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The Days Of Pearly Spencer

David Mcwilliams

Text File

#----------------------------------PLEASE NOTE--------------------------------#
#This file is the author's own work and represents their interpretation of the#
#song. You may only use this file for private study, scholarship, or research.#
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Anyone else remember this non-hit by David McWilliams?  It reached #2 in
Albany, NY - where the WPTR-AM production staff even concocted a parody
version, 'Days of Mark Allen', about one of their DJs - but it apparently
wasn't a hit anywhere else in the US, since the best it could do nationally
was to squeak onto the bottom rung of Billboard's _Bubbling Under_ chart
for a single week in June, 1968.

Notes:  1) the Grass Roots covered it on one of their albums; 2) according
to net.correspondent Maurizio Codogno, it was a hit in Italy (as _Il Volto
Della Vita_) for Caterina Caselli; 3) the filtered vocal on the chorus - not
to mention the subject matter - predated _Aqualung_ by about three years; 4)
Marc Almond's remake was a big hit in the UK in 1992; his version features
an extra verse:

	A tenement, a dirty street
	Remember worn and shoeless feet
	Remember how you stood to beat
	The way your life had gone
	So Pearly don't you shed more tears
	For those best forgotten years
	Those tenements are memories
	Of where you've risen from


                        "Days of Pearly Spencer"
                           (David McWilliams)

Intro:

	Am (strings alone first two bars; w/arpeggiated guitar next two
	    bars; w/bass and drums next two bars and into verse)

Verse 1:

	  Am
	A tenement, a dirty street
	  Em
	Walked and worn by shoeless feet
	    Am
	In silence long and so complete
	        C               G
	Watched by a shivering sun

	Old eyes in a small child's face
	Watching as the shadows race
	Through walls and cracks that leave no trace
	And daylight's brightness shun

Chorus (w/filtered vocal):

	Dm    Em                      Am
	         The days of Pearly Spencer
	     Dm  Em                    Am
	Ahh..ahh    the race is almost run

Verse 2:

	Nose pressed hard on frosted glass
	Gazing as the swollen mass
	On concrete fields where grows no grass
	Stumbles blindly on

	Iron trees smother the air
	But, withering, they stand and stare
	Through eyes that neither know nor care
	Where the grass has gone

[repeat chorus]

Verse 3:

	Pearly, where's your milk-white skin
	What's that stubble on your chin
	It's buried in the rotgut gin
	You've played and lost, not won

	You played a house that can't be beat
	Now look, your head's bowed in defeat
	You walked too far along the street
	Where only rats can run

[repeat chorus; fade 2nd time]


-- another ace 60's tab from Andrew Rogers