was, with three tracks remaining: the kick drum track was distorting and causing a ringing sound. Everyone in the room looked at me.
“Marjie,” said Dole, “Y’all got dog ears.” He fixed it and I went back into the booth and sang the song.
I also wrote songs, and Pandora called at one point asking for a country waltz. One of her artists was looking for “a smart one.” I sent her a song called “You Could Have Fooled Me,” figuring “smart” meant, “a pinch of cyanide in your sugar.” It had a little depresso-sarcasm, and I went wild with a maverick direct-from-bridge-to-out-chorus structure.
As was the way back then, I recorded it and sent it to Pandora. She called me a couple of weeks later to say, “She loves it, but she thinks it’s a little codependent.”
“Pandora,” I said, “it’s a country waltz. It’s the very definition of codependency.”
“Well it’s the chorus. She doesn’t like the word “need” ‘cause she feels that's too needy.”
I couldn’t argue with that.
Codependent Chorus
You could have given me everything I’d ever need
And I would have made you a home, one you could finally own
And you could have had me to hold
Lived and died owning my heart and soul
But you say you can’t see giving up being free
Well you could have fooled me
“OK. What if we say `dreamed’ instead?”
“Oh that’d be great! If you can fit it.”
I tilted my head and let that statement pass. I had work to do. The artist wasn’t going to just sing the song modified. That’s not how it was done. I had to send a new tape of the entire song with the new word dropped in, so that's what I did.
Non-Codependent Chorus
You could have given me everything I’d ever dreamed
And I would have made you a home, one you could finally own
And you could have had me to hold
Lived and died owning my heart and soul
But you say you can’t see giving up being free
Well you could have fooled me
Pandora called the next week thrilled. “Well it sounds just perfect!”
“Pandora, why didn’t you think I could fit it?”
“Well because need has one syllable, but dreamed has two,” she said.
And that’s when I learned that in Southern, ee is one sound, but ea is completely another.
I sang the original chorus to the beagle while writing this.
In response she hit the bottle pretty hard for 7:00 am and has been in codependent ennui ever since.
Morning Teaistisms
The world only has two words for tea.
That’s not really true, but it’s mostly true, and fun is the Paul Revereesque aspect of the two variations: Tea if by sea and Cha if by land. The tea trade originated in China but traveled outward in two ways. If a region has the tea-like pronunciation it was brought there on ships, probably by Dutch traders. If the region has the cha-like pronunciation, chai, say, it got there over land on the silk road. The only places that don’t use some derivation of tea and cha are places that grew their own tea and never traded for it.
I love chai. I love the spiciness of it, the variety in kick and flavor and heat or lack-of that the tea and different spices bring. Traditional Indian and Pakistani chai is made by rapidly boiling milk, adding the chai mix and sugar and stirring it vigorously, and then aerating it by pouring it from as high as possible through a sieve into the waiting cup below. This makes a creamy foam far more airy and redolent than the lid of frothed milk we’re used to on our coffee.
For everyday, I prefer a water-based chai with milk added. Like with curry and spice powders you can make your own, but there are such great prepared mixes out there I’d rather enjoy the variety of whatever floats my Boston Harbor tea boat at the moment. The Blue Lotus Chai Company makes some really good ones. I use one of those little electric wisk things to mix it all up and aerate the brew, adding the sugar and chai first, putting in a little boiling water, mixing, adding more water and then the hot milk. I don’t get the frothy foam, but I get a quick, delicious cup of chai.
Some of us did know she can sing. I'm thinking, private invitation zoom concert, where we drink a lot of tea while we listen. Anyone?
Thank you for singing for me. I know you didn’t sing for me, but it felt like you did.