The first day of Christmas: Say it ain't so, Joe

I thought I'd use this Christmas period to introduce you to a few songs that you might not know. Not classical - I doubt there are any classical songs that I know that are unfamiliar to all of you - but my first love, which is pop!

Murray Head - Say it ain't so, Joe

Some of the songs I plan to write about are songs that did well in the charts but are never heard these days. This one, though, was never in the charts - which amazes me, because I remember it getting lots of radio play at one point. This is the original version, sung by the guy who actually wrote it, Murray Head (best known for One Night in Bangkok). It came out in 1975, but a few years later there were a couple of cover versions - from Roger Daltrey in 1977 and Gary Brooker in 1979. I think it was the Gary Brooker one that I heard first, but I must have heard all three on the radio, because it was many years later that I acquired CDs of them (there were no CDs in 1979!)

The title of the song is a well-known quotation (although, as with so many well-known quotations, there is some doubt over whether or not its origin is an urban legend). It's from the Black Sox Scandal of 1919 - a dark time in the history of baseball - and the Joe in question is Shoeless Joe Jackson. The story was told by the film Eight Men Out, and is also a big part of Field of Dreams. Short version of the story: in 1919, most of the players of the Chicago White Sox baseball team (one of the most successful teams at the time, and still a major team now) accepted bribes to intentionally lose several games, including that year's World Series. They were found out, and all banned from professional baseball for life. Shoeless Joe Jackson was the fans' favourite, and it was never proved conclusively that he was involved in throwing games, but he was banned with the rest anyway. He was the David Beckham of his day, so this was a big deal... and as he emerged from the trial in which he was found guilty and banned, allegedly a little boy said to him "Say it ain't so, Joe!" (In Field of Dreams, the reason Kevin Costner built a baseball field in the middle of his cornfield was because he believed the voice in his head was Shoeless Joe asking him to do this, and as a result the ghosts of Shoeless Joe and the other players did turn up to play there...)

The song itself is very simple, starting in D major with fairly straightforward chord progressions. The thing I love most about it, though, is the section starting at about 1:45. It starts in B minor and goes through a series of fairly obvious chords, but none so obvious that you're ever sure exactly which of them is going to appear next. The progression ends with A minor, and with this we realise that the progression has been leading us through a really long modulation from D major to E major. The song from here to the end remains in E major, but the moment when the first E major chord of the whole song appears - at 2:44 - is one of the most joyous moments in any song. It never fails to cause my face to break into a huge grin. Magical.