When I was just beginning to learn about rock, pop, and R&B and all the stuff I was hearing on the radio back in the early 1970s, I made a few specific stops every time I went to Crossroads, the big mall (big for its time, anyway) on the west end of St. Cloud. I’d head to Woolworth’s and Musicland, check out the specials, look at Musicland’s new sheet music books, and then head to what I now know were called the remainders bins.
I was looking, I guess, for something somewhat familiar that I could learn more about, but I rarely found anything I recognized. Oh, after a while, there were albums that I saw frequently, but they were by folks I knew nothing about. So, I have some regrets about those shuffles through the bins. First of all, I wish I’d picked up the frequently encountered McLemore Avenue, a collection of instrumental covers of tunes from the Beatles’ Abbey Road by Booker T & The MG’s. (I finally found a CD of the album in Madison, Wisconsin, sometime around 2010.)
And then there was Jake Holmes.
I don’t know how many times I flipped past his album So Close So Very Far To
Go, the one showing him protectively embracing a lovely young lady:
I wish I had.
When I tumbled into the world of music blogs in 2006 – it was the week Billy Preston died, I recall – I started to learn about many folks that I knew little about or had never even heard about, even in my extensive explorations of popular music since the early Seventies. One of them was Jake Holmes. On some blog somewhere – I have no idea which one it was – I found mp3 rips of Holmes’ So Close So Very Far To Go from 1970 and three of his other six albums: The Above Ground Sound of Jake Holmes from 1967, A Letter to Katherine December from 1968, and Jake Holmes from 1969.*
And I found the tune “So Close” from So Close So Very Far To Go:
Where's
that smile?
I hope you didn't lose it.
Put it on again,
And wear it once for me.
Sure, I know,
It's been some time between us,
But I had to stand back some,
To get the room to see.
But it's all right now,
Hold on tight now.
I'll be stayin', I won't go.
Don't you cry now,
We can try now.
Just takes some distance to know . . .
So close,
We almost couldn't make it.
So close,
But it looks like we're alright.
So close,
I almost couldn't see you.
So close,
But it looks like we're alright.
What a day,
Remember, it was even rainin',
And as soon as I'd say goodbye,
I didn't want to leave.
One last look,
You could see my eyes were askin',
I could feel yours
Pullin' at my sleeve.
But it's alright now!
Hold on tight now!
I'll be stayin', I won't go!
Don't you cry now.
We can try now!
Just takes some distance to know . . .
So close,
We almost couldn't make it.
So close,
But it looks like we're alright.
So close,
I almost couldn't see you.
So close,
But it looks like we're alright. Alright!
Alright!
I’d certainly never been in that emotional place when I was sixteen, but by the time I heard “So Close” I’d been there more than a few times. And the record spoke to me in 2006 in ways I know it couldn’t have in 1970. So maybe it was waiting for me, waiting for the time to be right. That sound a bit New Age-y, I know, but I do believe that things come to us when they’re supposed to, whether it be love or a pop song.
I like the other three Holmes album I’ve heard, and I like the rest of So Close So Very Far To Go. And I imagine that I’d like the three albums I’ve never heard. (Two of those three are available as playlists at YouTube, so we’ll find out about those very soon.) But I don’t think that anything I could hear from the man can touch me the way “So Close” can:
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