Happiness as Anarchy #180: Old, old songs

I can’t remember how I first heard Spanish Is The Loving Tongue, but it’s one of those songs that I loved instantly. I find it intriguing that there are two versions with different opening melodies – one starts with an ascending arpeggio, the other descending; the same notes in the opposite order. My preference is for the latter, and my favourite version is this live recording of Tom Waits at Folk Arts Rare Records, San Diego in 1974. The lyrics were originally published as a poem – A Border Affair – in 1907 by Charles Badger Clark, cowboy poet, and set to music in 1925 by Billy Simon.