"Scorpio Love Song"
© 1970 Lee Ruth
MP3
Sample of Lee's Original
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"Scorpio Love Song" © 1970 Lee Ruth |
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Jerome Wheeler - Vocal & Banjo |
| MP3
Sample of Lee's Original |
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| Song Lyrics: |
Lee's Lyrics:
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| Nobody ever wanted your body The way that I want your body. Nobody ever longed to reach to touch you The way I want to touch you. All my senses are in flight Moving to you in the night. Nobody ever wanted your body the way that I do. Nobody else has ever seen you In the light that I have seen you. No one has seen the contrast and the brightness The shadow and the sunlight playing And the clouds that bring the rain As they come and go again. No one else has ever seen you the way that I do. Nobody ever wanted your body The way that I want your body. Nobody ever longed to reach to touch you The way I want to touch you. All my senses take delight As they find you in the night. Nobody ever wanted your body the way that I do. |
Nobody ever wanted your body The way that I want your body Nobody ever longed to reach, to touch you The way that I want to touch you All my senses are in flight And the clouds that bring the rain All my senses take delight |
| Artist on the Song: |
Lee on the Song:
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One of the things that we all had in common besides
Jamming and |
When this project got underway and I was gathering my songs together to offer them up for grabs to prospective participants, I decided not to include a few songs, including this one, so I left it off the list. Soon thereafter, I suggested "Sometimes I Miss My Home" as a good fit for The Celebrated Renaissance Band and I was surprised when Jerome Wheeler said that he'd sorta hoped to take a crack at "Scorpio Love Song." I remembered then that back in 1970-71, when the song was new, Jerome frequently requested that I sing it. The CRB's arrangement of SIMMH featured Dan Peek on the lead vocal with Jerome singing a harmony line. It took a suggestion from Jerry Foster to remind me how much the album would be enhanced if Jerome's voice was clearly to be heard somewhere on it, so I offered him an exclusive shot at "Scorpio Love Song." Glad he took me up on it, and his solo banjo accompaniment underscores starkly his recognition that, contrary to some people's notions about the song back during the brief period of time when I was singing it in public, it really was and is a love song. I suspect that most everybody, in his or her "deep heart's core" (to borrow a phrase from William Butler Yeats), feels this way or has felt this way about somebody they love. |
| Artist on Lee Ruth: |
Lee on the Artist:
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| I first met Lee at the Chez back in 1963, I think
it was. Dan Peek and I were playing Old Timey music on banjo and guitar.
We got along right from the start. Went outside after our set and started
jamming. We must have jammed all night. For the next 7 years we jammed in McAlester Park, in the Ivanhoe Parking Lot, onstage at Max's Campus Snacks, the Chez, Corn's Lake, the Ivanhoe back room, the Archway beneath the entrance to the quadrangle. And kept jamming whenever we ran into each other over the years. He was the beard in Heavens Bright Babies, a play Bummer and I did at Gladstones. It's true that MU moved the lions underneath the arches by the Jschool because of Lee. We all used to alter our consciousness (cough, cough) and jam all night there. The ROTC guys would be mustering for their morning marches on the Columns Yard at an ungodly hour to get up and we would break into "Feel Like I'm Fixing to Die Rag" or "ROTC Rag" by Tom McCarg, a great songwriter from that time. The Arches had Great Acoustics. Anyplace where people were jamming Lee was sure to be there. The guy could play anything, any song. He knew who played what on what record and who wrote what on what song. I went over to his house once and he lived in a basement and the basement was full of nothing but records--45's, 78's, piano rolls, reel-to-reel tapes. I said "No wonder you never sleep, it must hurt getting your beard caught in these 45 hole spacers!" |
In the almost 40 years I've known him, there is probably no one I've had more occasions to play music with than Jerome,, though off and on he lived away from Columbia for a considerable number of years, and until this year (2003) we had never played in a group together. He always had some big musical adventure going for him--a band, a play, another band, another play, on the road--yet somehow there were those many late nights on the streets of Columbia, in the J-school arch, in the studio, occasional onstage gigs together, living rooms, front porches, back stages, back porches, playing all night on "Radio Omega" on KOPN radio--where didn't we play? No matter how divergent our lives have been, we always seem to find common musical ground when our musical paths intersect. My pleasure, Jerome! |
| Producer's Notes: |
Recording Credits:
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| I first met Jerome in the early 1980s, when I had just moved back to Missouri from Oregon. Jerome was producing one of his Rock operas "B-Movies from Outer Space," and I had numerous friends involved in that production. I also met Pete Skolka at the same time--he was the musical arranger for the production. Since then our musical pathways have crossed many many times--live at KOPN's studios or on various projects that Jerome and Pete have worked on in the various configurations of Pete's studio. Over the years we have used each other as extra sets of ears on our projects. Jerome and Pete have a CD that they have worked on for over ten years--the "Dot Commies." I was honored to hear parts of its production, there are some great songs on on it! Jerome has been and continues to be an incredible songwriter--he too deserves a tribute anthology. For this project, Jerome originally chose "Oh Be Joyful," a mandolin instrumental of Lee's, but after some changes decided on a song I never heard called "Scorpio Love Song." The session took place on my birthday. Jerome was not in the best of health that day and in pain laid down a stigmatic marked stellar version of the song. If you listen close you can hear the blood and passion on the tracks. What a gift to this project! Thanks Jerome. |
Recorded at Pete Szkolka's Studio Record Date: 7/22/03 Recorded live to two-track |
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