Wondering If I Have Any Sense
Billy Stewart — "Sitting in the Park" (1965)
In dark times such as these, I take special delight in savoring any and all small glimpses of magic that flicker in my direction. Moments like my formerly scared and angry cat Hugo waking me up at sunrise by sweetly licking and head-butting my hand; moments like me getting carded this week while buying beer, even though I just turned 59. Most magical of all, at least as far as this past week or two have been concerned, was unexpectedly hearing my all-time favorite soul song emanate from the lips of my lovely girlfriend.
Not that Billy Stewart’s 1965 hit “Sitting in the Park” is particularly obscure — it was one of the late, great soul singer’s biggest hits — or that Shannon doesn’t have great taste in music. But hearing her croon the song’s chorus out of the blue was one of those things that, if only for a couple of seconds, made it feel like everything was all right with the world even as so much of it is going terribly wrong.
I can’t remember the first time I heard “Sitting in the Park” — it just feels like one of those songs that has somehow always been part of my life. I can, however, vividly remember it going through my head while I sat on a bench in Chicago’s Grant Park in June 1987, waiting for a friend to meet me for lunch during a break from my summer job at the Art Institute of Chicago, all while being completely unaware that the song had been cut just a couple of miles down Michigan Avenue.
“Sitting in the Park” is, for me, the quintessential summer soul song. As it unhurriedly unfolds, you can practically smell the freshly-cut park grass, feel the sticky embrace of the heat and humidity, see the water bubbling in the park’s fountain, and hear the birds singing in the park’s trees while the ice cream truck slowly makes its way down the street. And it’s such a beautiful testimonial to the transportive magic of music that this blissfully summery track was actually recorded in mid-December…
Stewart’s almost-equally summery hit “I Do Love You” and its peppy B-side “Keep Lovin’” were recorded at the same Chess Studios session on December 14, 1964, with Chess/Checker studio stalwarts Louis Satterfield on electric bass, Gerald Sims on guitar, Leonard Caston Jr. of The Radiants on piano (and possibly also organ, though the credits don’t say who played it), and future Earth, Wind & Fire founder Maurice White on drums.
After learning that “Sitting in the Park” and “I Do Love You” were cut on the same day, I figured that December 14 must have been one of those late-autumn Chicago anomalies where the warm winds roll in one more time before the hammer of winter slams down. But nope — a recent check of the Chicago Tribune archives indicates snow flurries and temps in the low thirties. The intrinsic warmth of these recordings came entirely from Stewart’s voice, and from the musicians’ fingers.
It’s easy to get so caught up in the laid-back vibe of “Sitting in the Park” and its gorgeous chorus refrain that you wind up missing the song’s melancholy and uncertainty. As early as the third line of the first verse, Billy is already expressing doubts that the girl who said she’d meet him there will actually follow through; and by the second verse, he’s already beating himself up for taking her at her word.
Sitting here on the bench
With my back against the fence
Wondering if I have any sense, girl
Something tells me I'm a fool
To let you treat me so cruel
But nevertheless, I say again
You got me waiting
As with the word’s use in Sly, Slick & Wicked’s “Sho’ Nuff” a few years later, that impeccably enunciated “nevertheless” does some heavy lifting here; on the verge of completely wigging out about the situation, Billy reels himself in and tries to be patient, even as the doubt builds with each agonizing minute of lateness…
“She never shows up, huh?” Shannon sadly asked me last night as we listened to Billy protesting “Even though I love you so/I’m not gonna wait, no, any longer” on the song’s fadeout. Well, maybe… but I like to think that Billy’s lovergirl finally did arrive; maybe her bus was late, or maybe she got caught up in conversation with a girlfriend she’d run into on her way to the agreed-upon bench. And that, despite his prior protestations, he was still there waiting for her, all 300 pounds of him beaming with joy and relief as she finally came into view. But then again, I’ve always been a romantic…
By the way, if you’re unfamiliar with Billy Stewart — or just know him for this song and his “buck-buck-chuck” delivery of George Gershwin’s “Summertime” (which was recently included on the soundtrack of Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time in Hollywood), I highly recommend checking out any one of the many great Stewart compilations out there, including 1970’s Remembered (which was released right after his tragic and premature death in an auto accident), 1982’s The Greatest Sides or 1988’s One More Time. The cat could have seriously sung a home appliance repair manual and made it sound fantastic. Also, there’s a good PBS documentary out there called Fat Boy: The Billy Stewart Story, which intelligently (if kinda stiffly) discusses his life and career with input from a number of great soul and R&B personages from the fifties and sixties.
And speaking of “Sitting in the Park”… right as I was in the middle of writing this newsletter, my old music biz pal Brian O’Neal hipped me to the fact that The Stax Museum of American Soul Music is launching a new website that pays tribute to the work of the late Chicago DJ and soul historian Bob Abrahamian, whose radio show “Sitting in the Park” originally aired on Chicago’s WHPK-FM. The website includes several installments of his show, as well audio interviews that Abrahamian conducted with undersung Chicago soul contributors like Jan Bradley, Lee Holloway and Randolph Murph.
Despite my extensive Chicago roots and my deep love of the city’s soul music, I confess that I wasn’t previously aware of Abrahamian or his work. But the man clearly loved the music, and put a lot of time and effort into shining a light on both the records and the people who made them before he left this earthly groove in 2014. I’m really looking forward to digging into this site — thanks for the hot tip, Brian!
Hope y’all have a wonderful weekend, and maybe even get to spend a little time on a park bench this Saturday and Sunday. And if you do, I hope whomever you’re waiting for actually shows up like they said they would. Keep the faith, baby — in this and all things…
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Introduced to “Sitting” by NRBQ and their gorgeous version on “Ludlow Garage 1970”. Flat Foot Doozy! Thanks always dear Dan.
Thank you for the BS inspiration! (no BS!) Thanks also for the Buckingham Fountain post card, ever since I learned of it, anytime I'm in or around Grant Park I'm compelled to point out to whomever that the Prudential building, now dwarfed by the glass & steel super-skyscrapers, was once the tallest skyscraper in town, nice to see her when she still was.