“Music gives soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the
imagination, and charm and gaiety to life and to everything.”
Plato
Music, particularly American music, has transformed my bicycle journey. Listening to music in the great outdoors is inspiring and meditative. The music feels as if it is part of the larger world. In general, I listen to music whenever I have paved shoulders. For safety reasons, I avoid using ear buds when I am on roads without shoulders or when I am in towns and cities. Many cities have ordinances forbidding headset use within city limits. These ordinances make perfect sense when you are riding on busy city streets. In rural areas, however, I have found music to be an indispensable companion.
Before starting my bicycle journey, I spent months ripping my CD collection to my laptop and then manipulating my music on iTunes so I could take advantage of the iTunes smart playlist feature. I also read Tom Moon’s wonderful book, “1,000 Recordings To Hear Before You Die: A Listener’s Life List.” Because there is so much music in the world, I felt I needed help to locate the best music. This book provided the kind of discerning, educated musical knowledge that I was looking for. When I first started reading this book, I couldn’t help checking to see which of my CDs were included on the list of “1,000 Recordings To Hear Before You Die.” After satisfying my curiosity regarding which of my CDs had made the grade, so to speak, I began using this book to add to my music collection. My music collection slowly grew to about 300 critically acclaimed CDs across all genres, carefully stored on my iPod Classic. This wonderful device plays my music for about 40 hours when fully charged and my Beats earbuds provide astonishing sound quality. Appendix 7 documents the complete playlist for my journey.
I sometimes feel like I am in heaven as I spin through the beautiful countryside with all this music in my ears. I listen and re-listen to my music collection for many hours each day. I believe the best music has healing properties and I often feel my spirits lift as my iPod shuffles my music and magically selects the perfect track to accompany my journey and heal my heart. I also can’t help but notice when my iPod shuffles my music and selects music associated with the particular region where I am traveling, for example Cajun music in Louisiana or Doc Watson’s music in the Appalachian mountains.
I enjoy listening to the “weird, old music” of America on albums like the “Anthology of American Folk Music” collected by Harry Smith. This type of music made me think about what was happening in America when this music was first created. The “Anthology of American Folk Music” includes songs about crop failures, broken lives, broken loves, favorite hunting dogs, and a deeply felt song about never wanting to return to Arkansas. I began to think more and more about how music provides a soundtrack for the American experience both past and present.
Musical Seers
Robert Johnson
When you enter Mississippi on Highway 61 just south of Natchez, there is a prominent sign with these words, “Welcome To Mississippi, Birthplace of America’s Music.” Highway 61 is famously referred to as the “Blues Highway” and the blues is exactly what this sign is referring to. All of America’s music is deeply influenced by the blues. I didn’t fully appreciate this, however, when I first read this sign. The sign made me pay attention, though, because the words on the sign were very powerful, “Birthplace of America’s Music.”
One of the albums I purchased after reading Tom Moon’s book was “Robert Johnson: The Complete Recordings.” To be honest, the first time I listened to this album I didn’t care for it. I couldn’t understand many of the lyrics and on some tracks the sound quality was poor. I had come to totally trust Tom Moon’s musical judgment, however, so I was hanging in there and listening to a lot of Robert Johnson.
Over time, his music started to grow on me. I thought the frequent mention of firearms in his songs was interesting considering the gun culture in America. I also began to compare the Rolling Stones version of “Love In Vain” with the Robert Johnson original whenever those songs came up on my iPod. Robert Johnson had started working his way into my life.
The meaning of the phrase “Birthplace of America’s Music” slowly began to dawn on me. It wasn’t so much a matter of the sound of the music or the exact musical notes, but rather the powerful way Robert Johnson’s music expressed the world he lived in and his reaction to it. The idea that music should express the inner world and emotions of a singer-songwriter is taken for granted today. It is not uncommon to hear a pop star criticized because they don’t write their own songs. The idea is that they are somehow less authentic if they sing someone else’s material. This idea is definitely a sea change from the past. After all, no one ever tried to deny the power of Billie Holiday’s music just because she did not write her own songs.
Robert Johnson was born in 1911. Accompanied only by his guitar, his songs are intense and dramatic. He recorded twenty-nine of his songs in 1936 and 1937. He was murdered by a jealous husband in 1938. Despite this incredibly short timeline, the breathtaking power of his music forever changed our idea of what and how popular music should communicate.
John Hammond of Columbia Records began championing Johnson’s music decades after his death. Hammond, who launched the recording careers of Billie Holiday, Aretha Franklin, Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen, and Stevie Ray Vaughan, issued a Robert Johnson album in 1961 titled “King of the Delta Blues Singers.” This album captivated a generation of musicians at the dawn of rock’s golden age.
Eric Clapton wrote in “Clapton: The Autobiography,” describing his first encounter with Johnson’s music, “I realized that, on some level, I had found the master.” Decades after his death, Robert Johnson became one of the most famous guitarists who had ever lived, hailed as a lost prophet. In the late 1960s, the Rolling Stones, Eric Clapton, and Led Zeppelin covered or adapted Johnson’s songs in tribute. Bob Dylan attributed “hundreds of lines” of his songwriting to Johnson’s influence and included a Johnson album as one of the items on the cover photo of his album “Bringing It All Back Home.”
The guitar playing on Johnson’s recordings was unusually complex for its time. Most early Delta blues musicians played simple guitar chords that harmonized with their voices. Johnson, imitating the boogie-woogie style of piano playing, used his guitar to play rhythm, bass, and slide simultaneously, all while singing. Another innovation associated with Johnson is the walking bass. Appearing on the Johnson songs “Ramblin’ on My Mind” and “I Believe I’ll Dust My Broom,” the walking bass, a low, rambling rhythm that evokes a swaggering strut, became a building block of both the Chicago blues and Rock ’n Roll.
A photograph of Robert Johnson appears on the cover of the CD, “Robert Johnson: The Complete Recordings.” This photograph strikes me as being just as powerful as the famous picture of Walt Whitman in the front of “Leaves of Grass.” In this photograph, Robert Johnson is bursting with life. He coolly appraises the world with an artist’s confidence. In my opinion, Robert Johnson is second only to Walt Whitman as the most revolutionary artist that America has ever produced.
As you ride north through Mississippi on the Natchez Trace Parkway, you will pass within a few miles of my father’s hometown of Houston, Mississippi. This is where my father was born in 1919, only eight years after Robert Johnson was born. When I was six years old my father put me on a train to travel alone from Dallas, Texas to Jackson, Mississippi to visit my grandparents. This was in 1956, well before the civil rights movement of the 1960s started to change the Jim Crow culture of the deep south. Years later, I asked my father whether in retrospect it had been reasonable to let me travel alone at such a young age. He admitted that he had made a mistake. Of course, what parent doesn’t make mistakes from time to time!
I remember being shocked by the overt signs of discrimination, even as a young child. I asked my grandfather what the deal was with the separate restrooms and water fountains. I don’t recall his answer.
My grandmother was very religious and I attended her church every Sunday. I can remember sitting in church and thinking that the Golden Rule, “Treat others as you would want to be treated,” wasn’t being followed based on my observations of the way white people were treating black people. My grandmother was sweet and nice to everyone, but I noticed that my grandfather was sometimes incredibly rude to the black man who worked for him. I may have only been six years old, but it was crystal clear to me that it was a very bad idea to use the “N” word when addressing a black man!
What a strange world to be so saturated with religion and yet so full of hypocrisy! I mention all this only to point out that what I saw as a privileged, white child was plenty bad, but, of course, only scratched the surface of the true desolation of Robert Johnson’s Mississippi experience.
Perhaps religion failed Robert Johnson. That might explain these lines from his song “Stones in My Passway.”
If I had possession over Judgment Day,
If I had possession over Judgment Day,
Then the woman I’m lovin’, wouldn’t have no right to pray.
No right to pray! That is the ultimate rebuke. The song continues:
I got stones in my passway
And my road seems dark as night, I got stones in my passway
And my road seems dark as night, I got pains in my heart,
They have taken my appetite.
I’m crying please, please, let us be friends,
And when you hear me howlin’ in my passway,
Please open your door and let me in.
The haunting beauty of Robert Johnson’s voice combined with the spareness of his guitar make this song incredibly powerful. Here is what Bob Dylan has to say about Robert Johnson’s music in his book “Chronicles: Volume One:
“I fixated on every song and wondered how Johnson did it. Song-writing for him was some highly sophisticated business. The compositions seemed to come right out of his mouth and not his memory. Johnson’s words made my nerves quiver like piano wires. They were so elemental in meaning and feeling. When he sings about icicles hanging on a tree it gives me the chills, or about milk turning blue, it made me nauseous, and I wondered how he did that. ‘The stuff I got’ll bust your brains out’ he sings. Johnson is serious, like the scorched earth. I wanted to be like that too.”
In an interview discussing his album “Rough and Rowdy Ways,” Dylan says:
“Robert Johnson was one of the most inventive geniuses of all time. But he probably had no audience to speak of. He was so far ahead of his time that we still haven’t caught up with him. His status today couldn’t be any higher. Yet in his day, his songs must have confused people. It just goes to show you that great people follow their own path.”
Bob Dylan
Bob Dylan is the most important American musician of the last fifty years. His journey from Minnesota to Woodie Guthrie’s bedside, and then on to fame and fortune in New York City is the stuff of legend. He started by imitating Woodie Guthrie and then somehow managed to find his own voice. I started listening to Bob Dylan while I was in college in the late sixties and he has been an essential part of my musical life ever since.
There is often a surreal quality to my bicycle journey around America. On one trip, I caught up with another cyclist in Montana and together we pulled over to get snacks at a convenience store. We sat on the curb on the side of the store to eat our snacks in the shade and chat. I told him how important listening to music was to me on my journey around America and I mentioned that Bob Dylan was one of my favorite artists. I was bowled over when he replied that he was related to Bob Dylan! He actually looked just like Bob Dylan in the famous picture on the cover of the album, “The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan.” It is, indeed, a small world!
There is a powerful documentary film that captures Dylan performing at an important turning point in the evolution of his music. The film is titled “The Other Side of the Mirror” and the musical performances in the film take place just at that magical moment when Dylan is making the transition from Folk to Rock ‘N Roll.
When he sings the song “Maggie’s Farm” in this film, the distant look in Dylan’s eyes actually makes him look like a seer. Dylan’s performance strikes me as being similar to the way he describes Robert Johnson’s music, “The songs seemed to come right out of his mouth and not his memory.” The first time I watched Dylan sing “Maggie’s Farm” in this documentary, I actually got goosebumps. Dylan describes his song writing process like this, “A song is like a dream, and you try to make it come true. They’re like strange countries that you have to enter.”
Dylan’s place is secure in the world of “old, weird” American music. The music on his album “The Basement Tapes” is just as surreal as anything on “The Anthology of American Folk Music” collected by Harry Smith. This album with Dylan and The Band has always been one of my favorites. Dylan and the members of The Band gathered in the basement of a house nicknamed Big Pink and worked together on what would become “The Basement Tapes.”
Dylan, reflecting on this time period, said, “That’s really the way to do a recording. In a peaceful, relaxed setting, in somebody’s basement, with the windows open, and a dog lying on the floor.” Dylan brought sheaves of traditional material including folk songs and murder ballads to serve as inspiration. With this rich supply of Americana, Dylan began writing in collaboration with members of The Band. Masterpieces from these sessions include “I Shall Be Released,” “This Wheel’s on Fire,” “You Ain’t Goin’ No Where,” and “Tears of Rage.”
The selection of Bob Dylan as the 2016 recipient of the Nobel Prize in Literature thrilled his fans. The will of Alfred Nobel, the Swedish philanthropist who established the Nobel prizes, decrees that the literature prize go to someone who produced “the most outstanding work in an idealistic direction.” According to the official news release, Dylan was selected for “having created new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition.”
The Swedish Academy’s permanent secretary, Sara Danius, compared Dylan to Homer and Sappho and said that reaching the decision had not been difficult. “We’re giving it to Bob Dylan as a great poet, that’s the reason we awarded him the prize. He’s a great poet in the great English tradition, stretching from Milton and Blake onward. He’s an interesting traditionalist in a highly original way.”
Musical Storytellers
Lucinda Williams
Lucinda William’s critically acclaimed album, “Car Wheels on A Gravel Road,” is a favorite of mine. The songs on this album mention the names of cities across the south, Slidell, Memphis, Birmingham, just as Robert Johnson mentions the names of these cities in his songs.
Most of us are city dwellers these days, but in Robert Johnson’s time America was overwhelmingly rural. If you wanted to escape the rural life, you needed to head for a city. Just the name of a city like “Memphis” would be shorthand for everything you were dreaming of, freedom, fame, money, love.
Today, we are just as likely to dream about life outside the city. Somehow, though, just saying the names of these old, southern cities, as Lucinda Williams does in her songs, still has the power to suggest the possibilities which exist on down the highway.
Lucinda Williams connects with the past when she acknowledges Robert Johnson in her song “2 Kool 2 Be 4-Gotten.”
There is no good, there is no bad
In this dirty little joint.
Mr. Johnson sings over in the corner by the bar.
Sold his soul to the devil so he could play guitar.
Lucinda Williams’ songs often reflect the mundane details of everyday life. Her song “Ventura” begins with someone stirring a can of soup. Yet “Ventura” also has a breathtakingly beautiful chorus which suggests that we may be able to transcend our everyday lives through the sheer beauty of the natural world:
I want to watch the ocean bend
The edges of the sun in.
I want to get swallowed up
In an ocean of love.
John Prine
John Prine’s music invites us to understand lives which are usually hidden in America. The characters in some of John Prine’s songs remind me of the lost souls in Sherwood Anderson’s novel “Winesburg, Ohio,” which I discussed in the preceding chapter. Here are some lines from his song “Donald and Lydia.”
Lydia hid her thoughts like a cat
Behind her small eyes sunk deep in her fat.
She read romance magazine up in her room
And felt just like Sunday on Saturday afternoon.
But dreaming just comes natural,
Like the first breath from a baby,
Like sunshine feeding daisies,
Like the love hidden deep in your heart.
Prine recalled his first public performance on open-mic night at a small Chicago club called the Fifth Peg. His performance of “Hello in There” and “Angel From Montgomery” was met with profound silence from the audience. “They just sat there,” Prine said. “They didn’t even applaud, they just looked at me.” Then the clapping began. “It was like I found out all of a sudden that I could communicate deep feelings and emotions.”
John Prine died in 2020 at the age of 73 from complications of covid. I was deeply moved by this heartfelt remembrance by Jason Isbel, Prine’s close friend and fellow musician:
“Of all the things I love about John’s songwriting, my favorite is the way he could step so completely into someone else’s life. John had the gift and the curse of great empathy. In songs like ‘Hello in There’ and ‘Angel From Montgomery’, he wrote from a perspective clearly very different from his own, an old man and a middle-aged woman, but he kept the first-person point of view. ‘Angel From Montgomery’ opens with the line ‘I am an old woman named after my mother.’ I remember hearing his recording of this song for the first time and thinking ‘No, you’re not.’ Then a light bulb went on and I realized that songwriting allows you to be anyone you want to be, so long as you get the details right. John always got the details right. If the artist’s job is to hold a mirror up to society, John had the cleanest mirror of anyone I have ever known.”
Joni Mitchell described the process of communicating through song this way, “A vocal performance is the same as acting. The song words are your script. You must be the character who wrote the song when you sing it. You have to bring the correct emotion to every word. If you just sing a song in a pretty way, then it is going to fall flat. You have to bring more to it.”
Grace VanderWaal
I first learned about Grace VanderWaal from a charming interview published in the New York Times. During the interview, Grace mentioned her favorite things to do in New York City. She spoke enthusiastically about her favorite ramen noodle shop. My children also adored ramen noodles! I loved Grace’s enthusiasm and the way she expressed herself. I thought to myself, “This young woman is so in the moment. I love that part about ramen noodles!”
The article mentioned that Grace had won the eleventh season of America’s Got Talent when she was twelve years old. Grace bought her first ukulele with money she received for her eleventh birthday. She taught herself to play her new ukulele by watching a YouTube video. On a whim, her mom signed her up for America’s Got Talent. Grace wrote the four songs she performed on America’s Got Talent. I thought to myself, “That sounds awesome. Maybe Grace’s performance is on YouTube.” A few days later, I was absolutely transfixed by Grace’s songwriting and her four performances in “Grace VanderWaal All Performances In America’s Got Talent, https://youtu.be/hTIMH9BGyfk.”
Grace VanderWaal is the only person to ever win America’s Got Talent while performing four original songs. I was so moved by her songs that I immediately added her album “Perfectly Imperfect” to my music collection. Like other great singer-songwriters, Grace occupies a central place between the world and her listeners. She observes the world, filters her observations through her unique way of looking at things, and then conveys her thoughts and feelings to her listeners in the form of sublime music. The music critic Grant Tribe describes Grace as having been born into this world as the “true spirit of music.”
Grace’s brother, Jacob VanderWaal, has said that Grace is utterly fearless. A brave man is one who is unflinching as he uses physical force to defeat something external to himself. This is the type of courage we find in Homer’s “Iliad” and “Odyssey.” I think the story of Joan of Arc surprises and inspires us because she embraces this traditional, male expression of courage.
Perhaps true courage, on the other hand, is an internal struggle to find and express one’s identity and to determine how one should relate to others and to the world. In Montaigne’s essay, “On Experience,” he writes, “Greatness of soul is not so much pressing upward and forward as knowing how to circumscribe and set oneself in order.” I believe Grace expresses her fearlessness through her music as she confronts questions of identity and how best to relate to the larger world.
When placed side by side, some of the adjectives used to describe Grace’s music seem contradictory, serious and lighthearted, for example, or innocent and an old soul, to take another example. Grace’s complete, gorgeous humanity contains multitudes so it makes sense that those multitudes would contain contradictions. Grace’s unique talent includes a rich variety of vocal inflections, the mystery she conveys in her lyrics, her vivid and often surprising images, her lack of cliche, her succinctness, her frankness, and even her imperfections. Grace is the opposite of everything that is fake, contrived, unkind, or unintelligent. We are very fortunate to be able to enjoy her music and her unique perspective on life!
Grace VanderWaal’s original songs on the album “Perfectly Imperfect” express her emotional reactions to her twelve-year-old world just as Robert Johnson’s music expressed his emotional reactions to his depression era Mississippi world. It probably seems strange to compare the music of a twelve-year-old white girl to a blues master like Robert Johnson, but music doesn’t care about your age or the color of your skin. Grace is making great music that takes the personal and makes it universal. With Grace, America’s music is evolving once again into something deeply personal and overwhelmingly emotional. Grace brings a unique musical intelligence and soulfulness to all her performances.
Be sure to listen to Grace (age thirteen) perform a sublime cover of Leon Bridges’ “River https://youtu.be/CccMZxkqS0Q.” Search on YouTube for “Grace VanderWaal Performs ‘River’ MTV Push.” Grace’s live performance of three of her songs in a NPR Tiny Desk Concert is another favorite of mine. Search on YouTube for “Grace VanderWaal: NPR Music Tiny Desk Concert.”
A Musical Perspective
One weekend morning, while I was a student at the University of Texas in Austin, I was tuned to my favorite radio station, KUT, the local PBS station. I was listening to an interview with a creative writing professor. She was explaining how she used music to inspire students in her creative writing class. Her husband was a musician who assisted her in class. He was also present in the studio. If you have ever walked over to a piano, struck a single key, and experienced the mood in the room change in an instant in response to the sound, then you already understand the basic idea behind the technique they called “toning.”
The professor read a short poem by one of her students. Then, she explained that the poem had been written in response to a single, sustained note played on the flute by her husband. Her husband then demonstrated the very same sustained note that had inspired the poem. Even though I was not present in the studio, I could hear how the music changed the mood in the studio. The host had been joking around a bit and was now speaking in a much more serious manner. Working with her husband, the professor read several more poems. Each poem was preceded by the music that had originally inspired it. There was no doubt about it! There was a clear emotional connection between the music and the poetry!
I was captivated by this very novel way of using music. By this time, however, they were running short on time, so the professor encouraged the radio audience to pick up their pens and give “toning” a try. The husband played a long solemn note on his flute. Well, by this time, I was in a trance like state and easily persuaded, because I picked up my pen and started writing! I was thrilled to experience the powerful effect the music had on the writing process.
Music is able to transport us to a higher level, to offer us a new perspective, and to change us in unexpected ways. In an interview, the renowned cellist Yo-Yo Ma likens music to the Socratic method, “Music asks us, how would you find an answer? Music is a stimulus. It makes our brain active. We need music because it helps us get to very specific states of mind.” We respond to music on both the conscious and subconscious levels. Certain smells, for example, can recall the memory of grandmother’s apple pie. Music can do something similar. It reminds us of a first kiss, of a rainy night, of walking alone in a forest.
Most of us become interested in music as teenagers. The music that we first pay attention to is often played by musicians a decade or so older than ourselves. Then, when you close in on the age of 70, as I am doing, you can’t help but notice when the musicians you have listened to all your life begin to die. Just during the five years I have been biking around America, here are some of the musicians who have passed on: Bobbie Bland, Bo Diddley, Doc Watson, David Bowie, Chuck Berry, and Leonard Cohen.
One of my favorite songs is Leonard Cohen’s “Tower of Song.” This song is about getting old. It also suggests that there is some sort of hierarchy in the world of music:
Well, my friends are gone and my hair is gray,
I ache in the places where I used to play,
And I’m crazy for love but I’m not coming on,
I’m just paying my rent everyday in the tower of song.
I said to Hank Williams how lonely does it get?
Hank Williams hasn’t answered yet,
But I hear him coughing all night long,
A hundred floors above me in the tower of song.
America’s recorded music is arguably America’s greatest artistic legacy. I hope the very best of America’s music will illuminate your journey around America. My advice is to listen to the good stuff while you still have time!
How To Access Your Music Library
My bicycle journey has bridged two very different ways of accessing my music library. At the start of my journey, my music library derived from physical cds which I had ripped onto my laptop and synched to my iPod Classic. After seven years of faithful service, however, the battery in my iPod Classic had finally died. What to do?
I downloaded the Spotify music app onto my android phone, installed a 64 GB memory card ($20) into the little pop out tray on the left side of my phone, and began rebuilding my music library. Fortunately, I had a written list of my favorite recordings to refer to (see Appendix 7).
Spotify provides a simple, elegant interface for accessing just about all the music that exists in the world. I purchased the e-book edition of Tom Moon’s wonderful book, “1,000 Recordings To Hear Before You Die: A Listener’s Life List” on Amazon and began downloading additional recordings. I found that the most productive way to build my music library was to start with the artists I already loved. I began by reading what Tom Moon had to say about a particular artist. Then I looked over “Catalog Choices” and “Next Stops” for more suggestions. Finally, I selected promising recordings not already in my library to download.
Your Spotify music library is permanently stored on the cloud and effortlessly syncs to all your devices. You will need to actually download your music onto a particular device, however, in order to liberate that device from the streaming process. This is important because rural areas often lack a reliable internet connection for streaming. You will need premium Spotify to be able download music to your device. Begin by downloading the Spotify app at your favorite app store. Premium Spotify costs $10 per month. The first three months are free. Trust me, premium Spotify is worth every penny!
After all my hard work rebuilding my music library, I rewarded myself with a new pair of Beats Flex Bluetooth ear buds. The Beats Flex ear buds ($69) are BY FAR the best ear buds I have ever used. I also enjoy listening to music without ear buds in my tent and in hotels. I purchased a Bose Soundlink Micro Bluetooth speaker for this purpose ($99).
“Chasing Spring” Playlist
In general, I prefer music which is introspective. In classical music, for example, I prefer chamber music as opposed to the grander symphonies. The string quartets of Haydn, Mozart, and especially of Beethoven are an essential part of my musical life. George Bernard Shaw wrote that Bach’s theme is religion and Mozart’s is characters but that “Beethoven was the first man who used music with absolute integrity as the expression of his emotional life.”
String quartets embrace “the art of musical conversation” in the words of the musicologist Joseph Kerman. If you are outside on a clear night, look up at the stars. That’s how Beethoven said he was inspired to write the Molto adagio movement of his string quartet Op. 59, No. 2. This movement is filled with an intensely moving pathos. In his late quartet, Op. 130, to take another example, the solemn Cavatina movement is also indescribably moving. “Never,” Beethoven said of this movement, “have I written a melody that affected me so much.”
Bach is my favorite composer. If I were stranded on an island and was forced to select a single recording to keep me company, I would undoubtedly select the recording “Bach: Sacred Masterpieces” conducted by John Elliot Gardiner.
My favorite jazz artists are John Coltrane, Miles Davis, Ella Fitzgerald, Billie Holiday, and Charles Mingus. My favorite soul artists are James Carr, Ray Charles, Aretha Franklin, and Etta James. My favorite popular artists are Bob Dylan, Grateful Dead, Steve Earle, Joni Mitchell, Van Morrison, John Prine, Bruce Springsteen, Grace VanderWaal, Townes Van Zandt, Tom Waits, and Lucinda Williams.
I recently discovered the superb album “Raising Sand” with Robert Plant and Alison Kraus and produced by T Bone Burnett. T Bone Burnett seems to have had a hand in just about every truly great album released in recent years. (The album “Ralph Stanley” comes to mind.) “Raising Sand” includes sublime covers of my favorite Townes Van Zandt song, “Nothin,” AND my favorite John Prine song, “Killing The Blues!” Lucinda Williams’ “The Ghosts of Highway 20,” John Prine’s “The Forgiveness Tree,” and Bruce Springsteen’s “Western Stars” are also superb recordings which I only recently added to my music library.
Every time I listen to P J Harvey’s “Stories From The City, Stories From The Sea” I get goosebumps. This album is a stunning work of art from beginning to end. If you have ever wondered just how powerful it is possible for a rock song to be, listen to the song “This Is Love” from this album and your question will surely be answered! My favorite piece of music in my entire music collection, however, is Cecilia Bartoli singing Antonio Vivaldi’s “Sposa Son Disprezzata” on the album “Arie Antiche.” This is a gorgeous piece of music that thrills me every time I hear it!
Before continuing this musical discussion, I think it is important to acknowledge that I attach great significance to that great juke box in the sky known as “Shuffle.” On one bicycle trip, I was approaching Miles City, Montana. Most of the sky was blue, but near the city, huge, black, anvil shaped clouds towered over the plains. Lightning strikes extended from the clouds to the ground, not single strikes, but three or four simultaneous lightning strikes at a time. I pulled over to the edge of the shoulder to watch the lightning and to make up my mind whether to find a camping spot nearby or continue toward the city. I still had my ear buds on and my iPod continued to play. At that moment, “Shuffle” selected the Neil Young song “See The Sky About To Rain.” The song begins like this:
“See the sky about to rain,
Broken clouds and rain, Locomotive pulling the train,
Whistle blowing through my brain…”
With Neil Young’s majestic song in the background, I realized I could hear a train in the distance! From that moment, “See The Sky About To Rain” has been my favorite Neil Young song! Many strange thoughts ran through my mind, quantum theory, parallel universes, shuffle play, and the odds of being hit by lightning while riding a bicycle! I needed to make a decision, however, should I camp here or keep going? The wind suggested that the storm was headed north, away from Miles City. My water supply was low. There is a nice coffee shop in Miles City. I decided to press on!
In year eight of my journey, I created the playlist “Chasing Spring” on Spotify. “Chasing Spring” includes my favorite tracks from all the recordings in my music library (refer to Appendix 7 for a complete list of these recordings). The playlist “Chasing Spring” includes approximately 2,500 tracks. This was a very labor intensive process. I spent about one hundred hours completing this project. Since I plan to spend a significant portion of the rest of my life listening to this music, however, I thought this was time well spent!
How To Install The Playlist “Chasing Spring”
If you would like to install the playlist “Chasing Spring” on Spotify on your device, make sure Spotify is installed on your device and then click on the Spotify link for “Chasing Spring“ at www.bicyclejoy.org.
If you don’t already have the Spotify app on your device, download the Spotify app at your favorite app store. The free Spotify app will allow you to stream the playlist. If you wish to download the playlist onto your device in order to liberate your device from the streaming process, you will need premium Spotify. Premium Spotify is free for the first three months. After the three month trial period, premium Spotify costs $10 per month.
The music will appear on your device in Spotify as a playlist entitled “Chasing Spring.” You can download the music onto your device with a single click. If you decide to download the music, make sure the Spotify download setting is set to “highest” quality before starting the download.
If you decide to download the playlist onto your phone, you might need to install a memory card in the little pop out tray on one side of your phone. A 64 gigabyte memory card costs approximately $20. Of course, if your phone has plenty of internal memory, you won’t need to install a memory card.
If you install a memory card, use the memory “Settings” in your phone to initialize the memory card for “external” storage. Use the “Settings” in Spotify to direct downloads to the memory card. From Spotify “Home,” click on Settings/Other/Storage and select where you want to save your downloaded music. These instructions are based on my android phone, my operating system, and my edition of Spotify. They are intended to give you a general idea of how to initialize your memory card and how to direct downloads to your memory card. The exact procedures may vary somewhat depending on your device, your operating system, and the edition of Spotify you are using.
Once the music is installed on your device, open the playlist “Chasing Spring” and click on “Shuffle Play.” You will be spirited away on a musical journey every bit as transformative as your bicycle journey. Witness the birth of America’s music with the music of Robert Johnson and Blind Willie McTell. Experience the healing power of the blues with Muddy Waters and Howling Wolf. The sheer joy, exuberance, and peerless musicianship of Louis Armstrong mark the birth of jazz. The lilting, soulful singing of Billie Holiday will touch your heart. The spirituality of John Coltrane, the elegance of Duke Ellington and Ella Fitzgerald, and the complex harmonies of Charles Mingus reveal an American music that is as vast, liberating, and deeply spiritual as America itself.
How To Grow Your Music Collection Using Spotify
Spotify has permanently changed my listening habits. Spotify makes it easy to “love” a track and add it to your “Liked Songs” playlist. You can also “love” albums in order to add them to your collection of albums. You can use these simple but powerful tools to slowly grow a life-changing music collection!
Here is how to start building your life-changing music collection. From the Spotify homepage, click on the magnifying glass labeled “Search” at the bottom of the homepage. Then scroll through the various music genres in order to select a genre that interests you, for example, “Blues.” Be sure to click on “See More” in order to see all the Blues playlists. Continue to scroll through the Blues playlists until you find one that interests you, for example, “Acoustic Blues.” Open the “Acoustic Blues” playlist and click on “Shuffle Play.” Whenever something incredible comes up, click the heart symbol to “love” the song. Continue listening to the “Acoustic Blues” playlist and continue to “love” any incredible songs that come up.
When your listening session is over, click on “Your Library” at the bottom of the Spotify homepage. ‘Your Library” has three headings, “Playlists,” “Artists,” and “Albums.” Click on “Albums” and scroll to the bottom of “Albums.” (Use the “slider” which appears on the right side of the screen to quickly scroll to the bottom of “Albums.”) There you will find “Recommended Albums” based on the songs you recently “loved.” I recommend “loving” these albums. After I “love” an album, I open the album and click on the three vertical lines on the top right. Then I click on “Add To Playlist.” I then add the album to a master playlist labeled “Music Collection.” This step is necessary because Spotify only allows you to “Shuffle Play” individual albums and does not allow you to “Shuffle Play” your entire collection of albums. I created my “Music Collection” playlist in order to be able to “Shuffle Play” my entire collection of albums. Perhaps someday Spotify will correct this rather obvious shortcoming. Over time, your “Music Collection” playlist is likely to become very large. For this reason, I do not download this particular playlist. I download all of my other playlists using the toggle switch which appears at the top of each playlist. From time to time, when I have a good internet connection for streaming, I open my “Music Collection” playlist and click on “Shuffle Play” in order to search for additional incredible songs to “Like.”
I consider my “Liked Songs” playlist to be the heart and soul of my music collection. I use my “Liked Songs” playlist as the basis for creating these additional playlists:
- Chasing Spring
- Bach Favorites
- Classical Favorites
- Jazz Favorites
- Quiet Favorites
- Blues Favorites
- Country Favorites
- Rock Favorites
Spotify does not allow readers to access my “Liked Songs” playlist by clicking on a Spotify link. Therefore, it was necessary to construct the playlist “Chasing Spring.” The playlist “Chasing Spring” is identical to my “Liked Songs” playlist. My playlist “Quiet Favorites” simply combines “Classical Favorites” and “Jazz Favorites” into a single playlist. Refer to “How To Install The Playlist Chasing Spring On Spotify” (see above) if you would like to install the playlist “Chasing Spring” on your device.
Here are the recordings which accompanied me on my bicycle journey. The recordings are listed alphabetically by the composer’s or artist’s last name. The one hundred recordings that I consider indispensable are numbered (1) through (100) following the titles of the recordings. Chapter 9, “Music,” introduces certain important American artists and includes information about how to download a free Spotify playlist entitled “Chasing Spring” which includes my favorite tracks from these recordings!
Adams, Johnny
Johnny Adams Sings Doc Pomus
Adams, Ryan
Heartbreaker
Ahmed, Mahmoud
Ethiopiques, Vol. seven
Alexander, Arthur
The Best of Arthur Alexander
Bach, Johann Sebastian
Brandenburg Concertos, Rinaldo Alessandrini (1)
Partitas, Andras Schiff (2)
Sacred Masterpieces, John Elliot Gardiner
Six Favorite Cantatas, Joshua Rifkin (3)
Sonatas for Violin & Keyboard, Capucon and Fray (4)
Baez, Joan
Joan Baez
Baker, Chet
The Best of Chet Baker Sings (5)
The Very Best of Chet Baker
Balfa Brothers
The Balfa Brothers Play Traditional Cajun Music
The Band
The Band (6)
Music From Big Pink (7)
Bartok, Bela
The Six String Quartets, Takacs Quartet
Bartoli, Cecilia (Various composers)
Arie Antiche
Basie, Count
The Complete Decca Recordings (8)
The Beatles
Abbey Road
A Hard Days Night (9)
Help!
Magical Mystery Tour
Revolver (10)
Rubber Soul (11)
Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (12)
White Album
Beck
Odelay
Sea Change
Beethoven, Ludwig van
String Quartets Op. 59, Kuijken Quartet (13)
The Late Quartets, Quartetto Italiano (14)
Berry, Chuck
The Great Twenty Eight
Bill Evans Trio
Sunday At The Village Vanguard
Waltz for Debby (15)
Billy Bragg & Wilco
Mermaid Avenue
Bland, Bobby
Two Steps from the Blues
Bob Marley & The Wailers
Natty Dread
Brown, Clifford
Clifford Brown & Max Roach
Clifford Brown With Strings (16)
Brubeck, Dave
Time Out (17)
Buena Vista Social Club
Buena Vista Social Club (18)
Lost and Found
Buffalo Springfield
Retrospective
Burnett, T Bone
Twenty Twenty: The Essential T Bone Burnett
The Byrds
Sweetheart of the Rodeo (19)
Carmichael, Hoagy
Hoagy Sings Carmichael (20)
Carr, James
You Got My Mind Messed Up (21)
Chapman, Tracy
Tracy Chapman
Charles, Ray
The Best of Ray Charles: The Atlantic Years (22)
Genius Loves Company
Modern Sounds In Country and Western Music (23)
Chenier, Clifton
Bugalusa Boogie
Louisiana Blues and Zydeco
Chet Atkins & Lester Paul
Chester and Lester
Cliff, Jimmy
We Are All One, The Best of Jimmy Cliff
Cline, Patsy
Sweet Dreams (24)
Cohen, Leonard
I’m Your Man
Songs of Leonard Cohen
Songs of Love and Hate
Coltrane, John
Ballads (25)
Blue Train (26)
Coltrane Plays The Blues (27)
John Coltrane & Johnny Hartman
A Love Supreme (28)
My Favorite Things (29)
Cooder, Ry
Boomer’s Story
Chicken Skin Music
Paradise and Lunch
Cooke, Sam
The Best of Sam Cooke
Night Beat
Cream
Disraeli Gears
Credence Clearwater Revival
Chronicle: The 20 Greatest Hits
Crosby, David
If I Could Only Remember My Name (30)
Crosby, Stills & Nash
Crosby, Stills & Nash (31)
Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young
Deja Vu (32)
Davis, Miles
Kind of Blue (33)
Miles Ahead
Porgy and Bess
Quiet Nights
‘Round About Midnight
Sketches of Spain (34)
Desmond, Paul
Take Ten
Diddley, Bo
His Best: The Chess 50th Anniversary Collection
Domino, Antoine “Fats”
They Call Me The Fat Man (35)
Dr. John
Dr. John’s Gumbo
Plays Mac Rebennack
Dylan, Bob
Another Side of Bob Dylan
The Basement Tapes (36)
Blonde On Blonde (37)
Blood on the Tracks (38)
Bob Dylan
The Bootleg Series, Vol. 1-3
Bringing It All Back Home
Desire
The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan
Highway 61 Revisited
John Wesley Harding (39)
Love and Theft
Modern Times
Nashville Skyline (40)
New Morning
Planet Waves
Rough and Rowdy Ways (41)
Shadows In The Night
Time Out of Mind
The Times They Are A-Changin’
Together Through Life
Earle, Steve
Guitar Town
I Feel Alright
The Mountain
Townes (42)
Train a Comin’
Transcendental Blues
Eilish, Billie
Don’t Smile At Me
When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go?
Elgar, Sir Edward William
Cello Concerto, Jacqueline Du Pre
Ellington, Duke
Far East Suite
Money Jungle (43)
Piano Reflections (44)
Ely, Joe
Honky Tonk Masquerade
Escovedo, Alejandro
The Boxing Mirror
Gravity
Real Animal
Thirteen Years
Evans, Bill
Alone
The Everly Brothers
Walk Right Back
Evora, Cesaria
Anthologie/Mornas & Coladeras
Cesaria (45)
Miss Perfumado
Ferrer, Ibrahim
Ibrahim Ferrer
Mi Sueno
Fitzgerald, Ella
The Cole Porter Songbook (46)
Cheek To Cheek (with Louis Armstrong) (47)
Flack, Roberta
First Take
Fleetwood Mac
Then Play On (48)
Franklin, Aretha
I Never Loved A Man The Way I Loved You (49)
Lady Soul
Frisell, Bill
Quartet
Frizzell, Lefty
Look What Thoughts Will Do (50)
Getz, Stan & Charlie Byrd
Jazz Samba
Getz, Stan & Joao Gilberto
Getz/Gilberto (51)
Gilberto, Joao
Brasil
Glass, Philip
Kronos Quartet Performs Philip Glass (52)
Gonzalez, Ruben
Introducing Ruben Gonzalez
Gordon, Dexter
Go (53)
Grateful Dead
American Beauty (54)
Wake of the Flood (55)
Workingman’s Dead (56)
Haggard, Merle
I’m a Lonesome Fugitive
Mama Tried/Pride In What I Am
Harris, Emmylou
Elite Hotel
Pieces of the Sky
Harrison, George
All Things Must Pass
Harvey, P J
Stories From The City, Stories From The Sea (57)
Haydn, Franz Joseph
Piano Sonatas, Alfred Brendel
String Quartets Opus 76, Quatuor Mosaiques
Three Late String Quartets, Quatuor Mosaiques (58)
Hendrix, Jimi
Are You Experienced?
Hill, Lauryn
The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill
Holiday, Billie
The Complete Decca Recordings (59)
The Essential Billie Holiday
Hooker, John Lee
Plays & Sings the Blues
Howlin’ Wolf
Howlin’ Wolf: His Best (60)
James, Etta
Tell Mama (61)
Jobim, Antonio Carlos
The Composer of Desafinado Plays
John, Elton
Elton John
Johnson, Blind Willie
The Rough Guide To Blues Legends
Johnson, Robert
Robert Johnson: The Complete Recordings (62)
Jones, George
The Grand Tour
I Am What I Am
Jones, Norah
Come Away With Me
Feels Like Home
Little Broken Hearts
Joplin, Janis
Pearl
King, Albert
King of the Blues Guitar
King, B. B.
Blues On The Bayou
King, Carole
Tapestry
Krause, Alison
I’ve Got That Old Feeling
Kristofferson, Kris
Kristofferson
Lang, k. d.
Shadowland
Leadbelly
Where Did You Sleep Last Night? (63)
Little Richard
20 Greatest Hits
The Louvin Brothers
My Baby’s Gone (64)
Lovett, Lyle
Joshua Judges Ruth
Lyle Lovett and His Big Band
Step Inside This House (65)
Lowe, Nick
The Impossible Bird
Jesus of Cool
Lynn, Loretta
The Definitive Collection
Lynyrd Skynyrd
Essential Lynyrd Skynyrd
Madredeus
Ainda
Essencia
Mama’s and the Papa’s
If You Can Believe Your Eyes and Ears
Mayall, John & The Blues Breakers
Blues Breakers (66)
Blues From Laurel Canyon
McGarrigle, Kate and Anna
Kate & Anna McGarrigle
McTell, Blind Willie
The Definitive Blind Willie McTell (67)
Mingus, Charles
Mingus Ah Um (68)
Mingus Plays Piano (69)
Mitchell, Joni
Blue (70)
Clouds
Court and Spark
Ladies of the Canyon
Monroe, Bill
The Essential Bill Monroe
Morrison, Van
Astral Weeks (71)
The Essential Van Morrison
His Band and the Street Choir
Moondance (72)
Veedon Fleece (73)
Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus
The Complete Quintets, Various, Phillips
Eine Kleine Nachtmusik, Neville Marriner
Piano Concertos Nos. 15, 17, Leonard Bernstein
Piano Concertos, Nos. 19-21, 23-24, Alfred Brendel (74)
Quartets Nos. 16 and 17, Quatuor Mosaiques
Quartets K 464 and K 465, Quatuor Mosaiques (75)
Requiem, John Elliot Gardiner
Symphonies Nos. 40, 41, Leonard Bernstein (76)
Nelson, Willie
Stardust
To Lefty From Willie
You Don’t Know Me: The Songs of Cindy Walker
Neville, Aaron
For the Good Times
New Basement Tapes
Lost On the River
Nirvana
Never Mind
The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band
Will The Circle Be Unbroken (77)
Orbison, Roy
The Ultimate Collection
Orton, Beth
Central Reservation
Owens, Buck
Buck Owens Sings Harlan Howard
Palestrina, Giovanni Pierluigi da
Missa Papas Marcelli, Pro Cantione Antiqua (78)
Parsons, Gram
G. P.
Grievous Angel
Phillips, Washington
The Key To The Kingdom
Piaf, Edith
The Voice of the Sparrow
Piazzolla, Astor
Tango: Zero Hour
Pickett, Wilson
The Exciting Wilson Pickett
Plant, Robert & Alison Kraus
Raising Sand
Portuondo, Omara
Omara Portuondo (79)
Presley, Elvis
A Boy from Tupelo
How Great Thou Art
Prine, John
Bruised Orange
In Spite of Ourselves
John Prine (80)
The Missing Years
Pink Cadillac
Souvenirs
Sweet Revenge
The Tree of Forgiveness (81)
R.E.M.
Green
Reckoning
Radiohead
OK Computer
Red Hot Chili Peppers
Californication
Redding, Otis
The Dock of the Bay
Otis Blue (82)
Regina, Elis
Como e Porque
Rich, Charlie
Behind Closed Doors
Rodrigo, Joaquin
Concierto de Aranjuez, John Williams
Rodrigues, Amalia
The Art of Amalia Rodrigues
The Rolling Stones
Aftermath
Beggars Banquet (83)
Between the Buttons
Let It Bleed (84)
Out of Our Heads
Some Girls
Sticky Fingers
Rollins, Sonny
Saxophone Colossus (85)
Ronstadt, Linda
Heart Like A Wheel
Rush, Otis
The Essential Otis Rush – The Classic Cobra Recordings
Sade
Love Deluxe
Lover’s Rock
Promise
Santana
Abraxas (86)
Supernatural
Segovia, Andres
The Art of Segovia
Shakira
Donde Estan los Ladrones?
Shostakovich, Dmitri
24 Preludes & Fugues, Tatiana Nikolayeva (87)
Simon & Garfunkel
Bookends
Sounds of Silence
Sinatra, Frank
Francis Albert Sinatra & Antonio Carlos Jobim
In The Wee Small Hours
Songs For Swingin’ Lovers
Sledge, Percy
The Best of Percy Sledge
Smith, Patti
Horses
Son House
Martin Scorsese Presents The Blues: Son House (88)
Springsteen, Bruce
Born to Run
Devils & Dust (89)
The Ghost of Tom Joad (90)
Greatest Hits
Human Touch
Nebraska
The Rising
The River (91)
Tunnel of Love
We Shall Overcome: The Seeger Sessions
Western Stars
The Wild, The Innocent & The E Street Shuffle
Stanley, Ralph
Ralph Stanley (92)
Taj Mahal
The Natch’l Blues
Taylor, James
Sweet Baby James
Telemann, Georg Philipp
Water Music, Reinhart Goebel
Tubb, Ernest
The Definitive Collection
VanderWaal, Grace
Just The Beginning
Letters, Vol. 1
Perfectly Imperfect (93)
Van Zandt, Townes
Be Here To Love Me (94)
No Deeper Blue
Townes Van Zandt
Vaughn, Stevie Ray
The Sky Is Crying
Texas Flood
Vaughn Williams
Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis & Barber, Adagio
for Strings, Leonard Slatkin
The Verve
Urban Hymns
Vivaldi, Antonio
The Four Seasons, Janine Jansen
Waits, Tom
Alice (95)
Bone Machine
Frank’s Wild Years
Mule Variations
Rain Dogs
Swordfishtrombones
Waters, Muddy
The Anthology
Watson, Doc
The Essential Doc Watson (96)
Welch, Gillian
Revival
Time (The Revelator) (97)
Wilco
Being There
Yankee Hotel Foxtrot
Williams, Hank
40 Greatest Hits (98)
Williams, Lucinda
Car Wheels On A Gravel Road (99)
Essence
The Ghosts of Highway Twenty
Lucinda Williams
Sweet Old World
West
World Without Tears
Winehouse, Amy
Back To Black
Young, Neil
After The Gold Rush (100)
Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere
Harvest
On The Beach
Ragged Glory
Zevon, Warren
Excitable Boy
ZZ Top
Tres Hombres
The following recordings accompanied me on my bicycle journey until December 2018 at which point I rebuilt my music collection using Spotify. Unfortunately, the following recordings were not available on Spotify:
Hancock, Butch
Eats Away The Night
Own & Own
You Coulda Walked Around The World
Smith, Harry (Various)
Anthology of American Folk Music