On October 12, 1492, Christopher Columbus landed in the New World. Though most of the States don’t actually take the day off, most do recognize it as a day of official recognition. It is recognised that the recognition and history of Columbus is controversial, and a discussion may be in order. But this isn’t intended to be the best place for that.

For some States, Columbus Day can be a fairly big ordeal. In others, they don’t even give the kids a day off and the State offices remain open. It’s on the list of Federal Holidays but not everyone gets to take the day off!

Because of the whimsical nature of the way the holiday is celebrated, we thought we’d bring you something different. There aren’t actually a whole lot of songs that have to do with Columbus Day, but we have one that you may not be familiar with and may enjoy learning about.

You can listen, and I’ll tell you about the artist and song!

The full name of this song is a mouthful. It is The Story of Reuben Clamzo and His Strange Daughter in the Key of A. The artist’s name is Arlo Guthrie, and you may know him from his Alice’s Restaurant. This song was first released in 1978 on the Rehashed 4:20 Sampler album.

You may also know his father, Woody Guthrie -- one of the most distinguished figures in American Folk music. If you aren’t aware that you know him, he’s the author of the famous song This Land is Your Land.

One of the things that makes that song remarkable is that Woody chose to place the song into the public trust, by releasing it into the public domain and relinquishing all of his ownership rights. It has since gone on to be covered by many people and has historically been quite popular.

Arlo Guthrie was born on July 10, 1947. He was actually born in New York, but has mostly made Massachusetts his home for most of his adult life. His song Massachusetts is officially recognized as the State Folk Song.

Arlo is best known for writing about his life and observations, often in the form of some protest, though with a touch of satire and humor. You can tell that he was heavily influenced by his father and his father’s friends.

If you’re familiar with the Alice’s Restaurant song, you should know that that’s more-or-less truthful, including his bout with the law and their attempt to draft him for Vietnam. What you may not know is that the little catchy chorus was actually a radio jingle/commercial for a restaurant that was, in fact, known as Alice’s Restaurant.

Either way, this song is a mix of absurdity and humor. It’s whimsical, just like the varied ways the States of the Union celebrate the holiday. It’s a fun little diddy that you’re quite unlikely to know and this is an excellent day to share it with you.

If you’re interested in learning more about Arlo, you can click the above link to the Wikipedia article. He has a lot more than just Alice’s Restaurant. He has other many other gems, ranging from songs about drug laws to experiencing the American Midwest. On top of that, you can also see him in concert, as he’s still performing.

We here at MFU would like to thank you for your patronage and hope you have a safe and happy Columbus Day. Please, do feel free to leave your comments!

If you’re interested in what we do, see the About This Project page. If you’d like to contribute, you can Register and then we will set your permissions to that of “contributor.”  If you’d like to contribute without registering, you can use our Easy Share link and submit your material for review! If you’d like email notifications to know when we publish new articles (every day, around 16:30 Eastern), just enter a working email address in the “Subscribe” section in the top right!

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“White Rabbit” was written and performed by Grace Slick while she was still with The Great Society. When that band broke up in 1966, Slick was invited to join Jefferson Airplane to replace their departed female singer, Signe Toly Anderson, who left the band with the birth of her child.

The first album Slick recorded with Jefferson Airplane was Surrealistic Pillow, and Slick provided two songs from her previous group: her own “White Rabbit” and “Somebody to Love”, written by her brother-in-law Darby Slick and recorded under the title “Someone to Love” by The Great Society.

The Great Society’s version of “White Rabbit” was much longer than the more aggressive version of Jefferson Airplane. The song was ranked number 478 on Rolling Stone’s list of the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time, Number 87 on Rate Your Music’s Top Singles of All Time, and appears on The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame’s 500 Songs that Shaped Rock and Roll.

“White Rabbit” is one of Grace Slick’s earliest songs, written during either late 1965 or early 1966. It uses imagery found in the fantasy works of Lewis Carroll—1865’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and its 1871 sequel Through the Looking-Glass—such as changing size after taking pills or drinking an unknown liquid.

Slick had stated the composition was intended to be a slap to parents who read their children such novels and then wondered why their children later used drugs. Characters Slick referenced include Alice, the White Rabbit, the hookah-smoking caterpillar, the White Knight, the Red Queen, and the Dormouse.

Slick reportedly wrote the song after an acid trip. For Slick, “White Rabbit” “is about following your curiosity. The White Rabbit is your curiosity”. For her and others in the 1960s, drugs were a part of mind expansion and social experimentation. With its enigmatic lyrics, “White Rabbit” became one of the first songs to sneak drug references past censors on the radio. Even Marty Balin, Slick’s eventual rival in Jefferson Airplane, regarded the song as a “masterpiece”.

In interviews, Slick has related that Alice in Wonderland was often read to her as a child and remained a vivid memory well into her adulthood. Slick mentioned that in addition to Alice in Wonderland, her other inspiration for the song was “the bolero used by Miles Davis and Gil Evans on their 1960 album Sketches of Spain.” The song is essentially one long crescendo similar to that of Ravel’s famous “Boléro”. The music combined with the song’s lyrics strongly suggests the sensory distortions experienced with hallucinogens, and the song was later used in pop culture to imply or accompany just such a state.

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Jack Bruce sang and played bass on the song, Eric Clapton overdubbed guitar parts, Ginger Baker played drums and timpani, and Felix Pappalardi – the group’s producer – contributed violas. This song is about depression and hopelessness, but the setting is an empty apartment. The lyrics were written by a poet named Pete Brown, who was a friend of Cream bass player Jack Bruce, the lead vocalist on the track. Brown also wrote the words for “Sunshine Of Your Love,” “I Feel Free” and “SWLABR.”

The music was written first. Pete Brown’s first attempt at a lyric was something about a “doomed hippie girl” – the song was called “Cinderella’s Last Goodnight.” Jack Bruce wasn’t buying it, so he scrapped that idea and pulled up an eight-page poem he had written earlier, which he reworked into “White Room.”

In an interview with Pete Brown, he told the story: “It was a meandering thing about a relationship that I was in and how I was at the time. It was a kind of watershed period really. It was a time before I stopped being a relative barman and became a songwriter, because I was a professional poet, you know. I was doing poetry readings and making a living from that. It wasn’t a very good living, and then I got asked to work by Ginger and Jack with them and then started to make a kind of living.

And there was this kind of transitional period where I lived in this actual white room and was trying to come to terms with various things that were going on. It’s a place where I stopped, I gave up all drugs and alcohol at that time in 1967 as a result of being in the white room, so it was a kind of watershed period. That song’s like a kind of weird little movie: it changes perspectives all the time. That’s why it’s probably lasted – it’s got a kind of mystery to it.”

Some lyric interpretation courtesy of Pete Brown:

“Tired starlings” – Why are the starlings tired? Because the pollution in London was killing them. Pete Brown also told us: “The ‘tired starlings’ is also a little bit of a metaphor for the feminine in a way, as well. It was women having to put up with rather a lot – too much pressure on them at the time.”

“Goodbye Windows” – “Just people waving goodbye from train windows.”

“Black-roof Country” – “That was the kind of area that I lived in. There were still steam trains at one point around that area, so the roofs were black. It was black and sooty. It’s got that kind of a feel to it.”

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This was written and originally recorded by the blues musician Roy Hawkins in 1951. Rick Darnell co-wrote on this. Roy was a blues singer, pianist, and songwriter. After working in clubs, he broke through with his 1950 song “Why Do Things Happen to Me” inspired by an auto accident which paralyzed his right arm.

Little is known of the early part of his life. By the mid-1940s he was performing as a singer and pianist in the Oakland, California area, where he was discovered by musician and record producer Bob Geddins, who was impressed by Hawkins’ “soulful, doom-laden style”. Hawkins seems to have made his first recordings when about 45 years old with his band, the Four Jacks, which included saxophonist William Staples, guitarist Ulysses James, bassist Floyd Montgomery, and drummer Madison Little.

After several less successful singles, including “Gloom and Misery All Around”,  Hawkins left Modern Records in 1953. He recorded for a series of labels over the next few years including Flair, RPM, Rhythm, and Music City, for whom he recorded as Mr. Undertaker. His last recordings were made for Kent Records in 1961. His later years were spent working in a furniture store. Hawkins died in Compton, California in 1974.

In the 1950s, King was a Memphis radio DJ who played the Roy Hawkins original on the air. King recorded the song several times but didn’t like any of the results. Producer Bill Szymczyk (most famous for producing the Eagles) called King at 4:00 a.m. and suggested the addition of strings (King later said that he’d agree to just about anything at that time of the night). The addition polished up the recording that gave King his first million-selling record.

This was B.B. King’s biggest hit. He didn’t have much success on the charts, but became a blues legend who influenced a generation of musicians. A music video director who worked with King once said “…he’s reticent to be anything other than B.B. King.”

King passed away in 2015 at age 89.

B.B. King’s recording earned him a Grammy Award for Best Male R&B Vocal Performance in 1970 and a Grammy Hall of Fame award in 1998. King’s version of the song was also placed at number 183 on Rolling Stone magazine’s list of the 500 greatest songs of all time .

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“America” was inspired by a five-day road excursion Simon undertook in September 1964 with his then girlfriend Kathy Chitty. Producer Tom Wilson had called Simon back to the United States to finalize mixes and artwork for their debut studio album, Wednesday Morning, 3 A.M. Simon, living in London at the time, was reluctant to leave Chitty, and invited her to come with him, forgetting the album and spending five days driving the country together.

“America” is a song that “creates a cinematic vista that tells of the singer’s search for a literal and physical America that seems to have disappeared, along with the country’s beauty and ideals.” Art Garfunkel once described the song as “young lovers with their adventure and optimism”.

The narrator spends four days hitchhiking from Saginaw to join Kathy in Pittsburgh, where together they board a Greyhound bus to continue the journey. The narrator begins with a lighthearted and optimistic outlook (“Let us be lovers, we’ll marry our fortunes together”) that fades over the course of the song. To pass time, he and Kathy play games and try to guess the backgrounds of their fellow passengers. Over the course of their journey, they smoke all their cigarettes. Kathy reads a magazine before falling asleep, leaving the narrator awake to reflect on the meaning of the journey alone. In the final verse, the narrator is able to speak his true emotions to Kathy, now that she is sleeping and cannot hear or answer. “I’m empty and aching and I don’t know why” captures the longing and angst of the 1960s in nine simple words. The narrator then stares out the window “counting the cars on the New Jersey Turnpike.” Many other empty, aching, and lost souls are on the highway, each on their own journey alone even if someone is traveling with them. The soaring harmony lines and crashing cymbals create a powerful and poignant end to the song’s final verse: “They’ve all come to look for America.” Pete Fornatale interprets this lyric as a “metaphor to remind us all of the lost souls wandering the highways and byways of mid-sixties America, struggling to navigate the rapids of despair and hope, optimism and disillusionment.”

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