No one does this song better than the writer:
Randy Newman’s ” I think it’s gonna rain today.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J4c54PAzXrM
October comes with dark chocolate nights and bitter sweets. Even south Florida feels the change in the season. My mulberry tree has dropped leaves and cowers nearly bare over the fence. The humidity that melts human flesh into pots of seething sweat has spilled away. Cooler breezes began. Nights come up fast and stay past morning rides to work. School children feel Halloween treats in their teeth of imagination.
October is my favorite month. It’s that branding big “O” that looks like every pumpkin ever born.
The rains are no longer predictable. Summer rains are clockwork afternoons. October clouds the sky grey. South Floridians come out to play. Even the skycasters on TV have no idea. Thunder placed me back inside the house from my garden weeding. But it didn’t rain. It’s tricking me.
This song is not reminiscent of the green, hot, american south; it is so very the agricultural or the natural american plains. It is the Native American pulling corn into dolls. It is the Wisconsin lazy cow fields. How did Randy Newman know this song would anthem Edward Hopper’s Gas Station of loneliness? Newman pulls the church bells of the mid-American Baptist faith. It’s the rocking chair on the Americana farm porch. “Interstellar”, the science fiction movie which heralds the last crop of Earth civilization, used that icon effectively. Randy Newman even looks like Matthew McConaughey in this video clip.
Later versions of his song in video clips linked here by Neil Diamond, Bette Midler, Dusty Springfield, Peter Gabriel were lovely and well sung but lacked scraped knees. Unlikely versions by UB40, Joe Cocker, and Barbra Streisand didn’t make my grade to video clip link. I was expecting better of Joe Cocker.
An unusual and deep Bobby Darin did a great rendition. Mr. Spock sung it…Leonard Nimoy didn’t grok it but what a memory to keep!
Judy Collins was the first to kick the can down the street. The always gorgeous Judy Collins, Norah Jones, equally sublime, and the maestro himself: this trinity captured the plains autumnal spirits. It is almost October.