Anyone else remember this non-hit by David McWilliams? It reached #2 in
Albany, NY - where the WPTR-AM production staff even concocted a parody
version, 'Days of Mark Allen', about one of their DJs - but it apparently
wasn't a hit anywhere else in the US, since the best it could do nationally
was to squeak onto the bottom rung of Billboard's _Bubbling Under_ chart
for a single week in June, 1968.
Notes: 1) the Grass Roots covered it on one of their albums; 2) according
to net.correspondent Maurizio Codogno, it was a hit in Italy (as _Il Volto
Della Vita_) for Caterina Caselli; 3) the filtered vocal on the chorus - not
to mention the subject matter - predated _Aqualung_ by about three years; 4)
Marc Almond's remake was a big hit in the UK in 1992; his version features
an extra verse:
A tenement, a dirty street
Remember worn and shoeless feet
Remember how you stood to beat
The way your life had gone
So Pearly don't you shed more tears
For those best forgotten years
Those tenements are memories
Of where you've risen from
"Days of Pearly Spencer"
(David McWilliams)
Intro:
Am (strings alone first two bars; w/arpeggiated guitar next two
bars; w/bass and drums next two bars and into verse)
Verse 1:
Am
A tenement, a dirty street
Em
Walked and worn by shoeless feet
Am
In silence long and so complete
C G
Watched by a shivering sun
Old eyes in a small child's face
Watching as the shadows race
Through walls and cracks that leave no trace
And daylight's brightness shun
Chorus (w/filtered vocal):
Dm Em Am
The days of Pearly Spencer
Dm Em Am
Ahh..ahh the race is almost run
Verse 2:
Nose pressed hard on frosted glass
Gazing as the swollen mass
On concrete fields where grows no grass
Stumbles blindly on
Iron trees smother the air
But, withering, they stand and stare
Through eyes that neither know nor care
Where the grass has gone
[repeat chorus]
Verse 3:
Pearly, where's your milk-white skin
What's that stubble on your chin
It's buried in the rotgut gin
You've played and lost, not won
You played a house that can't be beat
Now look, your head's bowed in defeat
You walked too far along the street
Where only rats can run
[repeat chorus; fade 2nd time]
-- another ace 60's tab from Andrew Rogers
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