Long preface: There's a Charles Bronson movie (Telefon) in which Russian agents have been subconsciously programmed with various agendas, which they are to act on when they hear a particular word or phrase on the phone. After listening to a number of your posts about pop music of the past, I'm beginning to understand that popular music works in a similar fashion. We hear an overwhelming number of popular tunes (on the radio in our generation, social media today) and when the music industry is ready to fill us with new songs, the old music is closeted away. But old pop music is never completely erased--it sits in our memory bank waiting to be activated. In this case, it's Della Reese's "Don't You Know." I could have sworn that this was a new track for me, but when I played it, the memories came "streaming" in.

"Long Black Veil" is the only truly new tune to me--I didn't know about Lefty as I was growing up, and only discovered his genius in the last 5-10 years as I began exploring country music.

Ratings:

"Long Black Veil": 92

"Smoke Gets in Your Eyes": 98 (charted at 11--give me a break)

"What'd I Say": not my favorite Ray Charles song, but anything he touched was gold. 95

"There Goes My Baby": doo wop at its finest 97

"Don't You Know": 92 I need to listen to more Della.

P. S. I'm sure I've cluttered your comments page at least once with this song, but Lefty Frizzell / Sanger D. Shafer (a currently underestimated songwriting genius) penned one of my favorite country songs (for Moe Bandy), a graduate-level course in metaphor: https://youtu.be/LyxNA43ZOXA?si=ufczfGHCbOKxVprB