“Me and Mrs. Jones” Billy Paul

I don’t know if multi-tasking is in your repertoire, but if it is…hit play on the audio track and listen while you read this post.

OK, picture this…a little kid, one of many in the world, discovers this song and falls in love with it. Maybe love is a strong word…affection might be better. A little kid..a young boy….a kid named “me”…likes this song enough to learn the lyrics and begins to sing along loudly to it whenever the song comes on the radio….

“MEEEEEEEEEEANDANDMRSMRSJONES….WEGOTATHINGGOINGON….WEBOTHKNOWTHATIT’SWRONG…BUTITSMUCHTOOSTRONG….TOLETITGONOW….

How inappropriate is that? What kind of song is that for a little guy to fixate on? Scooting across the shag carpet, falsetto blasting out of a slightly pre-adolescent set of pipes….”MRS. JONES! MRS. JONES! MRS. JONES! WE GOT A THING GOING ON!!”

The song came out in 1972…so that would have made me about 12 years old.

I must have felt pretty sophisticated singing along with such a “grown up” song.

I must have been smart enough to know that there was something fishy going on with Mrs. Jones meeting that dude at the same café…

I must have been able to figure that out?…

Hopefully not…I’m still not exactly sure what was going on while they visited over a bowl of world-famous chili. What were those two up to?

Or how about this song?….

“Brother Louie” Stories

My favorite music was schooling me in inter-racial relationships…and meeting someone at the same café for who knows what reason….

Music is great stuff.

Now we have Miley swinging around on a wrecking ball.

My children don’t go around singing that song like I belted out “Brother Louie” back in the day.

Check this out…a version…the original version of the song..that I’d never heard before…done by the “black” group, Hot Chocolate.  (You did know that music had “colors”, didn’t you? Black group? White group? Remember that American Indian group called Redbone? Wasn’t that crazy? Indians playing rock and roll?)

“Brother Louie” Hot Chocolate

I guess that the real point of this post is that the songs I really gravitated towards (what kid needs to belt out “let’s get it on” over and over?) were the ones that had a little bit of a “naughty” edge to them…socially conscious or just kind of adult themed.

A kid knows…that’s the thing about music or anything…a kid knows what has an “edge”…even if he doesn’t really know exactly what the “edge” means.

That’s why you want to peak around the corner to see what your parents are watching on TV when you’re little and they think that you’re asleep…the grownups get to watch all the good stuff.

It’s just funny somehow to get a little precocious with your interest in songs…you can slip some funny messages in anywhere if the beat is right.

Groove can be pretty sneaky.

One more and I’ll say goodbye for now.

Good morning!