Most people know one or two songs that they can’t bear to listen to for even a second, songs that make them reach convulsively for the radio knob even if it means risking going into the ditch. Some songs show up on many people’s lists: Horse With No Name, for example, seems to rub an awful lot of people the wrong way, as does Dan Hill’s Sometimes When We Touch and Captain and Tenille’s Muskrat Love. Paul Anka’s Having My Baby seems to offend a lot of people too, perhaps because it’s not something you typically bellow about into your wife’s ear. Personally, I find it hard to top Rupert Holmes’ Him: after TMI-ing the sort of 70’s era hedonism that makes you want to don a full-body prophylactic, it ups the ante with one of the most execrable choruses of all time, with its insistent demand “me, me, ME!…”
Sometimes, though, a song is unbearable not because of the song itself but because of the abusive treatment it receives at the hands of those who, knowing that it’s a good song, try to elevate their musical reputations on its back. It’s the sheer beauty of Danny Boy, for example, which melds a beautiful, centuries-old Irish melody with timeless lyrics, that drives every mawkish performer extant to set upon it like a pickpocket on a gold watch. It’s virtually impossible to find a straightforward, respectful version – try to find even one on YouTube – because even the greatest vocalists insist on lingering annoyingly, well past the time signature date, on particular words, as if they’re trying to outdo other performers’ maudlin displays rather than just delivering the song as it’s written.
Jacque Brel’s Le Moribond, tonight’s musical selection, is another example of a song that has been appropriated to ill-effect. The fact that most people are familiar with its melody via Terry Jacks’ mawkish Seasons In The Sun – surely one of the most widely-detested songs extant – is a musical injustice of the highest order. Not only did Jacks’ clumsy, Hallmark Card-esque redaction of the original lyrics effectively invert the narrative sentiment of the original, which was world-weary in a blithe, charming, characteristically Gallic way, but his metronomic, almost lobotomizing delivery of the melody managed to hammer Brel’s highly-adept, skipping-stone musical phrasing into a odorless, tasteless paste.
Fortunately, relief is just a mouse-click away: here’s Marc-Andre Fleury lookalike Jacques Brel performing his 1961 song Le Moribond.
You are invited to link to your own cover versions of Danny Boy, and, of course, to your Reader Tips, in the comments.

Good evening ladies and gentlemen, welcome to SDA Late Nite Radio.
Tonight, for your delectation, here are Louis Armstrong and the Luis
Russell Orchestra performing I Can’t Give You Anything But
Love, Baby ¤ § in 1938 (3:05).

Your Reader Tips are, as always, welcome in the comments.

Good evening ladies and gentlemen, welcome to SDA Late Nite Radio.
Tonight, for your delectation, here are Bill Evans, Chuck Israels, and
Larry Bunker as the Bill Evans Trio performing Israel ¤ on Humphrey
Lyttleton‘s Jazz 625 show, in London in 1965 (8:21).

Your Reader Tips are, as always, welcome in the comments.

Good evening ladies and gentlemen, welcome to SDA Late Nite
Radio. Tonight, for your delectation, here is Mr. Victor Borge
performing Clair de Lune ¤ (the third movement of Claude
Debussy‘s Suite Bergamasque), in 1992 (5:01).

Your Reader Tips are, as always, welcome in the comments.

Good evening ladies and gentlemen, welcome to SDA Late Nite Radio.
Tonight, for your delectation, here is Dick Powell in the Hat Without
a Body episode of Richard Diamond, Private Detective (1949, 29:42,
RealPlayer).

Your Reader Tips are, as always, welcome in the comments.

Good evening ladies and gentlemen, welcome to SDA Late Nite
Radio. Tonight, for your delectation, here are Albert Ammons and
Pete Johnson performing Boogie Woogie Dream ¤ in 1944 (2:05).

Your Reader Tips are, as always, welcome in the comments.

Good evening ladies and gentlemen, welcome to SDA Late Nite Radio. Tonight, for your delectation, here from the 1942 movie Orchestra Wives are the Glenn Miller Orchestra, with Tex Beneke and The Modernaires, performing I’ve got a Gal in Kalamazoo ¤ (7:43), including, in the second half of tonight’s show, one of the great dance routines by the famous Nicholas Brothers. Interestingly, perhaps, a young Jackie Gleason acts the role of the band’s bass player in Orchestra Wives, and Harry Morgan is the soda-jerk.

Your Reader Tips are, as always, welcome in the comments.

Good evening ladies and gentlemen, welcome to SDA Late Nite
Radio. Tonight, for your delectation, here are Stan Kenton and
his orchestra performing Limehouse Blues ¤ in the Rendezvous
Ballroom (3:25).

Your Reader Tips are, as always, welcome in the comments.

Good evening ladies and gentlemen, welcome to SDA Late Nite Radio.
Tonight, for your delectation, here is Jascha Heifetz performing Henryk
Wieniawski‘s Polonaise N° 1 in D Major ¤, Op. 4 (4:25).

If you are not already familiar with the “Reader Tips Principles &
Guidelines” document, pick the “Reader Tips” link before posting.

Your  Reader Tips  are, as always, welcome in the comments.

Good evening ladies and gentlemen, welcome to SDA Late Nite Radio.
Tonight, for your delectation, here are Eddie Albert as Oliver Wendell
Douglas, and Eva Gabor as Lisa Douglas, starring in the Apple Time,
II & III episode of Green Acres in 1966 (Σt=28:20).

If you are not already familiar with the “Reader Tips Principles &
Guidelines” document, pick the “Reader Tips” link before posting.

Your  Reader Tips  are, as always, welcome in the comments.

Good evening ladies and gentlemen, welcome to SDA Late Nite Radio.
Tonight, for your delectation, here are Eric Clapton, Ginger Baker, and
Jack Bruce, as Cream, performing Sunshine of Your Love ¤ §, live,
in 1968 (4:58).

Your Reader Tips are, as always, welcome in the comments.

Anyone who has ever attended a memorial service and looked into those fading and frail blue and brown eyes of the veterans of the great wars has seen not fearless, superhuman characters , but rather modest and decent humans who risked everything in defense of freedom. Subsequent generations have been taught about the heroism and the glory, and the machinery of war, and tactics and the dates of key battles, and casualty figures, but no textbook can put us in their shoes; we will never walk strung-out, numb, and exhausted, down a muddy road in a foreign land, or experience the horrors they saw.
Tonight’s song is a paean to the frailty of human life, and to the persistence of love even in the face of final loss. We hear the voice of a doomed soldier whose hopes and dreams are too late for this world; even as he’s resigned to his fate, he yearns for home, seeing it more clearly by its impossible distance, as a woman’s voice rises, shining, immutable, and eternal like a diamond, amidst the horrors he will soon be freed from.
The melody is taken from the 17th century Irish air Fainne Gael an Lae, later known as The Dawning of the Day, and the lyrics were written by Jennifer Warnes. Here’s the biographically mysterious UK trio known as O3B singing the elegiac, haunting, and almost unbearably beautiful Too Late Love Comes.
The comments are open for your Reader Tips.

Good evening ladies and gentlemen, welcome to SDA Late Nite
Radio. Tonight, for your delectation, here are the Luis Russell
Orchestra performing Goin’ To Town, in 1931 (2:55).

Your Reader Tips are, as always, welcome in the comments.

Good evening ladies and gentlemen, welcome to SDA Late
Nite Radio. Tonight, for your delectation, here are Art Tatum,
Tommy Dorsey, Jimmie Dorsey, Charlie Barnet, George Van
Eps, Ray Bauduc, Ziggy Elman, and Stuart Foster performing
Art’s Blues ¤, in the 1947 film The Fabulous Dorseys (3:00).

Your Reader Tips are, as always, welcome in the comments.

Good evening ladies and gentlemen, welcome to SDA Late Nite
Radio. Tonight, for your delectation, here is our old friend, the
great Herbert von Karajan, conducting the Berlin Philharmonic
Orchestra performing Ludwig van Beethoven‘s Symphony N° 3
in E♭ Major & II, Op. 55: Eroica (Σt=48:21).

Your Reader Tips are, as always, welcome in the comments.

Good evening ladies and gentlemen, welcome to SDA Late Nite Radio.
Tonight, for your delectation, here are Patrick Macnee and Diana Rigg
performing the roles of Major John Steed and Mrs. Emma Peel in the
Murder Market, II, III, IV, & V episode of The Avengers (which was
the seventh show from the Rigg years) in 1965.

For your ease of reference, our previous Avengers shows here have been
The Town of No Return, 2009-08-03, and The Cybernauts, 2010-01-31.

Your Reader Tips are, as always, welcome in the comments.

Good evening ladies and gentlemen, welcome to SDA Late Nite Radio. Tonight, for your delectation, here are Carlos Santana, Gregg Rolie, David Brown, Michael Shrieve, Michael Carabello, and Jose Areas, as Santana, performing Babatunde Olatunji‘s Jin-go-lo-ba ¤ §, from Santana, their first album, in 1969 (4:25). But wait, there’s more: if that tickles your fancy, and you’re not an originalist purist, you may wish to also check out this Santana / Clapton / &c ¤ version (6:59).

Your Reader Tips are, as always, welcome in the comments.

Good evening ladies and gentlemen, welcome to SDA Late Nite Radio.
Tonight, for your delectation, here from the classic Dean Martin Roasts
series is Charlie Callas parodying George E. Jessel, as the “Toastmaster
General of the United States”, Roasting ¤ Don Rickles in 1973 (3:37).

Your Reader Tips are, as always, welcome in the comments.