Ain’t This a Top Ten: Say It Ain’t So, Joe (#7)

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No more strange things from Ian Dury. However, I am staying on “that side of the pond” for the artist singing today’s “ain’t” song. Here’s another person showing up that shouldn’t be any surprise to you at all. #7: Say It Ain’t So, Joe - Roger Daltrey So if you don’t like this song, at least the ladies have some eye candy to look at with 70s-era Roger Daltrey. Remember that song “One Night in Bangkok” back in the 80s? That was by an English singer named Murray Head. What I remember most about that is the jokes about some guy with his last name doing a song about Bangkok. Anyway, Head wrote this song. It’s pretty American to come from a Brit, if you think about it. The title, “Say It Ain’t So, Joe,” comes from the 1919 Chicago Black Sox World Series scandal, where it was (falsely) reported that a young boy saw Shoeless Joe Jackson and uttered those words. Of course, that phrase is part of the lexicon now. Beyond that, however, Head said one of his primary influences in writing this song about fallen idols with feet of clay was a documentary on Richard Nixon…from 1973. (For you kids, Nixon didn’t resign until 1974.) Of course, he generalized things (“the army and the empire may be falling apart”), but the knowledge that a Nixon documentary inspired this song makes it very obvious that our problems here in America were obvious to the rest of the world. So when Roger Daltrey made his great 1977 solo album, he included this tune, putting more rock into it than Head’s version. One of the things I love about music is how it captures history. This song really captures the feeling of the Nixon years. Say It Ain’t So, Joe Written by Murray Head Recorded by Roger Daltrey From One of the Boys, 1977 Don’t you think we’re gonna get burned: