Jesse Colin Young’s Ridgetop thrilled me each time I would hear it during my KQRS-listening high school/college days, the 70’s.
Last week, I was greatly blessed to hear spiritual depth in some of his recently recorded Christmas music on Pandora. Then I found this! Jesse is still a peacemaker!!!
Jesse Colin Young plays and talks about Get Together, and his new song, Bring ‘Em Home. His wife, Connie, plays violin.
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[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BJho6iWhnQ0]Jesse Colin Young – Get Together
Jesse Colin Young performs “Get Together” at WNRN in Charlottesville, Virginia on June 4, 2009 before his show at Bel Rio. Song appears The Youngbloods’ 1967 eponymous album.
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[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0e2XAN3wcJc]
The classic Youngbloods version. Jesse sings lead.
1967: The Youngbloods (RCA) – re-released as Get Together in 1971
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[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X4GjhuzMNEY]In this short, Get Together interview, Jesse says,
“It’s about love.”
And conversely,
it’s been too much about ‘fear‘:
Love is but a song to sing
Fear‘s the way we die
You can make the mountains ring
Or make the angels cry …
Come on people now
Smile on your brother
Everybody get together
Try to love one another
Right now
You hold the key to love and fear
All in your trembling hand
Just one key unlocks them both
Its there at your command
Loving everyone perfectly is the key to lock out fear, because only “perfect love casts out fear.” We have to turn the key all the way to the right! Then our hands will no longer tremble.
America heard this truth in the ’60s. May we realize it 40 years later. Let’s make the mountains ring!
The author of Get Together (also recorded as “Let’s Het Together”) was Cester William Powers, Jr. (Chet Powers). The Youngbloods didn’t make that up. Dino Valenti was one of several stage names used by Powers. The song was first recorded in 1964 by The Kingston Trio. The version recorded by We Five in 1965 charted in the US at #31. Jefferson Airplane recorded a version on their debut album in 1966. In 1966 Powers sold the song to Frank Werber, manager of the Kingston Trio, to help pay for his legal defense on drug charges. The Youngbloods version was originally released in 1967. It was reissued in 1969 after it was used in a television campaign. The 1969 release charted in the US at #10 and is the version most remembered.
– Popa, Redondo Beach, CA
source
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qster
One of my all time faves.
Rita Fannin Spencer
Dino is, in my opinion, the most influential songwriter of our time and he is dearly missed. Insightful, spiritual, writing simply, honestly yet so very powerfully about the deepest emotions we face as human beings, love, truth, hope, heart, the freedom to be who we are and our connectiveness to one another and the universe as he saw it, which is the way that I too see it. His powerful delivery of HIS lyrics could never be duplicated. He had the soul of the the deep and endless velvet blue night sky, the heart of a lion and a voice that came from someplace so special we will probable never hear the likes of it again. You can hear these things in everything he does. Dino, Chester Powers, will always own “Get Together”! I don’t care who has that piece of paper.