Salut! Live

We encountered the song on the B-side of her glorious cover of the Stones’ Ruby Tuesday.

My friend and frequent Salut! Live contributor Bill Taylor and I often bicker about music. But we agree that Melanie produced a version far superior to the original (good as that also was).

Far from being a throwaway filler, the B-side was a work of minor genius, cleverly mocking the money-grubbing suits of Tin Pan Alley, and would arguably come to be associated even more strongly with Melanie than Ruby Tuesday.

Salut! Live needs no excuse for occasionally straying from a folk straitjacket.

Like most people, its writers appreciate all kinds of good music, So dd Melanie, firmly resisting attempts to pigeonhole her as pop or country or folk even though, conveniently for us, she did start out singing in Greenwich Village folk haunts.

To read about Melanie's life and career is to find it impossible to dislike her. See https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melanie_(singer)

Born in New York to parents with Ukrainian and Italian roots, she enjoyed success in Europe and New Zealand before her breakthrough in the US.

Bobo's Party was a number one hit in France in 1968, the year before her first Stateside hit with the anthemic Woodstock song Lay Down (Candles in the Rain).

But it was 1971 before another piece of inspired whimsy, Brand New Key, would reach No 1 as her one and only American chart-topper.

She had a powerful, distinctive voice that mesmerised audiences the world over, from Woodstock and Ontario’s Strawberry Fields festival to the Isle of Wight and Glastonbury.

It was at Glastonbury - then an event quaintly known as Glastonbury Fayre - that her singing ushered in the 1971 summer solstice.

"Wise beyond her years ... a new talent to be reckoned with," wrote a Billbard critic of an early album.

Although she retreated to a large extent from the public eye as she brought up her three children, there were occasional welcome returns to public performance, including the 40th anniversary of Glastonbury in 2011 and was working on a new album prior to her desth

Her husband and producer, Peter Schekeryk, died in 2010.

The cause of Melanie's death has not been disclosed.

Billboard quoted this Facebook tribute to a "wife, mother, grandmother, great-grandmother and friend to so very many people" from the children — daughters Leilah and Jeordie and som Beau-Jarred:

'We are heartbroken, but want to thank each and every one of you for the affection you have for our Mother, and to tell you that she loved all of you so much! She was one of the most talented, strong and passionate women of the era and every word she wrote, every note she sang reflected that. Our world is much dimmer, the colors of a dreary, rainy Tennessee pale with her absence today, but we know that she is still here, smiling down on all of us, on all of you, from the stars.'

RIP Melanie Safka. I am indebted to a friend who posts at Faceook as "Tom Dooley", for digging out this gorgeous version of What Have They Done to My Song Ma? with the frequently excellent Miley Cyrus:

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