Welcome to Reader Tips. Tonight’s music is a song about exuberantly reckless driving in the fifties era, back when the typically boat-like and seatbelt-less cars were designed for pleasure and not safety. Even though the singer describes speeding drunkenly down mountainsides at night, in the rain, and passing other cars on blind corners, what sounds like a cautionary tale has little or no effect on his own driving habits: when he requests plasma from his hospital bed he’s just a hip daddy-o asking to be primed up for another bout of driving.
It’s to laugh. Here’s Nervous Norvus’ 1956 novelty song Transfusion.
You are enjoined to provide links to your Reader Tips in the comments.

Welcome to SDA Late Night Radio.
The best version of Green Green Grass of Home that I ever heard was at a bar in Whistler where, during some band’s scheduled break, a non-musician local dude – a large, affable snowboarding wildman of about 25, with long blonde hair – was goaded by his buddies to go onstage for what was obviously a reprise performance of a regular event. As the backing tracks played through a cassette machine, the dude – who, along with his buddies, looked three-quarters of the way through a keg – cradled the mic in both hands and delivered the most unashamedly emotional onstage performance I’d ever seen. As he barely choked out – almost barked – the last line of the chorus, his verklempt buddies teared up and rocked back and forth, shaking their heads, like they were hearing the Sermon on the Mount and couldn’t physically endure the ineffable beauty of it.
Truly one of the strangest things I’ve ever seen – you’d figure these guys would have been into speed metal, or something – but you had to hand it to the guy for putting it out there.
Alas, here’s no video of his performance, so tonight we’ll hand it over to a pro: here’s Welsh hotty von-hottenheimer Tom Jones taking his own run at Curly Putman Jr.’s oft-covered Green Green Grass of Home.
You are invited to provide your Reader Tips in the comments.

Welcome to SDA Late Night Radio. Tonight’s musical attraction is the talented and delightfully idiosyncratic New Englander Jonathan Richman, who was featured previously here, here, and here. In tonight’s song, Richman firmly but empathetically advises a heartsick friend that he’s going to have to emotionally let go of his former girlfriend; even though her new guy doesn’t deserve her, and might be leading her down the wrong path, the only thing to do is Let Her Go Into The Darkness.
The comments are open for your Reader Tips.

Welcome to SDA Late Night Radio.
The jaunty march Hail to the Chief has been associated with American Presidents for almost two hundred years, but frankly it just doesn’t sound right anymore. I’d like to propose a new song which, I suggest, is more suitable for President Obama’s entrances on important ceremonial occasions. Performed here by a nifty little trio consisting of Rob Bourassa on ukulele, Mike Karoub on cello, and Gerry Phillips on hand fart, here is my suggested new entrance music for President Obama: Ben Bernie, Maceo Pinkard and Kenneth Casey’s 1926 hit song Sweet Georgia Brown.
There. That’s better.
The thread is open for your Reader Tips.

Welcome to Late Night Radio. Tonight we feature Richard Thompson’s fine guitar playing, and, especially, his talent as a narrative songwriter, as he tells a long-ago tale of unrequited love. The song’s verses are short biographical vignettes of a moment in time when shifting cultural forces collided in the figure of two strong-willed but differing characters; this clearly-recalled detail floats a lyrical chorus wherein the narrator’s wistful sense of loss, whetted by those remembered circumstances, now soars in pure feeling far above them.
Here’s Shakespeare-headed English songwriter Richard Thompson performing Beeswing. (Lyrics here.)
The thread is open for your Reader Tips.

Welcome to SDA Late Night Radio. Yesterday, on Memorial Day, Americans paid tribute to their fallen soldiers. Steve McCann, who was brought to the US after being orphaned in World War II, believes that citizens of other nations should be thankful as well:

With each new generation, the knowledge and experience of war and survival are replaced with the demands of day-to-day living and an unfortunate tendency to fall prey to the false but fashionable proclivity of blaming the United States for all the world’s ills. But the various countries of Europe, Asia, and the Middle East who have experienced peace and prosperity for years or decades would not have done so without the willingness of the United States to expend the lives and wealth of its citizens.

On Memorial Day, when Americans honor the memory of those who without hesitation paid the ultimate price to defend the United States, it is fitting that the people and their progeny around the world whose lives were so impacted by these same sacrifices pause and express their gratitude.

Indeed. Tonight’s song, George Jones’ heartfelt 50,000 Names, is dedicated to our American friends, including the families of fallen soldiers.
The thread is open for your Reader Tips.

Welcome to SDA Late Night Radio. Tonight, as we roll on without rebranding, I’d like to thank Vitruvius for his years of exemplary service here at SDA. I was unable to join everyone else in thanking him during his last show because my internet connection was disrupted by wet *snow and ice*, so I just want to say: Vitruvius, you’re a real character, and you will be sorely missed for the duration of your absence.
To get this inaugural Vit-less Reader Tips underway, here’s a clip, from Canadian documentary filmmaker Harry Rasky’s 1980 film Song of Leonard Cohen, that alternates between footage of Cohen in a Montreal apartment playing a recording of a new song for his friend Irving Layton and footage of the live performance at which the recording was made. It’s touching to see Layton’s reaction to the achingly beautiful, almost numinous song. In the live performance itself, I love the passionate, gypsy-style violin that marries joy, sadness, love, and mortality with such great expressiveness. Here it is, then, for your Sunday evening pleasure: Leonard Cohen performing The Window.
The thread is open for your Reader Tips.

Good evening ladies and gentlemen, welcome to SDA Late Nite Radio. Due to additions to my professional obligations, pursuant to a project that completed negotiations last week & will begin on Monday, I will no longer have the opportunity to provide to this show the attention it deserves. Therefore, tonight will be my last Reader Tips (Late Night Radio) entry here at SDA. For the record & your ease of reference, the historic SDA Late Nite Radio Archive has been brought up to date & will be preserved. I’ve enjoyed DJ-ing Late Nite Radio very much ~ thank you, Kate.

EBD has graciously agreed to undertake the hosting of all
Reader Tips (Late Nite Radio) shows, effective Sunday night.

If I had to select a single “best” or “favourite” from the 2½ years &
ca. 850 shows at SDA Late Nite Radio, I couldn’t do it. But, since
I didn’t have to, tonight, for your delectation, I chose the inimitable
Louis Armstrong performing What a Wonderful World ¤ (2:19).

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

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 Señor Narciso Yepes
performing Francisco de Asís Tárrega y Eixea‘s Recuerdos de la
Alhambra ¤ § in Barcelona in 1991 (4:38).

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

Welcome to the Wednesday (EBD) SDA Late Nite Radio.
Last week, SDA commenter Another Sean alerted us to pianist Keith Jarrett’s sublime interpretation of Danny Boy. Tonight, to keep that loveliness flowing, we present Jarrett’s interpretation of Victor Young and Edward Heyman’s dreamy When I Fall In Love.
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 Percy Faith and his orchestra
performing The Song from Moulin Rouge ¤ § in 1953 (3:32).

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 Henry James (Red)
Allen and his All Stars performing Wild Man Blues ¤ (6:54).

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 Herbert von Karajan and the
Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra performing Johann Strauss Jr‘s famous
polka Unter Donner und Blitz, Op. 324, in 1987 (3:30).

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 Where Is Everybody, II, III,
and IV, the first episode of The Twilight Zone, from 1959 (Σt=23:31).

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 Roxy Music performing More
Than This ¤ §, from their Avalon album, in 1982 (4:27).

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 Jacob Venndt demonstrating ¤
a wide variety of Suzuki harmonicas and related styles (5:26). With this
technology, we could do a four-man harmonica klezmer band: clarinet,
violin, base, and oy! (On the other hand, the F-64C is $4,000 😉

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

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.