Richard Pryor Addresses a Tearful Nation

The second best songwriter in the world, right behind an old curmudgeon from Hibbing, Minnesota, is a guy named Joe Henry. He's married to Madonna's sister, but I won't hold that against him. He needs a less nondescript name, because his songs are anything but nondescript. He's been making albums for twenty years now, and almost nobody buys them. If you like Tom Waits, you might like him. His songs are jazz and folk and blues, all rolled into one, and given an off-kilter spin to make you think that maybe he's the piano player for the house band at some roadside dive on Pluto. Jazzbos like Ornette Coleman and Brad Mehldau and Don Byron like to record with him. So do alt-country bands like The Jayhawks. So does guitarist Marc Ribot, but he plays with everybody. So does Victoria Williams, whose vocals are even stranger than Joe's. He has an opera singer on his song "Flower Girl." Good luck trying to find a label for that kind of music. I'm content to just call it great. His lyrics are also jaw-droppingly wonderful, and work more often as standalone poetry than The Poet of a Generation's do.

At any rate, I'm writing an article about him for Paste Magazine, and I'm marveling at his music all over again.

Here is his song about Richard Pryor, which manages in four short verses to perfectly encapsulate the man, and make me really, really sad, and still marvel at the beauty of the language. Ornette Coleman plays some wild blues on his saxophone on this song, and it's one of the strangest, most harrowing things you'll ever hear:

Sometimes I think I've almost fooled myself
Sometimes I think I've almost fooled myself
Spreading out my wings
Above us like a tree,
Laughing now, out loud
Almost like I was free

I look at you as the thing I wanted most
You look at me and it's like you've seen a ghost
I wear the face
Of all this has cost:
Everything you tried to keep away from me,
Everything I took from you and lost

Lights shine above me, they're like your eyes above the street
Lights shine below me, they're like stars beneath my feet
I stood on your shoulders
And I walked on my hands,
You watched me while I tried to fall
You can't bear to watch me land

Take me away, carry me like a dove
Take me away, carry me like a dove
Love me like you're lying
Let me feel you near,
Remember me for trying
And excuse me while I disappear
-- Joe Henry, "Richard Pryor Address a Tearful Nation" (from Scar, 2000)