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One of those big airplay hits that turns out to have been a much smaller chart hit than you'd think. And even the success it did have took two attempts, although I remember hearing and preferring 'Silver Thunderbird', the follow-up to the original release.
The song itself has shown up on this blog before in a cover version by Cher, but it's probably this version that more people will remember. At the time I recall liking it more because it seemed sophisticated and the sort of thing I should be keen on, than because I was excited about it directly. I certainly didn't really understand a lot of the references back then: of course I'd heard of Memphis and I knew what country it was in, I knew about Graceland (thanks to Paul Simon) and who the Reverend Green was, but when he sang that it was "the land of the Delta Blues" I think I thought they were a baseball team or something. I'm a bit more clued-up now on the importance of the city in musical history, and also I have some appreciation of how far Cohn's hometown of Cleveland Ohio is from there, geographically and culturally. I don't know whether I'd say that it entirely captures the spirit of the place, but then again any impression I have of the place is entirely secondhand, and perhaps that's the point. It's a song about a visitor, after all. I thought I'd hate it when I came back to listen to it here, but it's really quite pleasant after all.
Available on: The Very Best of Marc Cohn
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