So we reach the end, but here’s a summary of the list so far

• Don’t Change On Me – Alan Jackson
  That’s Life – Frank Sinatra
  Dancing In the Moonlight… – Thin Lizzy
  Not the Only – Sugarland
  The Ceiling – The Wild Feathers
  Rock Me on the Water – Keb’ Mo’
  Jenny of the Roses – Hiss Golden Messenger
  It Makes No Difference – The Band
  No Next Time – Allison Moorer
  24 Frames – Jason Isbell
  Your Bright Baby Blues – Sarah and Sean Watkins
  Six More Days of Rain – Tift Merritt
  Wish Me Away – Chely Wright
  The Weight (feat. The Staples) – The Band
  Weight of the Load – Ashley Monroe
  Wayward and Weary – Tift Merritt
  That’s Where It’s At – Sam Cooke
  Left My Woman – The Wild Feathers
  Sad City – Trick Pony
  On To Something Good – Ashley Monroe
  Jessica – The Allman Brothers Band
  Tell Me Fool – Vince Gill
  V’s of Birds – Dwight Yoakam
  Your Secret’s Safe With Me – Dan Colehour
  The Pretender – Jackson Browne

05. Watching the Wires – Hiss Golden Messenger. Forty years later, and this is the most recent song on this playlist, released just last month. But, to me, it is instantly recognisable and has the same pulse that has been singing in my veins since I discovered Radio Caroline. The pulse, the beat, the drums and the guitars. Give me one good reason, do it for the feeling. I know what you say, but I had to learn the hard way.

04. Stockholm – Jason Isbell. To see Mr Isbell sing this with Amanda Shires is such a joy. This is from his 2013 album Southeastern, and you can feel the optimism shining through from a man who has cleaned up his act, met the love of his life, and is looking forward. Stockholm syndrome: becoming a willing captive. Escaping from one kind of captivity (addiction) into another (love). I love the anthemic feel of this, the shuffling drum beat, the rapidly strummed acoustic guitar, the power chords on the electric guitar. It lifts me. Lock me up tight in these shackles I wear, tied up the keys in the folds of your hair. It’s hard to believe that something this good was ever on television.

03. Learning to Fly (Live) – Tom Petty. I do love the original record of this, but it has to be the live one. How does an artist perform the same songs over and over? It’s the communion with the audience that makes it new again, every time. And Stevie Nicks, honorary Heartbreaker, stands at the back, and lends her voice. How can we go on without Tom Petty?

02. I Won’t Dance (1962) – Frank Sinatra. There are a number of great things about this. First of all, the song, which seems on the surface to be one of those standards, but it’s a little mystery box. It’s like a Schrödinger’s cat of a song, existing in two completely different versions, with only the refrain in common. Written for a flop musical in 1934, it was then rewritten by different songwriters for a completely different musical the following year. Then Fred Astaire performed it in the film version of that musical (Roberta), with Ginger Rogers (who danced backwards in heels). Then there’s the mysterious (second) lyric with its, “For heaven help us, I’m not asbestos” — a reference to a dress the woman spoken to by the song is supposed to be wearing that is so hawt it would set you on fire. Except the rest of the song doesn’t mention any supposed hawt dress, so the line stands alone, like a palimpsest in a mediaeval manuscript.

Then the song turns up, chameleon-like, in two completely different films, apparently able to travel in time, because it’s used to evoke “the 1920s” despite being written in 1934/5. Which means, somehow, that even when it was new it was always-already an oldie, a standard. Instant standard. And then it appears on two separate Frank Sinatra records in two completely different musical arrangements, both marvellous. Because of course Sinatra wanted to be Fred Astaire. The version on the 1957 Nelson Riddle arranged A Swingin’ Affair is my favourite Frank Sinatra song—apart from the version on the 1962 Neil Hefti arranged Sinatra/Basie.

I came to my own accommodation and reconciliation with Sinatra. Although my mum had some good stuff, most of her Sinatra albums were his desperate attempts to remain relevant in the late 60s and early 70s, those pre- and post-“retirement” releases. So I bought my own collection, and added to it over the years, on cassette, vinyl, CD. And then my Dad died and it turned out he’d amassed a load of Sinatra albums on CD, which I inherited. Then, on impulse in Fnac, the French entertainment/technology superstore, I bought a boxed set of Sinatra CDs, more or less completing his Capitol years. And probably the most recent album I purchased (on digital, this time) was Sinatra/Basie, the 1962 “historic musical first”, which takes us back to the beginning again, because it was one of the ones that were in the house when I was growing up. And it was released in the year of my birth, so…

This arrangement by Neil Hefti is genius. And Sinatra’s vocal is also, in spite of its obvious flaws (at one point he comes in after an instrumental interlude a little on the flat side, a little pitchy), brilliant. Perfect because it was not perfect. Always-already both perfect and not perfect and somewhere there’s a cat in a box listening to it. Here’s Sinatra performing it with the Buddy Rich Orchestra in 1982, in his late 60s. Still had it.

01. Blue Sky – The Allman Brothers Band. Oh yes, here’s a song I caught just once, and not even all the way through, on Radio Caroline. A simple little song. Verse, verse, chorus, the best guitar solo Duane Allman ever played. Then the best guitar solo that Dickie Betts ever played. Another verse, another chorus. Five minutes of heaven. Duane Allman died, aged just 24, before this was even released. But what immortality this is, the musical equivalent of that line from Bull Durham about baseball being a simple game. “You throw the ball, you hit the ball, you catch the ball.” Music is simple. You write a verse, you write a chorus, you play your instrument.