What's the use of a good quotation if you can't change it?
Doctor Who
I know only two tunes. One of them is ''Yankee Doodle'' and the other isn't.
Ulysses S. Grant
Notes:
1. Many thanks to my brilliant friend MacAndrew for contributing much of the substance of the Hawaii section. (Cheers, Mac!)
2. Sources for quoted lyrics (from SMiLE and elsewhere) have been intentionally omitted; all the lyrics are readily available online. Footnotes are bolded (if this platform allows for superscript, I haven't been able to figure it out).
3. This piece was envisioned as a three-part essay: one section for each SMiLE movement. In the interest of readability (and to forestall fatigue), I’ve cut it up further, into what I hope are manageable chunks. Let’s get through to Cole Porter this time, and we’ll pick things up in the next installment.
Van Dyke Parks, recalling the original creative impulse behind SMiLE:
Voluntarily, spasmodically, we chose to confirm the American experience…. We just thought it was important to do something American that was not ashamed, not Brit, not Beatle wannabe. 1
Brian Wilson, describing his reaction to hearing the SMiLE tapes again, after decades of silence:
I was amazed how creative the songs were – how Americana they were. 2
From its earliest conception to its long-deferred completion, SMiLE was envisioned as a fundamentally American work. And that Americanness is not a function of its thematic content alone. SMiLE is deeply connected to the musical tradition out of which it comes: the tradition of American vernacular song. Those connections are most interestingly manifested, perhaps, in the musical allusions that occur throughout. In some instances those echoes supply useful context; in others, they enrich the work with additional layers of meaning.
Fundamentally American, too, is that process of borrowing and blending. It lies at the very heart of American popular music:
For at least the past two centuries, much of what is dynamic in American music arose out of a continual process of sampling, fusing, and appropriating the different musics that make up American popular song. 3
The following discussion is something more than a bare inventory of musical references, and something less than an in-depth critical analysis of those references; to undertake such an analysis for each musical quotation would deform this essay beyond any hope of readability or usefulness.
I've imposed a three-part structure – one section for each SMiLE movement – and I have followed the sequence of songs within each movement. I have not, however, made any attempt to distinguish among musical quotations that are explicitly present in SMiLE, on the one hand, and those that may (or may not) be present by way of indirect allusion, on the other. As a consequence, you will find that "Home on the Range" (which is clearly quoted in "Cabin Essence") is lumped in with "Lazy Moon" (which may or may not be referenced in "On a Holiday"). One advantage of the three-section format is that it will enable the reader to skip those allusions which seem too remote or far-fetched.
Movement I
This SMiLE movement focuses on the recurring cycles of history, as revealed in the repeating patterns of the American past. The soundtrack to this pageant of historical events reverberates with a remarkable range of musical-historical echoes.
• Gee
This 1953 song, recorded by the doo-wop group The Crows, is widely regarded as the "first" rock-n-roll record (this sort of claim is always open to debate, of course). The single was especially popular in southern California, where a local disk jockey made the unusual decision to play the song over and over, continuously, for one entire night.
The scratchy vinyl/transistor radio effect applied to this song underscores its status as a quotation, a reference to musical history. It's interesting that Wilson and Parks chose to change the lyrics of "Gee" (what few lyrics there are, that is). In the original song the line is "why I love my girl": the singer is explaining his feelings. Wilson, on the other hand, doesn't seem to want to explain anything. For him, it's a pure celebration of those feelings: "how I love my girl."
The pattern of subtly altering the "cover" songs incorporated into SMiLE is a recurring one: we'll see it again with respect to "You Are My Sunshine" and "I Wanna Be Around."
• El Paso
The best-known recording of this western ballad is the Marty Robbins rendition from 1959. The lyrical parallels to "Heroes and Villains" are striking:
Out in the West Texas town of El Paso
I fell in love with a Mexican girl.
Night-time would find me in Rosa's cantina;
Music would play and Felina would whirl.
as compared with:
I been in this town so long that back in the city I been
taken for lost and gone and unknown for a long, long time –
Fell in love years ago with an innocent girl from the
Spanish and Indian home of the Heroes and Villains
and:
In the cantina, Margarita keeps the spirits high.
There I watched her. She spun around and wound in
the warmth. Her body fanned the flame of the dance
There are cantinas and dancing girls in both songs; and there is violence as well. Here is the relevant verse of "El Paso":
One night a wild young cowboy came in,
Wild as the West Texas wind.
Dashing and daring,
A drink he was sharing
With wicked Felina,
The girl that I loved.
So in anger I
Challenged his right for the love of this maiden.
Down went his hand for the gun that he wore.
My challenge was answered in less than a heart-beat;
The handsome young stranger lay dead on the floor.
Because "Heroes and Villains" is a sort of Cubist deconstruction of "El Paso," in which the conventional elements of the gunfighter ballad are present, but unconnected by a linear narrative structure, the gunplay in the SMiLE song is less clearly described:
Once at night, cotillion squared, the fight, and she was right
in the rain of the bullets that eventually brought her down –
Nothing, here, is exactly what it appears to be. The victim seems to be the dancing girl rather than the romantic rival; but on the other hand, that same dancing girl is described as "still dancing" in the very next line:
But she’s still dancing in the night unafraid of what
a dude’ll do in a town full of Heroes and Villains.
The "El Paso" reference has little to do with the "plot" of “Heroes and Villains.” Its principal role is to establish a connection to the entire western/gunfighter-ballad tradition: to enhance what Parks has called a “rough hewn…vision of California and the pioneer spirit and the rough'n'ready aspect of frontier life.” 4
• The Yankee Doodle Boy
In 1904 the twenty-six-year-old George M. Cohan – arguably the most “American” figure in the history of musical theater – wrote and starred in the musical Little Johnny Jones. Cohan played a young American jockey who travels to England to compete in the English Derby, riding a horse named – what else? – Yankee Doodle. Details of its plot are largely forgotten, but two of the show’s songs survive: “Give My Regards to Broadway” and “The Yankee Doodle Boy”:
I'm the kid that's all the candy,
I'm a Yankee Doodle dandy,
I'm glad I am,
So's Uncle Sam.
I'm a real live Yankee Doodle,
Made my name and fame and boodle
Just like Mister Doodle did, by riding on a pony.
I love to listen to the Doodle strain,
I long to see the girl I left behind me;
And that ain't a josh,
She's a Yankee, by gosh,
Oh, say can you see
Anything about a Yankee that's phony?
I'm a Yankee Doodle dandy,
A Yankee Doodle, do or die;
A real live nephew of my Uncle Sam's,
Born on the Fourth of July.
I've got a Yankee Doodle sweetheart,
She's my Yankee Doodle joy.
Yankee Doodle came to London,
Just to ride the ponies,
I am a Yankee Doodle boy.
Cohan’s song is itself, of course, a direct allusion to the pre-Revolutionary War-ear “Yankee Doodle” rhyme, attributed to one Richard Shuckburgh:
Yankee Doodle went to town
A-riding on a pony
Stuck a feather in his hat
And called it macaroni.
Yankee Doodle, keep it up
Yankee Doodle dandy
Mind the music and the step
And with the girls be handy.
“Yankee Doodle” was originally intended as a humorously contemptuous comment on the unsophisticated ways of the American colonials: “macaroni” was a term for a fancy Italianate style of dress, widely adopted by affluent Englishmen of the day. The point of the joke is that the rustic Yankee Doodle is foolish enough to think that the mere addition of a feather to his hat makes him an urbane “macaroni.”
In the best-known version of the song, this sneering British attitude has given way to a decidedly pro-American spirit. Here are the rarely-heard additional verses:
Father and I went down to camp
Along with Captain Gooding
And there we saw the men and boys
As thick as hasty pudding.
There was Captain Washington
Upon a slapping stallion
A-giving orders to his men
I guess there was a million.
“Captain” George Washington comes off rather well here, astride a stallion, commanding a seeming “million” men. Interestingly, however, an earlier verse also survives: one in which the rebel Colonials are given a far less sympathetic treatment:
Yankee Doodle came to town,
For to buy a firelock,
We will tar and feather him,
And so we will John Hancock.
We may detect a faint echo of “The Yankee Doodle Boy” spread across two different SMiLE songs: “Heroes and Villains” and “Surf’s Up”:
But she’s still dancing in the night unafraid of what
a dude’ll do in a town full of Heroes and Villains
and:
While at Port, adieu or die.
“Dude’ll do” and “adieu or die”: between them, these lines recall almost the whole of Cohan’s line:
A Yankee Doodle, do or die….
And so SMiLE echoes, doubly and subtly, this doubly American lyric.
• Peace In The Valley
Written in 1937 by Thomas A. Dorsey, one of the great American gospel composers, this song has been recorded by hundreds of artists, including Boxcar Willie and Johnny Cash. The most obvious SMiLE connection occurs in "Heroes And Villains":
Stand or fall, I know there shall be peace in the valley, and
it’s all an affair of my life with the Heroes and Villains
compared with:
There will be peace in the valley for me, some day
There will be peace in the valley for me, oh Lord I pray
There'll be no sadness, no sorrow
No trouble, trouble I see
There will be peace in the valley for me, for me
But there are several other echoes, elsewhere in SMiLE, of this song. Here are the verses:
Oh well, I’m tired and so weary
But I must go alone
Till the lord comes and calls, calls me away, oh yes
Well the morning's so bright
And the lamp is alight
And the night, night is as black as the sea, oh yes…
Well the bear will be gentle
And the wolves will be tame
And the lion shall lay down by the lamb, oh yes
And the beasts from the wild
Shall be led by a child
And I'll be changed, changed from this creature that I am, oh yes
"And the lamp is alight" recalls these lines from "Cabin Essence":
Light the lamp and fire mellow cabin essence;
timely hello welcomes the time for a change
as well as the "two-step to lamplight cellar tune" of "Surf's Up." The song's second verse echoes – glancing ahead to the second SMiLE movement – some of the lyrics of "Child Is Father of the Man":
And the beasts from the wild
Shall be led by a child
as against:
Easy my child – it's just enough to believe.
Out of the wild – into what you can conceive.
You'll achieve
The reference to the original gospel song follows the "Heroes and Villains" gunfight and the death (or is it?) of the dancing girl. The longing for peace, harmony and joy – an end to violence and sorrow – is common to both songs.
• This Land Is Your Land
Many commentators have suggested that SMiLE, taken as a whole, represents a sort of "journey" on the most literal level: an American trip from Plymouth Rock to "Blue Hawaii." It's not surprising, therefore, to discover possible echoes of another song that invokes both the western and eastern extremities of the American nation:
This land is your land, this land is my land
From California to the New York island;
From the redwood forest to the gulf stream waters
This land was made for you and me
This is the opening verse of "This Land Is Your Land": Woody Guthrie, of course, in his most obstreperously American vein. We'll run into him again, a bit later in this movement; but here, the immediate concern is the second verse of this iconic ballad:
As I was walking that ribbon of highway,
I saw above me that endless skyway;
I saw below me that golden valley;
This land was made for you and me
The first line strikes an immediate chord with this passage from "Roll Plymouth Rock":
Ribbon of concrete – just see what you done –
done to the church of the American Indian!
To be sure, the term "ribbon," as applied to a stretch of road, is not an unheard-of usage; and Guthrie was not the first to adopt it. That said, when one takes into account the underlying thematic commonalities here – the continent-spanning breadth of the vision inspiring both works – the Guthrie connection seems to be a reasonable one.
Domenic Priore, for one, has also noted the Guthrie connection; he comments on it in his 2005 book Smile: The Story of Brian Wilson's Lost Masterpiece.
It's also worth noting, in passing, that the "Cabin Essence" wheatfield, with its crying crow –
Over and over, the crow cries uncover the cornfield
Over and over, the thresher and hover the wheat field
– recalls Guthrie's "golden valley," as well as the following verse, with its “wheat fields waving” and its disembodied “chanting” voice:
When the sun came shining, and I was strolling,
And the wheat fields waving and the dust clouds rolling,
As the fog was lifting a voice was chanting:
This land was made for you and me
• C C Rider
This old standard is quoted in two related SMiLE songs: "Heroes And Villains" ("Heroes and Villains: Just see what you done-done") and "Roll Plymouth Rock":
Ribbon of concrete – just see what you done –
done to the church of the American Indian!
Bicycle rider, just see what you’ve done –
done to the church of the American Indian!
Interestingly, the repeated "done" occurs in the so-called "blues" renditions of "C C Rider," but not in the more "mainstream" versions (like Elvis Presley's). Here's Big Bill Broonzy's version:
You C C Rider, see what you done done
C C Rider, you see what you done done
You C C Rider, you see what you done done
You done made me love you and now your man done come
It's noteworthy that words addressed to a faithless lover, in the original song, are repurposed as an indictment of the colonialist Bicycle Rider. It's noteworthy, too, that the Big Bill Broonzy lyrics include these lines:
My home is on the water, I don't like no land at all
Home's on the water and I don't like no land at all
My home's on the water and I don't like no land at all…
So you C C Rider, see what you done done
"Roll Plymouth Rock" is about (among other things) the usurpation of the lands of the American Indian. Like the singer in the old blues song, the Native American is cast adrift: his "home" is as impermanent as a home "on the water," and he has "no land at all."
• Anything Goes
"Plymouth Rock" is an iconic image in American history. It symbolizes the beginning of that history, the moment at which the travelers from the old world touched the soil of the new world. A metaphorical rock as well as a literal one, it grounds the American experience. To write about it is to summon many ghosts. Here's one:
Times have changed
And we've often rewound the clock
Since the Puritans got a shock
When they landed on Plymouth Rock
If today
Any shock they should try to stem
'Stead of landing on Plymouth Rock
Plymouth Rock would land on them
This is the witty introduction (often omitted in performance) to the Cole Porter song "Anything Goes." It is echoed in the "Plymouth Rock roll over" lyrics of "Roll Plymouth Rock" (and "On a Holiday," in Movement III):
Rock, rock, roll Plymouth Rock roll over
Both songs present the alarming image of Plymouth Rock – by analogy, American history – turned topsy-turvy. The "rock" on which our culture is built is overturned; in that chaos, literally everything is cast into doubt. In short: anything goes.
Footnotes
1 https://www.theglobeandmail.com/arts/how-brian-wilson-found-his-smile/article655763/
2 Quotation from SXSW Panel, 3/18/05 (link no longer active)
3 https://historymatters.gmu.edu/mse/songs/amsong.html
4 https://www.gmuses.net/post/brian-wilson-van-dyke-parks-interview
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