Bill Knight | A lesson from Carole King

BILL KNIGHT

Around the holiday season of hope, the touring show “Beautiful: The Carole King Musical” sparked warm thoughts of the award-winning singer/songwriter’s singular knack for finding hope amid loss, faith in the face of despair, and fine music and lyrics – whether created from inspiration or commercial need.

Last month, the Tony and Grammy Award-winning production was in Chicago and Peoria, and this month stops in Mason City and Cedar Falls, Iowa, and Bloomington, Ind. (returning to the Midwest for March performances in Davenport before winding down in June).

Carole King, one of her tunes, and an anthology featuring her were recommended to me by a reader not long ago. He wrote to praise a relatively obscure record from decades ago, “Largo,” for the Americana music gem’s overlooked wonder, and also its renewed relevance at a time of division and discord –– relevance furnished by a particular track by Carole King.

Loosely inspired by Antonín Dvořák’s “New World Symphony,” the “Largo” project brought together an enormously talented group of musicians for the 1998 album, released by Polygram. Its blend of work songs, Appalachian reels and ballads that somehow echo the wild frontier and also contemporary society, ‘Largo” conjures work by The Band’s first few records, and the timeless, imaginative magic of music and U.S. history’s fine or cruel moments.

Its musicians include The Chieftains, Cyndi Lauper and Taj Mahal, members of the rock groups The Band (Levon Helm and Garth Hudson) and The Hooters (Eric Bazilian and Rob Hyman), and King, who duets with Joan Osbourne on “An Uncommon Love,” which King co-authored with k.d. lang.

Like “Beautiful: The Carole King Musical,” a stage version of “Largo” was once discussed. Elsewhere, Little Feat, with Bela Fleck on an album in 2000, covered “Largo’s” “Gimme A Stone,” by Levon Helm and David Forman, and Roger Daltrey of The Who not only performed live versions of “Gimme A Stone” and Taj Ma-hal’s “Freedom Ride,” but publicly praised “Largo” and urged people to listen to it.

Apart from its enjoyable importance, its inclusion of King’s “An Uncommon Love” (which later appeared on her 2001 album “Love Makes the World”) resonates today, whether received as a nod to romance between individuals or reconciliation within our nation.

The reader and fan of that tune laments, “The United States of America is an uncommon country, having been founded upon the inalienable rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. According to the Declaration of Independence, a government was to be established that would make ‘its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to … seem most likely to affect their Safety and Happiness.’ The signers of the Declaration agreed that, ‘We mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.’”

Indeed, when too much of the country can’t agree on election outcomes, public-health procedures, or basic facts, it’s reassuring to remember that the nation was once better, and it could be again.