Dueling Hits - Peter Paul & Mary - 1963-1969 | Eastern NC Now

    Publisher's note: I have initiated this new segment on BCN, where I determine the Best Music Ever ... and, 'with a little help from my friends'. I do this from my opinion, for what that is worth, where I will measure the best music that I am familiar with.

    I do this for two reasons: 1) I want to expose the best music that I know to the rest of us. 2) Popular Music today may be the very worst it has ever been, and that is saying much, since I lived through Disco.

    For a list of all of the contributions to this series, please click here.

    As previously mentioned, there will be others who share their favorites with our BCN readers, in particular here, Bobby Tony.

    After The Kingston Trio prepared the world for the folk era a group from New York extended the folk craze with their incredibly good instrumentation and harmony. They were highly produced and more accomplished as musicians than the Trio.

    Naturally, I learned all their songs and our small folk group included them in our jam sessions. Then things started getting heated up overseas. PP&M sang two songs that held a particular interest for me. John Denver wrote one and I could have sworn he was reading my mind. It was word for word the story of my life at that time. I still have a problem listening to this song as it brings back so many memories both good and bad. I married my Girlfriend just days before my departure for Vietnam and we went to a PP&M concert in Atlanta just a week before I boarded that 707 for "who knows what"?

Here it is "Leaving on a Jet Plane": Below.    

    Once I got to the Nam, things got fairly hectic my first few months there. Shortly after the TET Offensive we were mopping up the area around Saigon. Then the monsoon hit. You ain't never seen the rain until you are humping the bonnies or a rice paddy just outside of Tan Son Nhut Air Base with 9 months to go on your tour and you see those big 707 Jets take off and fly right over you and your buddies on the way back to freedom and the world.

    Every word in this song brings back a gusher of memories. Especially the "you can't jump a jet plane like you can a freight train, so I best be on my way, in the early morning rain". You just turn to your buddies and utter the famous Vietnam denial. "It don't mean nothin".

The Early Morning Rain written by Gordon Lightfoot: Below.