So to paraphrase Cary Grant in Bringing Up Baby -- I just went *FOLKIE* all of a sudden!
Seriously, after listening to my chum Peter Spencer's splendid new album (as discussed yesterday) I remembered an obscure folk thingie by a 60s guy named Jackson C. Frank that I originally wrote about in back in 2009. And I decided to revisit it.
And what I stumbled across in the process is an amazing cover version by a young woman from the UK -- previously unknown to me -- named Janileigh Cohen. Who I think may have a future in the music field.
I'm still not sure whether this is a great song or merely a maudlin one in an interestingly period way, but I think we can all agree that the above is a pretty spine-tingling performance.
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8 comments:
Check out a few of her other videos also, she's very good with a sweet engaging voice but zero charisma.
Captain Al
I knew the song, and had filed it away in my memory as one of those mid-'60s exercises in teenage world-weariness from a songwriter who had grown up with "The Fireside Book of Folk Songs" on the piano, as I did. The girl I dismissed as another pretty girl/pretty voice act, listened to it once, then went about my business. At the end of the afternoon I realized that I had been humming the tune, using her phrasing, all day. But it wasn't a standard-issue earworm. It was more about her interpretation, subtle, intelligent, and emotionally dead-on. I can't remember the last time I had been so thoroughly convinced by a performer after the fact.
Ditto.
On some level, she's got it.
The kid needs to lighten up. Nice voice. But only a small cut above your typical adolescent, somber sob sisters. Still, this may be the best version of that song I've ever heard. That microphone makes magic in her bedroom. And the light bulb perpetually swaying in the background is hypnotic and supernatural. I like that.
Got a Jackson Frank story but it's best not told. R.I.P. and all that, you know.
Sure is weird how so many people have come late to his table. I had an older girlfriend who was a coffee house folkie, beatnik holdover. A flaky mentor, if you will. I emulated her long straight hair and other fashion sense when I was younger. She was pretty cool. I called her Diane the Dilettante, which kinda annoyed her ... much to my delight. Her parents were rich fucks and she was always going to Europe. She had that Jackson C. Frank album and a bunch of other rare records from Europe.
VR
P.S. your buddy totally ripped off Girl From the North Country.
Talk about hypnotic and supernatural!
And once again the Resident Narcissist makes it all about her.
Oh look, it's another dreary Vicky story to scroll past.
Heard this first through Simon and Garfunkel on the boxed set. Always liked it. This is a very nice cover. She's got a good voice and knows how to use it, as they say.
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