Yes, The Disco Diva Got Better with Age

A repost about this wonderful, kind, generous lady, Donna Summer.

Under the original subtitle, Follow-up to "COVID-19 Had its "DISCO SUCKS" Moment Today", This post got very few views when I put it up before so I thought I would re-post it. If you missed it before, it’s a nice one for those of you who grew up in the Disco craze.

A little break from the harsh posts. (Don’t worry, I’ll get back to them soon)

A song about the end of a love affair, surviving the only way you can; by looking to the future… Written by Jimmy Webb who wrote so many of the Glen Campbell hits.

Memories of a happier time in love:

I recall the yellow cotton dress
Foaming like a wave
On the ground beneath your knees
The birds like tender babies in your hands
And the old men playing
Chinese checkers by the trees

Looking to the future:

“There will be another song for me
And I will sing it
There will be another dream for me
Someone will bring it

I will drink the wine while it is warm
And never let you catch me looking at the sun,
And after all the loves of my life
After all the loves of my life, you'll still be the one

I will take my life into my hands, and I will use it,

I will win the worship in their eyes, then I will lose it.”

Have you been to McArthur Park? It’s in Los Angeles. I lived there in the late 70s and again in the late 80s. I went to the park a few times. Old men do actually play chinese checkers by the trees.

This song is autobiographical. When he was still a young man, Jimmy loved a girl. She broke it off and married someone else a few weeks later. Jimmy was devastated.

His love and her new fiance decided to get married in McArthur Park. Jimmy wanted to go to the wedding but he didn’t want to be seen. So he hid out in the gardener’s shed on the park grounds and watched the festivities through a cracked window. It started raining. Looking at the large wedding cake as the raindrops ran down the glass window made it look like the cake was melting. That’s how this great song formed in the mind of Jimmy Webb.

Also, please take note: Those of us who are terribly nearsighted and never wore glasses, will attest that as darkness descends at dusk, on large green areas like parks, it appears as though they are melting before our eyes. I’d bet my bottom dollar that Jimmy Webb used to be horribly near-sighted.

“ I will win the worship in your eyes, then I will lose it.”

Donna in 2005 performing McArthur Park live at the Proms :

We lost Donna in 2012.

More Donna…

“Last Dance” Live in 2009