Music: Lady Day and John Coltrane
by Bob Schwartz
They’ll wash your troubles,
Your troubles, your troubles
Your troubles away!
Musician and poet Gil Scott-Heron was unlike any artist of the modern era. He is a jazz artist identified as a “godfather of rap” (he rejected that), his song The Revolution Will Not Be Televised is quoted somewhere every day, and his vision of the black experience is as current and insightful as any.
But this isn’t about him. It’s about one of his songs, Lady Day and John Coltrane, that celebrates the power of music to heal and change our lives, especially when we are giving up. If you don’t regularly take that prescription, please consider it.
Lady Day and John Coltrane
Ever feel kinda down and out, you don’t know just what to do
Livin’ all of your days in darkness let the sun shine through
Ever feel that somehow, somewhere, you’ve lost your way
And if you don’t get help quick you won’t make it through the day
Could you call on Lady Day,
Could you call on John Coltrane
Now ‘cause they’ll
They’ll wash your troubles
Your troubles your troubles
Your troubles away!
Plastic people with plastic minds are on their way to plastic homes
No beginning there ain’t no ending just on and on and on and on and on, it’s
All because they’re so afraid to say that they’re alone
Until our hero rides in, rides in on his saxophone.
Could you call on Lady Day,
Could you call on John Coltrane
Now ‘cause they’ll,
They’ll wash your troubles,
Your troubles, your troubles
Your troubles away!
Bob Schwartz 
Love music, and Coltrane, and Lady Day. Yes, one’s soul could be greatly revived through that magic potion, but unless it inspires one to ACT, music is “merely” another opioid. For without action, one’s faith, the most lofty idealogies, “core values”, “driving principles”… they’re just dust in the wind. Without action, there’s no change, and MAN, does the world need change.
Thanks for the comment. As I said, the post wasn’t about Gil Scott-Heron. For those who do investigate him further, they’ll discover that he embodied exactly this great point about the necessary pairing of art/faith/principles with action. Thanks again.