Coxswain At The Wheel! Helm Hard A-Port! Midships! Save Our World!: “Calypso” by John Denver

John Denver’s second entry in this blog is really present because of a technicality; it was originally the B-side to his single “I’m Sorry,” which itself made number one, but once that song slipped from the top, radio stations started to play the other side and the single was officially flipped, with “Calypso” being listed for the four weeks it stayed in second place.

Aside from technicalities, I am pleased to address “Calypso” since it’s probably my favourite Denver song, with its full, sumptuous and madly optimistic arrangement. Written as a tribute to the research ship – a converted Royal Navy minesweeper which had actually been built in Seattle – used by Denver’s friend Jacques-Yves Cousteau, it appeared at a point where ecological and environmental concerns were coming to the fore, and those always underpinned Cousteau’s adventures, both on and off television (I was dazzled watching The Undersea World Of Jacques Cousteau as a child – this old French fellow in his mid-sixties fearlessly diving, swimming, researching and preserving). “Calypso,” the song, bounds along with unquenchable dolphin-like enthusiasm (how many times do pop songs contain the word “aye”?), sailing, not towards hell (cf. Roger Whittaker’s “The Last Farewell,” a transatlantic hit earlier the same year), but towards a future that was brighter and better than the one we ended up getting. “Wonderful Land” with a renewed conscience.

Date Record Made Number Two: 11 October 1975
Number Of Weeks At Number Two: 4
Records At Number One: “Bad Blood” by Neil Sedaka and “Island Girl” by Elton John
UK Chart Position: None

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Threads Of Alligator Lizards In The Air: “Purple Rain” by Prince and The Revolution

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"watching for night, with absinthe eye cocked on the lone, late, passer-by." (Sylvia Plath, "Prospect," 1956) This story begins in 1954, before most people had really recognised anything called rock, and a pop record which is half-perfect. That record, which stayed at number one in our charts for ten weeks, was “Cara Mia” by David Whitfield with Mantovani and his Orchestra and Chorus. Now, Whitfield was never the most subtle of singers and his in-your-face bellowing is somewhat distracting – it is significant that he was the first British reality media star (not from television, because at that time Opportunity Knocks was only broadcast on Radio Luxembourg) since his climactic high C at the end of “Cara Mia” is like a display of gymnastics, or an athletic field event; can he do that triple loop or throw that javelin beyond the stadium? It proves that technical prowess can often render itself unlistenable. But the magic here lies in the extraordinary

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