My Top 1000 Songs #801: Romeo's Tune

[I've been writing up my Top 1000 songs on a daily basis--you can see them all in descending order by hitting the All My Favorite Songs tag.]

Mississippi-born Steve Forbert is one of those Great American Singer-Songwriters you (ok, I) kinda take for granted. I can place him alongside Warren Zevon or Jackson Browne (or, yeah, Dylan and Springsteen and Carole King), right up through Freedy Johnston and Amy Rigby and Josh Ritter (the last of whom probably bears the most direct imprint of Forbert's style)--consummate storytellers and lovers of American characters. Too much great music, too little time. 

I'm a big fan of Forbert's 70s and 80s LPs--I'll concede I lost track of him after that, though he's been reliably releasing music ever since--although a lot of that connection comes from my wide-eyed admiration of "Romeo's Tune," off 1979's sophomore record Jackrabbit Slim. It's the perfect radio (or, even better, smoky bar) song, one of those wondrous tunes that sounds uncannily familiar even when you're hearing it for the first time. Forbert's gravelly twang set off against that lovely, rollicking piano is just pure magic, a song I can play endlessly on repeat and still want to spin just one more time.

Live on Friday's (god, I discovered a lot of great music on that show!):

Keith Urban cover:

Nice little acoustic YouTube cover: