This week’s Monday Morning Music request comes from Cathy Fagan in the English Department. It’s a softer, slower sound this Monday as Bonnie Rait performs “Too Long At The Fair”:
Cathy writes:
Does there ever have to be a backstory for Bonnie Raitt? Never. But this is a college, so here comes one. . . Born in Los Angeles to musical parents John Raitt (Broadway singer–Pajama Game, Oklahoma, Carousel) and pianist/singer Marge Goddard, Raitt began playing the guitar at the age of eight, when she received one as a Christmas present. Raised in Quaker traditions against the wacky backdrop of LA, Raitt went to Radcliffe in 1967 to be where the social action was (and where the ratio of guys to girls was 4 to 1, she confesses). By 1969 she’d left school, but not Cambridge, where she played the Boston folk/blues circuit, opening for greats such as James Taylor, Muddy Waters, and John Lee Hooker.
I think this is a great song for a Monday in May at NCC, when we all feel like we’ve just stayed “Too Long at the Fair.” Like James Taylor, Bonnie brings me back to my own halcyon college days, when life was very sweet and pretty easy. Hope her tones bring you back to 1974 (or there for the first time) when gas was 55 cents a gallon (but there was a big shortage), a new house cost $ 35,000.00, Nixon was about to resign, the IRA bombed The Tower of London, and inflation was running at 11.3%. See, it’s never been perfect!
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