New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg has called for caution. New York Governor Andrew Cuomo has declared a state of emergency. And as Hurricane Irene moves up the East Coast, worried citizens are stocking up on supplies. In light of that, here is our Hurricane Irene playlist. We have excluded the Scorpions’s “Rock You Like a Hurricane,” Neil Young’s “Like a Hurricane,” and The Doors’ “Riders on the Storm.” Song choices are not meant to undermine the potential severity of the storm and should not be considered appropriate substitutes for water, canned goods, and batteries.
Wynonie Harris, “She’s Gone with the Wind”: Some people say Irene is the biggest storm since 2005. Others believe that it’s the greatest threat since 1985. And some are reaching all the way back to 1944, to the Great Atlantic Hurricane. This Wynonie Harris song dates from the following year.
The Delfonics, “Didn’t I (Blow Your Mind This Time)”: It’s the supreme seventies sweet-soul anthem. Aretha Franklin has covered it, as has Millie Jackson. It’s also the song that makes Max Cherry fall for Jackie Brown. In this video clip, William Hart’s beard looks like a map of a hurricane. (A live version is below.)
Ella Fitzgerald, “Ill Wind (You’re Blowing Me No Good)”: Ella was a hurricane herself, and her version of this Harold Arlen song is filled with gusty vibrato. But it’s also full of rue and regret. Frank Sinatra also sang it, as did Tony Bennett, as did everyone else.
Robin Williams, “Blow Me Down”: Harry Nilsson wrote the soundtrack for Robert Altman’s doomed adaptation of “Popeye,” and this breezy song is one of the highlights, though Robin Williams’s performance of it in the film is—like the rest of the film—somewhat ramshackle. Nilsson’s version is available on various bootlegs.
The Carpenters, “Rainy Days and Mondays”: Irene is probably coming Sunday to the New York City area, but that seems like a quibble.
Tom Waits, “Blow Wind Blow”: Tom Waits just announced his new album, “Bad As Me,” in which he will deliver yet more of his trademark mix of junkyard rock and blues ballads. This official video for this song—which appeared on “Franks Wild Years” in 1987—features Waits, balloons, ventriloquist dummies, and top hats. There are no hurricanes, though there is a big fan.
Ian Hunter, “Irene Wilde”: The obvious choice would be “Goodnight Irene,” the folk standard originally recorded by Lead Belly, popularized by the Weavers, and covered by everyone from Jerry Lee Lewis to the Meat Puppets. But if it’s Irenes you want, why not try out this Ian Hunter love song, here performed live with Mick Ronson.
Bob Dylan, “Ballad in Plain D”: It’s easy to pick a Dylan song, but hard to pick the right one. Not “Hurricane”: it’s not about weather. Not “Blowin’ in the Wind”: there’s weather, but it’s political, metaphorical, and, by this point, cliché. Not “Shelter from the Storm”: too obvious. Not “Idiot Wind”: too long. In the end, we parsed lyrics, and found three candidates: “The wind began to howl” (from “All Along the Watchtower”); “I’d jump up in the wind, do a somersault and spin” (from the early “All Over You,” recently released on the Witmark Demos); and “The wind knocks my window, the room it is wet,” from this plaintive, sometimes bitter ballad. It’s about the late Suze Rotolo, Dylan’s early-sixties girlfriend, and Dylan later looked back on it with regret: “Oh yeah, that one! I look back and say ‘I must have been a real schmuck to write that.’ I look back at that particular one and say, of all the songs I’ve written, maybe I could have left that alone.”
