Songwriter/Singer Dave Loggins ("Please Come To Boston") Dies at 76

[Pink Freud]

He was 76; the second cousin of hitmaker Kenny Loggins.

Several years ago in northern Arizona I attended a coffeehouse's Open Mic Nite, and a local man sang "Please Come To Boston", with this story: He was in Colorado Springs playing in a bar, and he sang that song. He noticed one bar patron, who obviously really liked the song, lip-synching along. At the close of the song, the man came up and told the bar singer "That is the finest version of my song I've ever heard." Yes, it was Dave Loggins.

Chuck Negron heard Loggins sing "Pieces of April" and recorded it for Three Dog Night. Loggins shared a CMA Vocal Duo of the Year award with Anne Murray for his "Nobody Loves Me Like You Do".

[azredbirdfan]

Uugghh.
That song is in my top 5 of songs I really don't want to hear or remember.
Now it's stuck in my head.

[edwin drood]

Uugghh.
That song is in my top 5 of songs I really don't want to hear or remember.
Now it's stuck in my head.

I'll see your "Please Come to Boston" and raise you a "Sylvia's Mother".

[Heavy Early]

Uugghh.
That song is in my top 5 of songs I really don't want to hear or remember.
Now it's stuck in my head.

I'll see your "Please Come to Boston" and raise you a "Sylvia's Mother".

Wow -- torn between playing the "(You're) Having My Baby" and "Escape (The Piña Colada Song)" card

[Pink Freud]

I wonder if RhinoRecords ever sold a compilation of "All-time Worst Earworms" or "All-time Worst One-Hit Wonders".

Just imagine phone-addicted teens today hearing "Sylvia's Mother" for the first time, and trying to make sense of Ray Sawyer's tortured braying of "...and the operator says twenty cents more for the next three minutes...".

HUH??? Operator?? Twenty cents more? Three minutes???

[Charlie Smoke]

I wonder if RhinoRecords ever sold a compilation of "All-time Worst Earworms" or "All-time Worst One-Hit Wonders".

Just imagine phone-addicted teens today hearing "Sylvia's Mother" for the first time, and trying to make sense of Ray Sawyer's tortured braying of "...and the operator says twenty cents more for the next three minutes...".

HUH??? Operator?? Twenty cents more? Three minutes???

It was Forty cents more. Kimble. Surprised you didn't research a little as an investigative journalist.

[acco40]

Uugghh.
That song is in my top 5 of songs I really don't want to hear or remember.
Now it's stuck in my head.

I'll see your "Please Come to Boston" and raise you a "Sylvia's Mother".

And the operator said 40 cents more for the next three minutes

Not a big Shel Silverstein fan? Shel was in love with a woman called Sylvia Pandolfi, but she would later get engaged to another man. Desperate to continue the relationship, Silverstein called Pandolfi's mother, Louisa, but she told him that it was over.

[azredbirdfan]

Uugghh.
That song is in my top 5 of songs I really don't want to hear or remember.
Now it's stuck in my head.

I'll see your "Please Come to Boston" and raise you a "Sylvia's Mother".

There's a low signal independent oldies station near me that played Sylvia's Mother about a week ago.
Thanks a lot.

[azredbirdfan]

Uugghh.
That song is in my top 5 of songs I really don't want to hear or remember.
Now it's stuck in my head.

I'll see your "Please Come to Boston" and raise you a "Sylvia's Mother".

Wow -- torn between playing the "(You're) Having My Baby" and "Escape (The Piña Colada Song)" card

The high note in Minnie Riperton's "Loving You" is known to pierce the skull and produce intense headache.

[Heavy Early]

Uugghh.
That song is in my top 5 of songs I really don't want to hear or remember.
Now it's stuck in my head.

I'll see your "Please Come to Boston" and raise you a "Sylvia's Mother".

Wow -- torn between playing the "(You're) Having My Baby" and "Escape (The Piña Colada Song)" card

The high note in Minnie Riperton's "Loving You" is known to pierce the skull and produce intense headache.

[141]

Uugghh.
That song is in my top 5 of songs I really don't want to hear or remember.
Now it's stuck in my head.

I'll see your "Please Come to Boston" and raise you a "Sylvia's Mother".

Wow -- torn between playing the "(You're) Having My Baby" and "Escape (The Piña Colada Song)" card

The high note in Minnie Riperton's "Loving You" is known to pierce the skull and produce intense headache.

Cracked the windshield in my ‘74 Gremlin.

[Pink Freud]

You last three posters, Maya Rudolph would like to have a word with you.

[Pink Freud]

It was Forty cents more. Kimble. Surprised you didn't research a little as an investigative journalist.

Wow....I goofed on one word in a song from 52 years ago. In all my local journalism career, after more than 2,000 live radio interviews, including with Herb Alpert; Engelbert Humperdinck; Toni Tennille; Sen. John McCain; Mario Andretti; Kenny Wayne Shepherd, Louie Anderson, Stan Musial, Ronny Cox, Paula Poundstone, Chris Botti, Maria Muldaur, J. D. Souther, and many more, I was, for some godforsaken reason, never sent to investigate Dr. Hook and the Medicine Show, which I've always deeply regretted.

It's the black mark on my career.

Yet....somehow...someway....my heart will go on.

Do you think, in YOUR heart of hearts, you can find the strength to somehow forgive me?

[Aesa]

It was Forty cents more. Kimble. Surprised you didn't research a little as an investigative journalist.

Wow....I goofed on one word in a song from 52 years ago. In all my local journalism career, after more than 2,000 live radio interviews, including with Herb Alpert; Engelbert Humperdinck; Toni Tennille; Sen. John McCain; Mario Andretti; Kenny Wayne Shepherd, Louie Anderson, Stan Musial, Ronny Cox, Paula Poundstone, Chris Botti, Maria Muldaur, J. D. Souther, and many more, I was, for some godforsaken reason, never sent to investigate Dr. Hook and the Medicine Show, which I've always deeply regretted.

It's the black mark on my career.

Yet....somehow...someway....my heart will go on.

Do you think, in YOUR heart of hearts, you can find the strength to somehow forgive me?

(bleep) Pink, I would have loved to be in the room for the KWS and J.D.Souther interviews

[Pink Freud]

(drat) Pink, I would have loved to be in the room for the KWS and J.D.Souther interviews

All of the celeb interviews I listed were by phone except for Sen. John McCain and singer Toni Tennille, since we were promoting their upcoming local shows and they were on the road.

The KWS went very well. Kenny was headlining the Flagstaff Blues and Brews festival in the mountains. I learned that his biggest single, "Blue on Black" is him playing, but not singing. That role fell to Noah Hunt.

The J. D. Souther live phone interview was interrupted by a lightning storm, so our conversation kept going in and out. He very graciously volunteered to call back the next day, but we aired what we had. I wish I'd have had the opp to ask him since he was Linda Ronstadt's love for so long, and he was such a gifted songwriter, why nearly all of her 1970s radio hits were covers of other artists. I thought her 1979 "Mad Love" album, recorded to jump on the New Wave movement, was her best, in part because it was so original for her.

J. D. talked about the Eagles song "The Sad Cafe", which he and Don Henley composed while dining and drinking at Dan Tana's, next door to the Troubadour, where the Eagles got their biggest break by doing their strongest set in front of just the right people, then going on tour with Ronstadt. The old Red Car streetcar line used to run from Santa Monica at the ocean all the way through L. A., down Santa Monica Blvd. past the Troubadour, and Henley and Souther used that as a metaphor of "and now that glory train, it don't stop here no more"***, as a way of lamenting how so many talented acts they saw at the Troubadour, who deserved stardom, never find it just due to right time, right place.

He also noted how the great Eagles song "How Long", released with their "Long Road Out of Eden" album in 2009 and sounding just like the early Eagles, had been written in the early '70s and performed by the band only at their first shows on tour, then forgotten. So, Souther was dumbstruck when he had the TV on one day and saw the music video of "How Long" --- 35 years after he wrote it --- with "Glenn just singing the chrome off it".

He spoke of the days when he and Jackson Browne were neighbors in the hills above the Hollywood Bowl and what a perfectionist --- prickly and fussy --- Browne was, pounding the exact same passage hour after hour, sometimes in the wee hours.

Sadly, the live show by J. D. Souther at the beautiful Prescott Elks Theater, seating capacity 480, was a disaster. Elks Theater shows always-always-always start five minutes after listed showtime. He was announced "Please welcome J. D. Souther!" at 7:05...and the crowd applauded.....then he didn't come out until 7:30, and only after a second announcement. One of the Elks staffers told me J. D. was downstairs drinking straight Patron, and that tall "tea" on top of his piano was actually more Patron.

He got political, describing "that ape in the White House" in front of an older crowd that lived and died with Fox News. He rambled and rambled and rambled between songs to the point when he took an intermission about two hours in, most of the crowd --- 9:30 bedtime in northern AZ! --- didn't return after the break. I did return, but then left ten minutes into his second set to join my wife in the car; she left at intermission, too, choosing to wait for me. I have no idea how long his show lasted or how many stuck around to the end.

*** Anxiously awaiting forum poster "Charlie Smoke" to google the lyric to make sure I didn't miss a word.