Blues: Shel Silverstein's The Best of Shel Silverstein

The Best of Shel Silverstein: His Word, His Songs, His Friends is an education for a boy like me who grew up simply knowing that my adventurous elementary school teachers brought out this funny book of poetry called A Light in the Attic. Silverstein’s poems captured my imagination, and that of many in my generation, because it was like he was inside my imagination. In fact, Silvestein could outdo the outrageous things that children dream.

This new collection of his poems and songs is an education, not because I didn’t know the strange visions Silverstein was capable of dreaming, and not because I didn’t know Silverstein had a voice like the Winnie the Pooh voice guy except he’s more like a crazy uncle. I had heard Silverstein’s recorded A Light in the Attic. His visions and his voice, that’s not why The Best of Shel Silverstein is an education.

Legacy’s release is an education, because as that young boy with a beloved copy of the Silverstein’s children’s poetry on my shelf, I never knew. . .he was also an adult. Very much an adult. Hanging around Hugh Heffner, writing songs with mature themes, as they’d say now. It turns out that Silverstein had these different avenues for his creativity, but did my generations’ parents realize that they were sending us to hear poetry from a man who could write a song like “I Got Stone and I Missed It.”

There’s also an education here in how Silverstein is behind some quite famous songs—although it’s not as well known that he was the one who penned the tunes. Dr. Hook & the Medicine Show play “Cover of the Rolling Stone,” but Silverstein never made it to the cover himself. Silverstein also wrote Johnny Cash’s hit, “A Boy Named Sue.” Knowing that Silverstein wrote it is like a great revelation, since it makes sense that the odd-rocking, novelty, country tune could only come from such a mind. This collection includes Cash’s live version from At San Quentin.

While it’s a treat to hear Silverstein’s tunes in the hands of Dr. Hook, Cash, the Irish Rovers, and Bobby Bare, it’s Silverstein’s own singing that steals the show. Going back to Johnny Cash, Silverstein sings “A Front Row to Hear Ole Johnny Sing.” A country plunker rocker with Silverstein’s twanging speak-singing that tells the story of just how far someone would go to see Johnny Cash in concert. It’s a humorous tribute to the Man in Black, appropriate to mention as the Cash biopic hits the silverscreen.

“Freakin’ at the Freakers’ Ball” invites quite a collection of different kinds of outcasts and oddballs to the party, but as Dr. Hook & the Medicine Show perform Silverstein’s song, with Hook’s Wolfman Jack blues voice, I wonder if this isn’t an incredibly blunt explanation for what it means that Jesus invites everyone to have eternal life.

Thanks to Legacy Recordings for the review copy.