DBT #416 Monday Morning Song - A Satisfied Mind

 

Let's do a second installment of a four song study for our Monday Morning Song.

I randomly sorted the library by song title and this was right in my face, likely because I had just imported Bob Dylan's version of "A Satisfied Mind" from his 1980 "Saved" album; and boy did Bob have fun on the cover.

Many might have thought Ian & Sylvia might have written this song, but it was written by Jack Rhodes and Red Hayes a couple of Texans, and the first credited cover of the song (according to Discogs) was in 1956 by Martha Carson on a Gospel album called "Journey to the Sky" though Wikipedia detailing 47 of the covers would have Mahalia Jackson as the first in 1955.

Per Wikipedia, Jack said 

"The song came from my mother. Everything in the song are things I heard her say over the years. I put a lot of thought into the song before I came up with the title. One day my father-in-law asked me who I thought the richest man in the world was, and I mentioned some names. He said, 'You're wrong; it is the man with a satisfied mind.'"

I have eight versions in my library, so let's look at this four pack, two lead ladies, and three male voices.

Let's start off with Bob, and you got to love the Gospel choir in the background:

Let's go to Mary McCaslin's debut rookie album "Goodnight Everybody" in 1969 next lead with a gentle pedal steel guitar and soft brushes on the drums.

No let's slow it down and let David Huckfelt and Greg Brown pass you an intense acoustic hymn from David's 2021 "Room Enough, Time Enough" album. Yes since I hosted David when he toured as The Pines, I can kind of call him a friend. I love what he said about the recording:

"I’ve loved this song since I first heard the Porter Waggoner version in my uncle’s old collection of country music records. If it looks easy to write a song that deals with life & death and morality without being preachy, I’ll tell you it ain’t. This song speaks great truth in a straightforward tongue; it reports the true story of a live well lived. As such, it’s been covered by everyone from Jeff Buckley to Justin Vernon, but I wanted to do something even more wistful, mournful, and grounded with it. I played this song for the legendary Iowa folk singer Greg Brown at a little bar in Tucson a few years ago, and he told me a story about a neighbor of his in Iowa who would drive his ailing father over to Greg’s house in the weeks before his death and ask Greg to come out to the car with his guitar to sing him this song. So when it came time to record it, I asked Greg if he would sing a duet; he obliged. It’s biblical in the opposite way of every contemporary distortion of the Christian message - it links heaven and Earth, this life and the next. Gabe’s accordion, Jeremy Ylvisaker’s other-wordly guitar, and of course the horns I love… but it’s really Greg’s voice that shoots this recording to the moon for me."

Here's another folkie that I've met a couple times, once when she played the Great River Folk Fest, and another time at FARM.  Annie is a great spirit and this cover leaves you again with a tasteful pedal steel and a little more upbeat than the other three songs.  You can find it on Annie and Ron's 2015 album "Searching for Neverland"

So let me know if you like the change.... 

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