Initial notice
If you have been wondering where we have been, we have had technical issues galore. I have the site working again so I am putting up one of my own articles as I won’t get too upset if it suddenly vanishes. I hope not, and hope we are back running. We shall see.
So working through the songs from Bob’s book that he wrote in response to getting his doctorate (it’s a done thing of course – if they give you a doctorate you have to write a book) and Dylan wrote “The Philosophy of Modern Song”. I’m going through the songs and have got to “Don’t let me be misunderstood”. The first major recording was by Nina Simone, and it was composed by Bennie Benjamin, Horace Ott and Sol Marcus.
Nina Simone recorded the first version in 1964 but since then there have been multiple, multiple cover versions. One by the Animals was a big hit in 1965, and many others have had success with it including one from Elvis Costello.
Now today I am not putting up a copy of the song here because one of the suspicions we have about what has been giving this site such problems is the fact that it has so many musical extracts on it. But you can just type in the title on a search engine and you’ll be overwhelmed.
The story is that the composer wrote the chorus after he had a row with his fiance and his pals in the writring business then finished it off and it appeared at a slow beat. The song was also taken up by some civil rights activists, although not everyone heard it that way.
Publisher’s note: if this little article goes up without affecting the rest of the site, I’ll come back and add a musical example and some more information.