Music for Grownups: The 10 Tastiest Tunes About Food
By: Richard Gehr | Source: AARP.org | Date Posted: 2008-09-11
Richard Gehr is a veteran music critic based in New York City. His reviews for AARP.org appear every Tuesday; his columns on Thursdays.
"If music be the food of love, play on,
Give me excess of it; that surfeiting,
The appetite may sicken, and so die."
-- William Shakespeare, "Twelfth Night"
Talk about too much of a good thing. If music "be the food of love," as Shakespeare suggests, the music of food is something completely different. Food and music have long been associated, of course: First we dine and then we dance. But the 10 best songs about food stand on their own – and love has nothing to do with it. Use the comments section to let us know what songs get you salivating.
10. A porker's hoof joins a bottle of beer and a "gang of gin" on the Saturday-night menu of "sin" that a Harlemite endorses in Wesley Wilson's "Gimme a Pigfoot." Blues legend Bessie Smith added a then-legal "reefer," perhaps as appetite enhancer, in her raucous 1933 rendition.
9. Impish reggae producer-singer Lee Perry's "Roast Fish and Cornbread" is a ghostly sounding yet deeply grooving celebration of a Jamaican dance party where food provides fuel for all the revelers "skanking in the backyard."
8. The first million-selling record by a male African-American, Josh White's 1944 version of "One Meatball" told the melancholy tale of man who learns, thanks to an obnoxious waiter, that 15 cents will not buy him a side of bread with his ground round. The song actually dates back to the 1860s, when it was known as "The Lone Fish Ball."
7. Louis Armstrong reveled in everyday life. Wife Lillian Hardin-Armstrong's "Struttin' With Some Barbecue," which he recorded with his Hot Seven in 1927, may be an instrumental, but you can practically smell the roasting pig.
6. Perhaps the stuff of legend, the story goes that in 1967, Paul McCartney provided celery-chewing percussion for an early version of the Beach Boys' "Vegetables." Brian Wilson's sweet paean to clean living would not be released in its entirety until 2004, when a whole new generation could ponder lyrics such as, "I tried to kick the ball but my tenny flew right off/ I'm red as a beet 'cause I'm so embarrassed…" (Not to be confused with the Mothers of Invention's "Call Any Vegetable.")
5. Lyrics about cooking grease and cigarette smoke help make Tom Waits's "Eggs & Sausage" the Smell-o-Vision equivalent of the Edward Hopper painting "Nighthawks at the Diner," which the growling singer mentions in the opening line of one of his best-known songs.
4. Written by George Harrison in tribute to pal Eric Clapton's chocolate cravings, the Beatles' "Savoy Truffle" is good enough to eat. Harrison's ”coffee dessert” and “ginger slings” were cribbed from a box of Mackintosh Good News candies.
3. When it comes to unappetizing yet brilliant food songs, I hereby declare a tie between "The Worst Pies in London" and "A Little Priest," both from the Stephen Sondheim musical "Sweeney Todd." You'll never enjoy a meat pie in quite the same way again. And is that squire on the fire?
2. Released this year, Paul Shapiro's "Essen" is an album of zany Yiddish swing music devoted almost entirely to food. The hilarious title track documents the entire menu of a weekend stay at a Catskills resort, from soup to nuts. “Es gezunderheit!” as they say in the old country, or “Eat in health!”
1. Food always tastes better when you're subsisting on a diet of gruel. Hence the exuberance universally displayed by whichever orphans happen to be singing "Food Glorious Food" in Lionel Bart's "Oliver!" musical. The waifs don't care what their repast looks like as long as they get that "full-up feeling." And sometimes that's all that magical, wonderful, marvelous, fabulous food requires.
Give me excess of it; that surfeiting,
The appetite may sicken, and so die."
-- William Shakespeare, "Twelfth Night"
Talk about too much of a good thing. If music "be the food of love," as Shakespeare suggests, the music of food is something completely different. Food and music have long been associated, of course: First we dine and then we dance. But the 10 best songs about food stand on their own – and love has nothing to do with it. Use the comments section to let us know what songs get you salivating.
10. A porker's hoof joins a bottle of beer and a "gang of gin" on the Saturday-night menu of "sin" that a Harlemite endorses in Wesley Wilson's "Gimme a Pigfoot." Blues legend Bessie Smith added a then-legal "reefer," perhaps as appetite enhancer, in her raucous 1933 rendition.
9. Impish reggae producer-singer Lee Perry's "Roast Fish and Cornbread" is a ghostly sounding yet deeply grooving celebration of a Jamaican dance party where food provides fuel for all the revelers "skanking in the backyard."
8. The first million-selling record by a male African-American, Josh White's 1944 version of "One Meatball" told the melancholy tale of man who learns, thanks to an obnoxious waiter, that 15 cents will not buy him a side of bread with his ground round. The song actually dates back to the 1860s, when it was known as "The Lone Fish Ball."
7. Louis Armstrong reveled in everyday life. Wife Lillian Hardin-Armstrong's "Struttin' With Some Barbecue," which he recorded with his Hot Seven in 1927, may be an instrumental, but you can practically smell the roasting pig.
6. Perhaps the stuff of legend, the story goes that in 1967, Paul McCartney provided celery-chewing percussion for an early version of the Beach Boys' "Vegetables." Brian Wilson's sweet paean to clean living would not be released in its entirety until 2004, when a whole new generation could ponder lyrics such as, "I tried to kick the ball but my tenny flew right off/ I'm red as a beet 'cause I'm so embarrassed…" (Not to be confused with the Mothers of Invention's "Call Any Vegetable.")
5. Lyrics about cooking grease and cigarette smoke help make Tom Waits's "Eggs & Sausage" the Smell-o-Vision equivalent of the Edward Hopper painting "Nighthawks at the Diner," which the growling singer mentions in the opening line of one of his best-known songs.
4. Written by George Harrison in tribute to pal Eric Clapton's chocolate cravings, the Beatles' "Savoy Truffle" is good enough to eat. Harrison's ”coffee dessert” and “ginger slings” were cribbed from a box of Mackintosh Good News candies.
3. When it comes to unappetizing yet brilliant food songs, I hereby declare a tie between "The Worst Pies in London" and "A Little Priest," both from the Stephen Sondheim musical "Sweeney Todd." You'll never enjoy a meat pie in quite the same way again. And is that squire on the fire?
2. Released this year, Paul Shapiro's "Essen" is an album of zany Yiddish swing music devoted almost entirely to food. The hilarious title track documents the entire menu of a weekend stay at a Catskills resort, from soup to nuts. “Es gezunderheit!” as they say in the old country, or “Eat in health!”
1. Food always tastes better when you're subsisting on a diet of gruel. Hence the exuberance universally displayed by whichever orphans happen to be singing "Food Glorious Food" in Lionel Bart's "Oliver!" musical. The waifs don't care what their repast looks like as long as they get that "full-up feeling." And sometimes that's all that magical, wonderful, marvelous, fabulous food requires.
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