Jimmy Webb is among the greatest American songwriters. Just about the first thing many people knew about Jimmy was when Richard Harris delivered the opus “MacArthur Park” off A Tramp Shining. It made No.4 in the UK on June 29, 1968, and No.2 in the US. It wasn’t just the fact that it was seven and a half minutes long that got everybody talking. Richard Harris was far from most people’s idea of a singer and a single that long was in most people’s minds far too long for a pop single.
Listen to A Tramp Shining right now.
The breakout with MacArthur Park
It is an amazing record. The melody, the lyrics, the orchestration, and the arrangement are all perfect. While some people thought Harris couldn’t sing others thought his delivery made the record what it was. A song is as much about the words as it’s about the music and Richard Harris being an actor makes the words mean so much more. Of course “MacArthur Park” baffled everyone with its line about the cakes left out in the rain.
“MacArthur Park” was also the focal point, if not the high point, of the album that Harris made with Webb. What a brilliant title – A Tramp Shining. Harris who had met Jimmy in Los Angeles had returned to live in London in 1967 and one day he cabled Webb: “Come to London. Let’s make a record. Love Richard.”
The city’s finest musicians
When Jimmy arrived in London he sat at the piano and played Richard about 30 or 40 songs including “MacArthur Park”; Harris was certain when he heard it the first time that it was a hit. Webb went back to LA and set about recording the tacks with some of the city’s finest musicians, before heading back across the Atlantic to Ireland where Richard had decided he wanted to record the vocals at Dublin’s Lansdowne Road Studios.
“Didn’t We” which Richard related to instantly because of the break up of his marriage is beautiful and though it’s been covered many times (including Sinatra) it never sounds better than the opening track on “A Tramp Shining.” “If You Must Leave My Life” is another stand-out, so is “In the Final Hours.”
The brilliance of Jimmy Webb
Over the years, Jimmy Webb has had more than his fair share of digs with people suggesting the lyrics of the song are a little daft, particularly the lines, “MacArthur’s Park is melting in the dark. All the sweet, green icing flowing down/Someone left the cake out in the rain.” Well, uDiscover can now exclusively reveal the probable source for the line, “Someone left the cake out in the rain.” British-born poet WH Auden, who later became an American citizen after moving to the USA in 1939, was painted and sketched by René Bouché in 1963 and the poet said of his portrait, “My face looks like a wedding-cake left out in the rain.”
There’s not a weak moment on the album. If you like over-the-top romantic music (classical or pop), then this is an album for you. If you don’t, avoid it like the plague.
