MONDAY’S MUSIC MOVES ME: A Kaleidoscope of Color Songs – The Rainbow Sherbet Edition

Wow, it is good to be back! I have been away from blogging since just after Thanksgiving. Life got a little crazy during December and that craziness carried over into this new year so my “holiday break” turned into an 8-week break! Honestly, the theme for Monday’s Music Moves Me (#4M) was ‘Christmas Holiday Music’ for the entire month of December and I wasn’t feeling any kind of holiday spirit so I decided to blow off the whole month. And then I apparently wasn’t ready for the break to be over so I skipped out on yet another Battle of the Bands this month and three weeks of #4M.

I was actually planning on posting last Monday because I LOVED the theme that our Spotlight Dancer, Mary from Jingle Jangle Jungle, came up with: SONGS WITH COLOR IN THE TITLE. I actually started working on it a little bit last month but I wasn’t quite finished.

The theme really excited me because I’m all about color. Those of you who know me surely agree. It’s no secret…my clothes, my house, my décor…I love color! So even though I missed last Monday’s 4M I was going to use today’s Freebie theme to post my Color Songs.

Now there are a zillion songs with a color in the title so I started out just putting together a playlist with my favorite colorful songs… but “wasn’t quite finished” was a serious understatement! When I began compiling a list of the color songs that I’m particularly fond of, it ended up being a ton of songs that would’ve yielded a real mother of a playlist — one way way too long for a single #4M post (and you all know I typically do long playlists and posts normally so for me to say it was too long, you know it has to be a monster list!)

So… I have decided to do a series: A KALEIDOSCOPE OF COLOR SONGS. The series will post over the next several Freebie weeks. Each post will focus on a specific color (or colors) until I’ve exhausted my list. I’m not yet sure how many weeks it will be. We’ll find out together.

Today my KALEIDOSCOPE OF COLOR SONGS is the Rainbow Sherbet Edition, a playlist featuring songs with the colors Orange, Green and Pink in the titles. Here is my playlist followed by some information and interesting facts about each of the songs. Hope you all enjoy!

THE RAINBOW SHERBET PLAYLIST

ORANGE

Orange Crush by R.E.M. – “Orange Crush” is a song by the American alternative rock band R.E.M. It was released as the first single from the band’s sixth studio album, Green, in 1988. It was not commercially released in the U.S. despite reaching number one as a promotional single on both the Mainstream and Modern Rock Tracks (where, at the time, it had the record for longest stay at number one with eight weeks, beating U2). It peaked at number 28 on the UK Singles Chart, making it the band’s then-highest chart hit in Britain, where they promoted the song by making their debut appearance on Top of the Pops.

Orange Crush was an orange flavored soft drink. In this case, though, it was meant to refer to Agent Orange, a chemical manufactured by Monsanto Corporation and Dow Chemical used by the US to defoliate the Vietnamese jungle during the Vietnam War. US military personnel exposed to it developed cancer years later and some of their children had birth defects. The extreme lyrical dissonance in the song meant that most people completely misinterpreted the song, including Top Of The Pops host Simon Parkin, who remarked on camera after R.E.M. performed the song on the British TV show, “Mmm, great on a summer’s day. That’s Orange Crush.”

The song does not refer to any single Vietnam-related experience for lead singer Michael Stipe, but simply that he lived in that era of American history. He wrote in Part Lies, Part Heart, Part Truth, Part Garbage 1982-2011:

“[The song is] a composite and fictional narrative in the first person, drawn from different stories I heard growing up around Army bases. This song is about the Vietnam War and the impact on soldiers returning to a country that wrongly blamed them for the war.”

As a guest on the late-night show Last Call with Carson Daly, Michael Stipe explained that the song was about a young American football player leaving the comforts of home for the war in Vietnam.

Also, Stipe opened the song during The Green World Tour by singing the famous U.S. Army recruiting slogan jingle, “Be all you can be… in the Army.” Stipe’s father served in the Vietnam War in the helicopter corps.

The drill sergeant heard in the background during the middle of the song is just an imitation by Stipe. In the traditional Michael Stipe way, the words he says during the imitation are complete nonsense. By the way, this was not the first R.E.M. song to deal with the Vietnam War. That distinction goes to “Body Count,” an early unreleased song that they played live many times.

The song’s meaning keeps changing for R.E.M. guitarist Peter Buck. He wrote in the In Time liner notes:

“I must have played this song onstage over three hundred times, and I still don’t know what the f*** it’s about. The funny thing is, every time I play it, it means something different to me, and I find myself moved emotionally.”

The video for the song, directed by Matt Mahurin, won the band its first VMA, for Best Post-Modern Video. And that surprised me. Frankly, I think the music video is difficult to interpret and I’m not really getting the whole Agent Orange reference at all. I was going to include that video in my playlist but instead chose one that I think conveys what the song is about so much better. It’s a documented video history of the chemical dump that took place in Vietnam when our guys were there serving the very country that just happened to be spreading poison on and around them at the same time. To see the streams and clouds of chemical raining down from the planes is quite chilling, knowing what we know now. In any case, you can see the official music video here if you want. If you have the time, check them both out and let me know what you think of the official award-winning video. Which one more depicts the song’s meaning and message, do you think?

GREEN

Green Grass & High Tides by The Outlaws – “Green Grass and High Tides” is a song by the Southern rock band Outlaws. It is the tenth and final track on the band’s debut album, Outlaws. The song is one of their best known, and has received extensive play on album-oriented radio stations, although it was never released as a single. The song is notable for having two extended guitar solos that stretch the song to nearly 10 minutes.

Outlaws founding member Hughie Thomasson said:

I wrote that song in St Augustine, Florida. We went to a cookout on the beach and everybody forgot to bring their guitars. I was standing by the ocean and there was a breeze and the words kept coming to me. It’s about all the rock stars I liked that died had come back and were playing a show just for me. Like Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin and Jim Morrison. And eventually more of course.

Henry Paul told Songfacts that this song is not about marijuana, but about deceased rock and roll luminaries, and the title, he says, was taken from the 1966 “Best Of” collection by the Rolling Stones called Big Hits (High Tide and Green Grass):

“From what I gather, there was an album out, the best of The Rolling Stones, called High Tides and Green Grass. That was the name of the Rolling Stones’ greatest hits – this is like 1966 – and I think it was a manifestation of that title turned in reverse, ‘Green Grass and High Tides.’ I know that much. And I know that it was a song written for rock and roll illuminaries, from Janis Joplin to Jimi Hendrix, and it had nothing to do with marijuana. But it had to do with, I think, a specific person’s [Thomasson’s] lyrical look at rock and roll legends. ‘As kings and queens bow and play for you.’ It’s about Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin. ‘Castles of stone, soul and glory.’ A lot of it is just sort of a collage of words that really don’t have all that much to do with anything, they just fit and sounded right. But I have to say it’s one of my favorite lyrics. My songwriting is more Steinbeck, really rooted in accuracy and reality; this is definitely Alice In Wonderland. It’s the whole ‘White Rabbit.’ It’s sort of like one of those magic lyrical moments that will forever be mysteriously, unclearly conceived.”

“Green Grass and High Tides” was the usual show closer for the Outlaws and the 20 minute+ version can be found on the concert album Bring It Back Alive (1978). The song is mentioned in Molly Hatchet’s song “Gator Country”, on Molly Hatchet (1978), and was featured on the Harley Davidson Road Songs album in 1995. The song also featured as a tribute to the recently departed from Lynyrd Skynyrd. The intro was: “We’d like to take a minute to remember some very good friends of ours, and friends of yours–the Lynyrd Skynyrd Band.”

I love this song! And I do remember that it was in the Top 3 of a radio broadcast I was listening to featuring the Top 100 songs of 1979. Such a good year…

Another great green song:

Green River by Creedence Clearwater Revival – “Green River” is a song by American rock band Creedence Clearwater Revival. The song was written by John Fogerty and was released as a single in July 1969, one month before the album of the same name was released. The song charted at #2 on the US Billboard Hot 100, #5 on Canada’s RPM and #19 on UK Singles.

This song was written by group leader John Fogerty, who explained in his Storytellers special:

“Green River is really about this place where I used to go as a kid on Putah Creek, near Winters, California. I went there with my family every year until I was ten. Lot of happy memories there. I learned how to swim there. There was a rope hanging from the tree. Certainly dragonflies, bullfrogs. There was a little cabin we would stay in owned by a descendant of Buffalo Bill Cody. That’s the reference in the song to Cody Jr. [“Up at Cody’s camp I spent my days…”]

The actual specific reference, Green River, I got from a soda pop-syrup label. You used to be able to go into a soda fountain, and they had these bottles of flavored syrup. My flavor was called Green River. It was green, lime flavored, and they would empty some out over some ice and pour some of that soda water on it, and you had yourself a Green River.”

John Fogerty has said that Green River is his favorite Creedence Clearwater Revival album, in part because it sounds like the ’50s albums by the likes of Elvis Presley and Johnny Cash that came out of Sun Records in Memphis.

And I love this lyric video because sometimes CCR’s lyrics are hard to understand! (How many of you thought they were singing “There’s a bathroom on the right” in the song “Bad Moon Rising”?)

Green Tambourine by the Lemon Pipers – “Green Tambourine” is a song about busking (street performance and the act of performing in public places for gratuities), written and composed by Paul Leka (who also produced it) and Shelley Pinz. It was the biggest hit by the 1960s Ohio-based rock group The Lemon Pipers, as well as the title track of their debut album, Green Tambourine. The song was one of the first bubblegum pop chart-toppers.

Released toward the end of 1967, it spent 13 weeks on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100, peaking at No. 1 on February 3, 1968, and sold over a million copies. The record remained on the chart for three months. It was also the first U.S. number-one hit for the Buddah label. The Lemon Pipers never repeated this success, though their “Rice Is Nice” and “Jelly Jungle”, both also written by Leka and Pinz, made the charts in 1968.

The song’s lyricist, Rochelle “Shelley” Pinz (1943–2004) was a writer at the Brill Building, working with Leka. She said:

In early Spring, 1966, while standing in front of the Brill Building I watched a man holding a tambourine begging for money. I wrote a poem about him and called the poem, ‘Green Tambourine.’ I added it to my lyric collection…. Sometimes I wonder what happened to the man in front of the Brill Building, holding a tambourine begging for money. I remember writing the lyric, ‘watch the jingle jangle start to shine, reflections of the music that is mine. When you toss a coin you’ll hear it sing. Now listen while I play my Green Tambourine’ as if it were yesterday. In the 60s, on the streets between Seventh Avenue and Broadway there was a magic one could only imagine.

The song tells the story of a street musician pleading for someone to give him money. In exchange he offers to play his green tambourine. The song’s instrumentation contains the titular tambourine as well as an electric sitar, a frequent signature of the so-called “psychedelic sound.” Another hook is the heavy, psychedelic tape echo applied to the word “play” in each chorus and at the end, fading into a drumroll (“Listen while I play play play play play play play my green tambourine”). The musical arrangement also features sweeping orchestrated strings and the distinctive vibraslap percussion instrument. While the Lemon Pipers played on the record, producer and joint author-composer Leka hired a string section to accompany the band to add extra depth to the already psychedelic arrangement.

Green-Eyed Lady by Sugarloaf – “Green-Eyed Lady” is a popular single by the 1970s rock band Sugarloaf. Written by band member Jerry Corbetta along with J.C. Phillips and David Riordan, the song was featured on the band’s debut album, Sugarloaf, and was the band’s first single. It peaked at number three on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1970 and was RPM Magazine‘s number one single for two weeks. It remains the band’s most popular song, according to the Last.fm rankings. It has been featured on dozens of compilation albums.

Since “Green-Eyed Lady” gets almost daily play on US radio stations to this day and none of their other songs do, many will be surprised to know that Sugarloaf is not a one-hit wonder; their other hit is “Don’t Call Us, We’ll Call You” from 1975 at #9 on the Billboard Hot 100. “Green-Eyed Lady,” at #3, is their best-known (and somewhat overplayed) single.

One of the reasons that the hook is so catchy is that it’s based on a piece of a scale exercise that frontman Jerry Corbetta found in a book.

Jerry Corbetta played the organ solo on this track in addition to singing lead. He played it in the style of jazz musician Jimmy Smith, his idol. In the single version, which is all you’ll hear on the radio and also in most compilation albums, the song length is about three and a half minutes. The album version is extended to seven minutes for Corbetta’s lengthy – but dazzling – organ solo. BTW, the version in my playlist here is the extended album version so you can experience Jerry’s dazzling organ solo. You’re welcome. 🙂

“Green-Eyed Lady” actually gave rise to that other hit for the band. Four years later, Sugarloaf described the process of recording the song and selling it to the recording industry (namely the failed attempt to get CBS Records to distribute the record) in its song “Don’t Call Us, We’ll Call You,” which also became a hit. (That’s a good one too. Check it out if you haven’t heard it).

Who is the green-eyed lady? According to lead singer Jerry Corbetta, it was his girlfriend at the time, Kathy, who his bandmates referred to as the green-eyed lady. He wrote the song with producer J.C. Phillips and a songwriter named David Riordan.

Fun Facts: The band was originally called “Chocolate Hair” but after getting signed to a record label, they had to change their name because managers were nervous about the potentially racist interpretation of that name (that and the name would have permanently branded them as ’60s psychedelics). They chose “Sugarloaf” after a local Colorado ski resort.

Sugarloaf was formed from the remains of the band The Moonrakers, with five members of that group carried over. Interestingly, “Moonraker” doesn’t just refer to a James Bond film, but also to a nickname for people from Wiltshire in South West Country England. The story goes that the people there were discovered running a rake through a pond at night, trying to retrieve treasure. When a revenue man asked what they were up to, their excuse was that they were trying to retrieve a wheel of cheese from the pond (the reflection of the full moon). The revenue guy walked off chuckling at their simple-mindedness, and the villagers didn’t have to pay taxes.

Green Onions by Booker T. & the MGs – “Green Onions” is an instrumental composition recorded in 1962 by Booker T. & the M.G.’s. Described as “one of the most popular instrumental rock and soul songs ever”, the tune is twelve-bar blues with a rippling Hammond M3 organ line by Booker T. Jones that he wrote when he was just 17. The Hammond organ was invented in 1934 by Laurens Hammond. Its mournful sound made it the instrument of choice for military chapels, but then in the 1960s the rockers got wind of it and the device became a standard keyboard instrument for jazz, blues, rock and gospel music.

Booker T. & the MG’s were the house band for the Memphis soul music label Stax Records. They recorded with many of the Stax artists, including Wilson Pickett, Otis Redding, and Isaac Hayes, but they also recorded their own material between sessions.

The group was named after the British MG sports cars, but when the company expressed disapproval, they claimed the initials as “Memphis Group.” Members of the band were Booker T. Jones, Steve Cropper, Al Jackson, and Lewie Steinberg (who was replaced in 1964 by Donald “Duck” Dunn). Jackson was killed in 1975, but the remaining members have gotten together often to play various events, including the “Bobfest” Bob Dylan tribute concert in 1992, and Neil Young’s 1993 tour. The band was integrated, which was unusual at the time in Memphis: Three members were black, and one was white (Cropper). When Martin Luther King Jr. was shot in Memphis in 1968, igniting already high racial tensions, they had two white and two black members.

In a Songfacts interview with Booker T. Jones, he credited the success of the song to its “apparent simplicity.” Said Jones: “‘Green Onions’ appears to be a simple song, but every time I play it I have to pay attention. I have to remember, and school myself on how the notes go, because it’s just not as simple as it sounds.”

The band developed this song while they were waiting for rockabilly singer Billy Lee Riley (a Sun artist) to show up for a session. In an interview with National Public Radio (NPR), Booker T. Jones said: “That happened as something of an accident. We used the time to record a Blues which we called ‘Behave Yourself,’ and I played it on a Hammond M3 organ. Jim Stewart, the owner, was the engineer and he really liked it and wanted to put it out as a record. We all agreed on that and Jim told us that we needed something to record as a B-side, since we couldn’t have a one-sided record. One of the tunes I had been playing on piano we tried on the Hammond organ so that the record would have organ on both sides and that turned out to be ‘Green Onions.'”

As the guys were calling it a night after recording this song, Jim Stewart asked them to listen to what he’d recorded on one particular take. They listened but weren’t as impressed as Jim, who asked: “If we released this as a record, what would you want to call it?” “Green Onions,” was Booker T. Jones’ reply. “Why ‘Green Onions'” Jim asked. Booker T: “Because that is the nastiest thing I can think of and it’s something you throw away.” Lol.

(Another story, according to guitarist Steve Cropper: the title is not a marijuana reference; rather, the track is named after the Green Badger’s cat, Green Onions, whose way of walking inspired the riff).

The group’s guitarist Steve Cropper brought this song to the Memphis radio station WLOK the day after they recorded it. The morning DJ, Rueben Washington, was a friend of Cropper’s, and put the song on his turntable to hear off-air. After listening to just part of the song, he cut off the record that was on air and started playing “Green Onions” for his listeners. Says Cropper: “He played it four or five times in a row. We were dancing around the control room and believe it or not, the phone lines lit up. I guess we had the whole town dancing that morning.”

The response to the song proved Cropper’s point that it should be the A-side of the single instead of “Behave Yourself,” and subsequent singles were pressed with the sides flipped.

“Green Onions” entered the Billboard Hot 100 the week ending August 11, 1962, and peaked at No. 3 the week ending September 29, 1962. The single also made it to No. 1 on the R&B singles chart, for four non-consecutive weeks, an unusual occurrence in that it fell in and out of top spot three times. It first appeared on the UK Singles Chart on December 15, 1979: the song was popular in dance clubs, but didn’t become a chart hit until 1979, when it was used in the movie Quadrophenia. (A character played by Sting danced to it in the movie). It peaked at No. 7 on January 26, 1980, and stayed on the chart for 12 weeks.

This song provides broadcasters with a wonderful instrumental bed which they can talk over or leave on its own without losing the audience. The NPR program Fresh Air uses it to great effect, and the song has also appeared in a number of films and TV shows, as well as in TV commercials for Mercedes.

As for its legacy, in 1999, “Green Onions” was given a Grammy Hall of Fame Award. In 2012, it was added to the National Recording Registry of the Library of Congress, a list of “culturally, historically, or aesthetically important” American sound recordings.

FUN FACT: According to Q magazine, a few years after this was released, Georgie Fame met Booker T and told him that he thought the Hammond sound on this song was amazing and asked him what the levers on the organ were set to. Apparently Booker T had been unaware that the settings could be changed and he replied, “What, those things move?” LOL!

The video in my playlist features movie clips of actors and actresses dancing to this very cool song. They include:

Marilyn Monroe, Eli, Wallach, Thelma Ritter, Clark Gable (The Misfits 1961)

Sophia Loren (It Started in Naples 1960)

Jayne Mansfield (Dog Eat Dog! 1964)

Natalie Wood (Gypsy 1962)

Kim Novak, William Holden (Picnic 1955)

Anita Ekberg (La Dolce Vita 1960)

Ann-Margret (The Swinger 1966)

Gina Lollobrigida, Rock Hudson (Come September 1961)

Romy Schneider, Jack Lemmon (Good Neighbor Sam 1964)

Brigitte Bardot (Come Dance With Me! 1959)

Elizabeth Taylor, Richard Burton, George Segal, Sandy Dennis (Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? 1966)

Jill St. John (The Oscar 1966)

Mamie Van Doren (Untamed Youth 1957)

Shirley MacLaine, Gene Kelly (What a Way to Go! 1964)

Cyd Charisse, Robert Taylor (Party Girl 1958)

Raquel Welch (Flareup 1969)

PINK

Pink by Aerosmith – “Pink” is a song by American rock band Aerosmith. It was written by Steven Tyler and professional songwriters Richie Supa and Glen Ballard. It was released as the third major single from Nine Lives in 1997.

The song reached No. 27 on the Billboard Hot 100, No. 38 in the United Kingdom, and No. 19 in Latvia. It also topped the Mainstream Rock Tracks chart for four weeks. The band re-released the song in the United Kingdom in 1999. The re-released version did much better, reaching No. 13.

The song is highlighted by a harmonica performance by Steven Tyler at the beginning, as well as a strong bass rhythm throughout the song, and a mix of acoustic guitars and jangling electric guitars throughout the verses.

Many of the lines in the verses start with the word “pink” (e.g. “Pink it’s my new obsession “, “Pink it’s not even a question”, “Pink on the lips of your lover”). The song is also highly suggestive, in that the origin of the fascination with pink stems from the admiration of a woman’s reproductive organs, particularly the inner side of the outer lips – the “pink in the middle” – and also the man’s penis – “I wanna wrap you in rubber” and “my favorite crayon”.

Regarding this song (and other matters), Steven Tyler was quoted as saying, “The only difference between pink and purple is the grip.”

The music video for the song used CGI to morph characters’ faces to other bodies. A variety of random characters mixed in with band members moving towards the camera, morphing into different characters in the process (e.g., Joe Perry as a centaur, Brad Whitford as a little boy, Steven Tyler as a skeleton, and a boy dressed as the Easter Bunny). It was directed by Doug Nichol.

Two versions of the music video exist. There are noticeable differences in each version. In the uncensored version, for example, there is a woman dressed in a blue jumpsuit walking towards the camera. For a brief second, the top, unzipped portion of the jumpsuit is pulled away, revealing her right breast. There is another instance where a woman’s breasts are briefly fully revealed when a woman, painted blue and green, does a pirouette.

The uncensored version caused minor controversy and MTV asked Nichol to censor the video for daytime airings. As a result, the edited version censored the pirouette scene. The clean version also shows Tyler and Perry presented as a two-headed man and only the coverup portion of the breast reveal scene (above) is present.

The video won an MTV Video Music Award for Best Rock Video in 1998. Additionally, in 1999, the song won a Grammy for Best Rock Performance By A Duo Or Group With Vocal. It was the fourth time Aerosmith won that award; Grammy voters didn’t warm to the band until the ’90s, when they gave them the trophy for “Janie’s Got a Gun.”

The song is a fan favorite and a live gem, and remains one of the only songs from Nine Lives consistently played on Aerosmith tours to this day.

Pink Houses by John Mellencamp – “Pink Houses” was released on John Mellencamp’s 1983 album Uh-Huh on Riva Records. It reached #8 on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100 in early 1984. “Pink Houses” was ranked #439 on Rolling Stone magazine’s list of The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time. (In case you’re interested in more John Mellencamp, check out my Artist Spotlight on John Cougar Mellencamp that I did for a 4M post last year).

Recorded in a farmhouse in Brownstown, Indiana, the song was inspired when Mellencamp was driving along an overpass on the way home to Bloomington, Indiana from the Indianapolis airport. There was an old black man sitting outside his little pink shotgun house with his cat in his arms, completely unperturbed by the traffic speeding along the highway in his front yard. “He waved, and I waved back,” Mellencamp said in an interview with Rolling Stone. “That’s how ‘Pink Houses’ started.”

The song also served as a scathing critique of Yuppies and Reaganomics and the overall “Greed is good” atmosphere of the time.

Its Use in Politics: In 2004, the song was played at events for Senator John Edwards’ presidential campaign. The song was also used at events for Edwards’ 2008 presidential campaign.

“Pink Houses” along with “Our Country” was played by Senator John McCain at political events for his 2008 presidential campaign. Mellencamp contacted the McCain campaign pointing out Mellencamp’s support for the progressive wing of the Democratic Party and questioning McCain’s use of his music; in response, the McCain campaign ceased using Mellencamp’s songs.

In January 2009, Mellencamp played “Pink Houses” at We Are One: The Obama Inaugural Celebration at the Lincoln Memorial.

In 2010, “Pink Houses” was used by the National Organization for Marriage (NOM) at events opposing same-sex marriage. At Mellencamp’s instruction, his publicist sent a cease and desist letter to NOM stating “that Mr. Mellencamp’s views on same sex marriage and equal rights for people of all sexual orientations are at odds with NOM’s stated agenda” and requesting that NOM “find music from a source more in harmony with your views than Mr. Mellencamp in the future.”  Love it!

Pink Cadillac by Bruce Springsteen – “Pink Cadillac” is a song by Bruce Springsteen released as the non-album B-side of “Dancing in the Dark” in 1984. The song did not appear on any album until 1998 when it was included on Tracks, a collection of Springsteen outtakes.

The song received moderate airplay on album-oriented rock radio, appearing on the Billboard Top Tracks chart for 14 weeks, peaking at number 27. The song was also a prominent concert number during Springsteen’s 1984-85 Born in the U.S.A. Tour.

Springsteen put this together after most of the crew had left the recording session. He started strumming the riff on an acoustic guitar, put down the basic track, and recorded it with the band in the morning.

Many Springsteen songs make references to cars. This is his second song with “Cadillac” in the title, the first was “Cadillac Ranch.” Like Prince’s “Little Red Corvette”, “Pink Cadillac” follows the tradition of the Wilson Pickett R&B classic “Mustang Sally” in using automobile travel as a metaphor for sexual activity, particularly as sung by Springsteen as the lyric: “I love you for your pink Cadillac” was originally a veiled pudendum reference. Springsteen, in fact, vetoed the first attempt by a female singer to release a version of “Pink Cadillac”, that being Bette Midler in 1983. However, “Pink Cadillac” had its highest profile incarnation via an R&B interpretation by Natalie Cole, which became a top-ten single in 1988.

FUN FACT: In 2001, AOL would not let users quote the song in a Springsteen discussion group because they felt the lyrics were too suggestive. One of the offending lines was “My love is bigger than a Honda, yeah it’s bigger than a Subaru.”  What??!

The Pink Panther Theme by Henry Mancini – “The Pink Panther Theme” is an instrumental composition by Henry Mancini written as the theme for the 1963 film The Pink Panther and subsequently nominated for the 1964 Academy Award for Best Original Score. The eponymous cartoon character created for the film’s opening credits by David DePatie and Friz Freleng was animated in time to the tune. The tenor saxophone solo was played by Plas Johnson.

The song was included on the film’s soundtrack album and issued as a single (in the United States) in 1964; the single reached the Top 10 on the U.S. Billboard adult contemporary chart and won three Grammy Awards.

Various recordings of the composition appeared in the opening credits of all The Pink Panther films except A Shot in the Dark and Inspector Clouseau. It has also been used in countless works in which the animated Pink Panther appears.

The video in the playlist is a fabulous live performance, not sure of the date or location, and it’s worth watching. The soloists are Plas Johnson on sax, Gus Bivona and Bill Green on flute, and Frank Capp on Drums. Pete and Conte Candoli, John Audino, Carl Fontana, Med Flory, etc… It is the Terry Gibbs Band with of course Henry Mancini on the piano.

I was notified that it can’t be viewed within my playlist so you’ll have to click into YouTube to watch it via this link. Imagine sitting in the audience watching. The sax blows me away….and I love the guy playing the Triangle!

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What did you think of these colorful songs? Do you have any favorites here? How about other songs that contain either Orange, Green or Pink in the title?

See you for the next Freebie theme week when I’ll present another Kaleidoscope of Color Songs!

 

Monday’s Music Moves Me (4M) is a blog hop hosted by X-Mas Dolly, and co-hosted by JAmerican Spice, Stacy Uncorked and Curious as a Cathy.  Be sure to stop by the hosts and visit the other participants.

1. XmasDolly

2. Callie – JAmerican Spice

3. Stacy – Stacy Uncorked

4. Cathy – Curious as a Cathy!

5. Jingle Jangle Jungle

6. Ramblin with AM Colorful Songs

7. Angels Bark

8. Catch My Words

9. VandyJ

10. Adventures in Weseland-Music Monday

11. Lari Basilio!

12. Golch Centrals Rambling Stuff

13. Mikes Ramblings