Ten Favorite Linda Ronstadt Guest Appearances: Bartender’s Blues (#8)

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We survived the first week of the new year! After two weeks in a row where I was off Monday and Tuesday I have to remember to go to work Monday morning!! Let’s celebrate with another song that features the incomparable Linda Ronstadt singing background vocals. #8: Bartender’s Blues - James Taylor It should be no surprise that Linda showed up singing on a James Taylor song. She recorded “You Can Close Your Eyes” on Heart Like a Wheel, which Taylor wrote. (Quick aside: the backing vocals on that song were from two bands, Poco’s Tim Schmit and the Eagles’ Glenn Frey and Don Henley. Later they’d all be in the same band.) Taylor has had a long and great career. One of his early hits, “Fire and Rain,” was about his own breakdown. A later song, “Her Town Too,” chronicled his divorce from Carly Simon. In between he’s written and covered some of the most iconic songs of the 70s. This song, from my second-favorite Taylor album (behind Flag), is downright cawntree. It should come as no surprise that George Jones later recorded this had and quite a good-sized country hit with it. The song is the first-person account of a bartender, describing the ups (“I can light up your smokes [old song, huh?], I can laugh at your jokes”) and downs (“I’ve seen lots of sad faces and lots of sad cases of folks with their backs to the wall”) of life in a bar. Even he sees both sides of the job: “I don’t like my work, but I don’t mind the money at all.” As he tries to explain that the bar that serves as a home-away-from-home for many provides security of sorts (“I need four walls around me to hold my life to keep me from going astray”), there’s Linda Ronstadt in the background. Her powerhouse backing vocals are a stark contrast to Taylor’s lead, almost as if what she is singing, although the same words, is Taylor’s conscience telling him to just keep repeating and believing the lie he’s saying. At the end, when he admits, “I’ve burned all my bridges, I’ve sank all my ships, and I’m standing at the edge of the sea,” you realize that he’s in as bad a shape as his customers. One of Taylor’s best, brightened even more by Ronstadt’s presence. Bartender’s Blues Written by James Taylor Recorded by James Taylor From JT, 1977 The smoke fills the air in this honky tonk bar: