The something borrowed music that I listened to yesterday came from Jennifer Warnes and her classic 1987 album of Leonard Cohen songs Famous Blue Raincoat. This was a favorite album of my wife’s and in particular Warnes version of the title track. Warnes toured as a backup singer with Cohen in the 1970s. (maybe she was there when we saw Leonard at the Irvine Auditorium at the University of Pennsylvania in the early 1970’s) The album includes many of my favorite Cohen tracks like “First We Take Manhatten” from I’m Your Man which had not even been released when Warnes’ album was released. While many of the songs were favorites like “Bird on a Wire” “Ain’t No Cure for Love”, “Song of Bernadette” others like “Night Comes On”, “If It Be Your Will” and “Coming Back to You” were less familiar having coming from the album Various Positions which is not in my collection. Both “Night Comes On” and “If It Be Your Will” were added to the 20th Anniversary Edition of the album along with “Ballad of the Runaway Horse” and a live version of “Joan of Arc” recorded in Belgium, 1992.
What I didn’t know was that guest contributors to the album included guitarists Stevie Ray Vaughan, David Lindley and Robben Ford, keyboardist Russell Ferrante, arranger Van Dyke Parks.
In the liner notes of the album Cohen wrote “Jenny sings Lenny” and I for one think she did a great job! So if you’ve never heard the album check it out, if only for her great cover of the title track!
Here’s “First We Take Manhatten” with Stevie Ray on guitar!