Angelina, Johanna, Ramona, Alberta, Suze, Denise, Sadie, Maggie and Jane — there’s no shortage of songs that use women’s names in their titles. The preceding are just some that Bob himself has used.

The program opened to the haunting instrumental strains of Laura, and Bob’s remarks:

Tonight we’re gonna talk about a subject close to my heart: women’s names. That which we call our nearest and dearest, the ones we love and want to love. Let me quote William Shakespeare to you: “What’s in a name? That which we call a rose, by any other name, would smell as sweet. ” So call your sweetie, and tell her we’re gonna play her a song.

Later, Dylan read Edgar Allan Poe’s poem “Annabel Lee.” (Halfway through the reading he commented, in an aside, “Oh, this is a long poem!”)

He referred to Poe as a “fender-bender poet,” and then to Buddy Holly as the “poet laureate of Lubbock, Texas,” before playing (of-course) Peggy Sue. (A track featuring “some of the best paradiddles ever heard on a record.”) Dylan took a delightful relish in introducing the Kinks’ Lola. Later he listed other songs that use “spelling,” like D.I.V.O.R.C.E, and Gloria. He quoted humorist Dave Barry as saying that “if you drop a guitar down the stairs, it’ll play Gloria on its way to the bottom.” Cue the sound effects, and sure enough … “How about that?”

“If you’re gonna crank something up, crank this up,” was Bob’s intro to Calvin Boze’s Safronia B.

After playing The Jaynettes’ Sally Go Round the Roses Bob listed various theories as to what that song is about, which led to him reciting the children’s rhyme about Lizzie Borden:

Lizzie Borden took an axe
And gave her mother forty whacks.
And when she saw what she had done,
She gave her father forty-one.

Then he gave us the history of the name “Sally”:

“Sally,” by the way, means “princess” or “lady,” in Hebrew, because it’s the pet form of “Sarah,” which is also the name of the wife of Abraham. In the Old Testament, she became the mother of Isaac at the age of ninety.

As Oprah would say, “You go girl!”

Her name backwards is “Harpo.”

Bob plays Bob Wills doing Corrina, Corrina, and mentions some of the other artists who have done versions of that song. Among those he leaves out are both Dean Martin and himself.

Before playing Billie Holiday incandescently singing Mandy Is Two, Bob provides an e-mailer with some advice on taking care of toddlers that is worthy of the Super Nanny (and maybe cribbed from her website).

The name Amanda was created in the 17th Century, by the playwright Colley Cibber, who based it on the Latin word meaning “lovable.” She’s not that lovable, going through the terrible twos.

We hear Ralph and Carter Stanley performing Little Maggie, a song that has also passed through Dylan’s lips more than once.

He tells us that Pretty Polly (a song we hear performed by Sandy Denny) was known as …

… a broadside ballad, a commercial art form of the 17th and 18th Century. A broadside, or broadsheet, is a long (?) single sheet of paper, used to publish advertisements, public notices, political messages and the like. They are also used to publish songs, often of a lurid, scandalous or political nature. They’re kinda like tabloids that you can glue onto a wall.

No program about songs based on women’s names would be complete without Nancy (with the Laughing Face), and Bob tells us the whole story of how Phil Silvers and Jimmy Van Heusen came to write it and give it to Frank Sinatra, in honor of his daughter, and how it went on to become such a favorite. And what a recording it is, indeed — Frank, and the angelic voice of his Columbia years.

Bob introduces Sweet Jennie Lou by Gene Ammons by saying that it is “one of those records that just shows you the thin line between jazz and R & B.”

Gene’s career was interrupted when he served time in prison between nineteen and fifty-eight and nineteen and sixty-nine, for drug usage. Nowadays, he would have gotten a slap on the wrist and put into rehab. But back then, we were robbed of ten years of his lyrical, musical voice. Fortunately, he left behind a lot of great records, such as Sweet Jennie Lou.

Dylan leaves us with “the words of Carl Sandburg.”

The woman named Tomorrow
sits with hairpin in her teeth
and takes her time.

And with that we take our leave.

Playlist:

Laura (clip)
Arthur Alexander – Anna
Buddy Holly – Peggy Sue
The Kinks – Lola
Billy Vera talks about Calvin Boze
Calvin Boze – Safronia B
Howlin’ Wolf – Louise
The Jaynettes – Sally Go Round the Roses
Bob Wills & the Texas Playboys – Corrina, Corrina
Billie Holiday – Mandy is Two
The Stanley Brothers – Little Maggie
Sandy Denny – Pretty Polly
The Chimes – Zindy Lou
Roy Orbison – Claudette
Frank Sinatra – Nancy (With the Laughing Face)
Bo Diddley – Mona
Gene Ammons – Sweet Jennie Lou

Next week’s theme: HAIR

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