Steve Russell
2 min readMay 6, 2021

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I just discovered this series and I believe I'll chase down the rest--but only after the earworm goes away from this one. The Everlys make a pleasant one, as earworms go. Carole King is one helluva songwriter and they did this one up right.

I feel the same way about music. I don't know if you've read my memoir, Lighting the Fire, but whether or not you have, I want to list off the tunes that I put in the credits. Paying back the musicians a tiny bit.

"Never Been to Spain" Hoyt Axton

"Little Egypt" Leiber and Stoller wrote it. I like the recording by Elvis.

"I Guess I Owe it All to Pamela Brown" Tom T. Hall's song might be a condensed version of my life.

"I Can't Stop Loving You" Don Gibson wrote it but Ray Charles came to own it.

"This land is Your Land" Woody Guthrie's song should be the national anthem because an amateur can sing it. If it has a "lost verse" some people claim is about socialism, that's better than the German drinking tune that we can't sing, which has a lost verse that stands for racism.

"Hey, That's No Way to Say Goodbye" Not Leonard Cohen's best tune, but it was in the narrative and a dozen better Cohen tunes were not.

"You Only Live Twice" Written by Leslie Bricusse and John Barry for a James Bond movie.

I admit that's an odd collection, but those were the tunes that got in my way as I wrote my memoir. Thanks for giving me a chance to thank the musicians publicly again.

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Steve Russell

Enrolled Cherokee, 9th grade dropout, retired judge, associate professor emeritus, and (so far) cancer survivor. Memoir: Lighting the Fire (Miniver Press 2020)