Cover illustration of Worlds of If magazine, July 1965
At one time, I thought I could get into the Lovin' Spoonful in a big way - my dad had been a big fan, and I was intrigued by their unlikely success as a NY-based folk-pop band. I did a little research and decided that their 1966 album Hums of the Lovin' Spoonful was the place to start. But the album never clicked with me for some reason - it was a little TOO odd. For me, the old-timey shuffle of the band's rhythm section didn't really mesh with Zal Yanovsky's virtuoso guitar-playing and John Sebastian's often bluesy vocal style. I put my favorite tracks from the album on the ol' Jukebox("Full Measure" being my clear favorite) and shelved the CD.
When "Darlin' Companion" popped up on the Jukebox, I pulled the Hums of the Lovin' Spoonful out again, and I'm liking it a lot better now than I did at the time. Sure, it's still understated and really quirky, but the songwriting is top-notch and the Lovin' Spoonful has impressive versatility. This shows through in a song like "Darlin' Companion", a straightforward country song from a time when pop artists didn't do that sort of thing much. The song's guitar part clearly borrows from the style of Luther Perkins, so it's not a big surprise that Johnny Cash returned the favor by covering the song a couple years later (the most famous rendition being the San Quintin performance). The lyric is cute, although I can't decide whether the line, "A flossy mare like you should have a steed," is clever or terrible. Most of the online lyric repositories say the line begins with "a saucy mare" but there's no way he's saying "saucy".
"Darlin' Companion" by the Lovin' Spoonful
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