Moving Music: "Blue Sky"

    

The Allman Brothers: (L to R) Jaimoe, Duane Allman, Greg Allman, 
Dicky Betts, Berry Oakley and Butch Trucks
(photo by Jim Marshall)

     There are a good number of songs that have affected me in profound ways throughout my life. In the next couple of months I'd like to feature some of them here. This won’t be a song analysis post and it definitely won’t be any of those “Why you should like this” type of posts either. I’ve always found them to be a bit obnoxious. Obviously, like many art forms, music is subjective. There can be many reasons why you love a song or why it speaks to you in a certain way. I want my focus to be on how these songs have transcended from something much more than a great pieces of music to something that goes deeper into my being. I won’t particularly dwell on great lyrics or fabulous musicianship of these songs, though certainly these things are some of the qualities that have endeared the song to me. It’s basically how, for whatever reasons, these songs have elicited a feeling in me that is much more than the sum of its parts. I’m also not going to try to convince you that you too should like any song I explore. I understand if you think the song is just okay or you don’t like the singer’s voice, or maybe it's too country or too disco or too whatever for your liking. I get it. It's a very personal experience. Maybe you will appreciate it or maybe you'll think about songs in your own life that have moved you in an incredible way. The first song I'd like to feature is “Blue Sky” by The Allman Brothers Band.    

     "Blue Sky" was released on the Eat a Peach album in February of 1972. The song is noted for a couple of things: It’s the first Allman Brothers song that guitarist Dicky Betts sang instead of Greg Allman, it has amazing alternate guitar leads by Betts and Duane Allman and it was one of the last studio recordings that Duane Allman played on before he died tragically in a motorcycle accident a few months later in October 1971 at 24 years of age. Betts wrote this song for his girlfriend and soon to be wife, Sandy "Bluesky" Wabegijig. 

    There are a number of songs out there that when I hear them, they take me back to the early to mid 1970’s, riding in the family car.  The radio was always on so I must have heard these songs many times over. “Blue Sky” was one of these songs that when I hear it now, I can sometimes see my 5 year old self sitting in the back seat, always on the left side, behind my dad. That was my spot, the left side. I don’t know how we figured out that would be my spot for the next 12 years but that was the way it was when my whole family was in the car. My older brother took the right side behind my mom and my younger brother was stuck in the middle, on the hump. Unfortunately them's the breaks when you're the youngest. I wonder if there's ever has been a study examining the health, well being and learning capacities for children who've had to endure the hump. Anyway, we lived in Mystic Islands, New Jersey at the time and I imagine we were driving back home from some outing. Maybe we had gone to Rickel Home Center(a store long gone now) or maybe we were returning from a day of walking along the  Atlantic City boardwalk and eating salt water taffy. The sun would be setting and the sky was turning orange, yellow and purple. I probably didn’t have a care in the world as "Blue Sky" entered my ears. I don’t think that as I listened to it then, I said to myself, “This is a great song”. It probably didn’t really register that way at all, it just got stored in my brain. There definitely is a sentimental attachment because of this memory but the sentiment is only a small part.

Dicky Betts

    There are tons of songs out there that when I hear them I become very sentimental because it reminds me of the time when I originally heard it. That’s how it is for all of us. It brings us back to a certain time in our lives maybe when everything was free and easy, when we were young. Some of these songs I might not even like at all but in the present day it’s a conduit to another time, you could say it was another life. “Hold Me Now” by The Thompson Twins, a song that's ok, is a song like that. It's totally a top 40, early 80’s pop song which happened to have a great bass line. It came out in 1983 just as me and my friends were coming of age. So when I hear it I think of those times of smoking pot, thinking we were the shit and discovering new worlds. That’s not the case with “Blue Sky” because it wasn't during the times of driving on New Jersey roadways that made me love this song the way that I do. That didn't happen until about 20 years later.

Sandy "Bluesky" Wabegijig-The inspiration for "Blue Sky"
(photo by Twiggs Lyndon)
You're my blue sky, you're my sunny day
Lord, you know it makes me high
When you turn your love my way

    During those 20 years, I’m sure I heard "Blue Sky" on the radio a lot, especially in the mid to late 80’s when I was listening to AOR/classic rock radio stations. This song would be exactly the type of song that would be on their playlists. On a side note, one thing I think is curious is that I've never owned this record or any Allman Brothers Band records for that matter. In the early 1990’s I worked as a waiter at Coldwaters restaurant on the east side of Manhattan. On one particular night, after the dinner rush, I was in a reflective and melancholic place. I had just been “in the weeds”, which is a restaurant term for being totally overwhelmed by an onslaught of customers, a term I’ve only ever heard being referred to this way. Would you believe I still have "in the weeds" dreams, even after 27 years of not being a waiter? They always starts off in an empty restaurant where somehow I'm a waiter again. First there are a few people sitting at tables and before you know it the whole place is full of customers pissed off because I haven’t taken their orders yet. Anyway, there was a pretty good cd jukebox at the bar and “Blue Sky” came on. I was mesmerized and hypnotized by that guitar solo. Those guitar solo notes almost seem to guide your heart. It was also a period after a break-up so maybe imagined that my ex was my “blue sky” too. But I think also though those notes suggest it’s going to be okay and seem to complement these lyrics:

Walk along the river, sweet lullaby
They just keep on flowin', they don't worry 'bout where it's goin', no, no

    I believe that sometimes you are in a certain state where you are more susceptible to allowing something to enter your heart.  I believe there were times that I was vulnerable, when I was maybe in a period of despair or that I was looking for something, a particular song came my way and fulfilled me in a way I hadn't expected.  At that point the song is much more than a great song, it's a spiritual experience. That’s the power of music. Had I not heard that that song on the jukebox, I’m not sure I would have that same feeling I have about “Blue Sky”. No doubt I would have agreed that it was a good song but I don't think it would have had the same impact that it has had on me other than some distant memory of my youth.
    There is a difference between seeing or hearing a work of art that you really love and admire and having an experience where you are receiving it in a different way that goes straight to the spirit of your being, to your soul. That may be a fine line but the difference is easily discernible for me because I’ll feel a sensation rushing through my body and I have thoughts like "what a beautiful world" and "anything is possible".