SPILL ALBUM REVIEW: MELANIE – THERE SHOULD HAVE BEEN A RAINBOW: THE NY FOLK SESSIONS 1963-1965

MELANIE
THERE SHOULD HAVE BEEN A RAINBOW: THE NY FOLK SESSIONS 1963-1965
CLEOPATRA RECORDS

Melanie Safka, who spent most of her professional life performing as simply Melanie, got her start in New York City around the time that Bob Dylan’s career was skyrocketing around the world. It wasn’t until the 1970s that she started having hits and carving out a name for herself. Songs like “Lay Down (Candles In The Rain),” “Bitter Bad,” “Nickel Song,” and her only number one hit “Brand New Key.” Although these songs are much loved and remembered to this day, it is her music from the 1960s that is not so widely known or even heard. There Should Have Been A Rainbow: The NY Folk Sessions 1963 -1965 is going to rectify that situation.

Melanie’s debut album was released in 1968, it seems that attempts were made much before that to get her recorded. Actually, these songs were recorded in an apartment, making them more demos than studio recordings, still it gives the listener a good idea of how she would have sounded in the coffee houses in Greenwich Village. It is also a chance to hear a 16- to 18-year-old develop her own style and sound.

This is Melanie and her guitar interpreting classic folk songs. Songs that had been around for generations. Some of the songs were fairly current at the time. There is a great deal of charm to these songs. “Gypsy Rover”, for example, which was written in Dublin in the late 1950s by Leo Maguire. But elsewhere there are classics like “Barbara Allen,” which is achingly beautiful. She does a great job with “I Never Will Marry (Version 1)” and the traditional “All My Trials”. She even covers a new song at the time, “Puff, The Magic Dragon”, which is more melancholy with her delivery.

The sound of the album is not perfect. It was recorded on a reel to reel in an apartment between 1963 and 1965, but that adds to the ambience of the music. Before Melanie became more of a hippie (she was loved at Woodstock) she was a folk singer. There Should Have Been A Rainbow: The NY Folk Sessions 1963 -1965 gives a glimpse into her youth and her seriousness about the music.

Melanie passed away last year, and I am not sure she ever received the credit and respect she deserved. Much like Donovan, she moved away from folk to produce more hippie/adult-oriented rock, but at the heart of her music was always what is heard on There Should Have Been A Rainbow: The NY Folk Sessions 1963 -1965. Melanie’s beautiful voice and emotion comes through with every song she sings. This is a very important historical document and a long overdue appreciation of a chapter of her career that was once thought lost.

Artist Links