New Year’s Resolved
What are you doing in 2021?
Happy New Year - Lightnin’ Hopkins
As a youngster in Buffalo, Texas, learning how to play the guitar, Samuel John “Lightnin’” Hopkins (1912-1982) looked forward to bluesmen coming to town. He remembered Blind Lemon Jefferson, a certified star of the blues circuit, playing on the street corner. Lightnin’ says when Jefferson hit Buffalo “I’d just get alongside and start playing.” Could be that’s where he got the inspiration for this one, because Blind Lemon loved to sing about the hope and promise of the coming new year.
From 1953, Lightnin Hopkins wishes you a “Happy New Year…”
New Year’s Resolution - Otis Redding and Carla Thomas
By all measures, 1967 was the ultimate year for Georgia’s Otis Redding. The father of four saw his career skyrocket following his Summer of Love appearance at the Monterey Pop Festival. That year he would earn $35,000 a week from his concert appearances and another million dollars from record sales. Just before his fabulous life (along with 4 out of 5 of the Bar-Kays) was cut short at 26 in a December 10 airplane crash, he put the finishing touches on “(Sittin’ On) The Dock of the Bay.” He never heard the radio playing his eerie swan song that would earn him a posthumous Grammy. The day after his Beechcraft H18 plunged into Lake Monona, his body was pulled from the frozen Wisconsin waters. He looked like a sleeping giant.
In March he had released an album of duets, King and Queen, with Carla Thomas. One song centered on another time he would miss, the new year of 1968. But the song itself would take a powerful stand on love and the future. Listen for the patented R&B guitar of Steve Cropper, the guy who wrote “Midnight Hour,” and the piano of Booker T. Jones who fronted a group called the MGs, but most of all, feel the power of Otis and Carla on “New Year’s Resolution.”
Auld Lang Syne - The Beach Boys
In every Brian Wilson interview recorded since 1963, the leader of the Beach Men has credited The Four Freshmen as a major inspiration. So there may be something to it. Here are those brotherly harmonies for the 1:19 closing of The Beach Boys Christmas Album released in November, 1964.
Closing of the Year - Wendy and Lisa and Plácido Domingo and Sarah Brightman
From 1992 Wendy and Lisa and Seal and a cast of millions (or maybe it’s just the cast of the motion picture Toys) ring out the old year and ring in the new with a stirring chorale and a song by Hans Zimmer and Trevor Horn. Before we even have a second to ask ourselves if this is the strangest Robin Williams movie ever—there are so many—we get this 1998 cover from Plácido and Sarah. Close this year, lock it away, throw away the key.
What Are You Doing New Year’s Eve - The Carpenters
The Frank Loesser 1947 classic in one of its best and slightly eerie covers. Karen Carpenter passed in 1983, the album this comes from, An Old-Fashioned Christmas, was released October 26, 1984. And it sounds as if it was recorded tonight.