Top 100 Elton John Songs, #25-1

25.  “Teacher I Need You” (Don’t Shoot Me, I’m Only the Piano Player)- An obscure track that hasn’t been played live in decades, it fits neatly into the 50s nostalgia of the Don’t Shoot Me album.  In this track, Elton John sends up the Bobby Sherman/Frankie Avalon teen idol style in the form of a lovesick teenagers’ unrequited love for his teacher (thus making it much more innocent than its raunchy cousin, Van Halen’s “Hot for Teacher.”)  Elton’s vocal delivery flawlessly mimics the teen idols, and it has one of my favorite Bernie Taupin lyrics: “I’ve got John Wayne stances, I’ve got Errol Flynn advances, and it doesn’t mean a doggone thing.”  Rarely has any song, not just by Elton but by any artist, toed the line so carefully between homage and parody.

24.  ”The Emperor’s New Clothes” (Songs from the West Coast)- When I first started listening to Elton John as a contemporary artist (rather than an oldies guy) in the 90s, his material was certainly good, but tried to fit in a bit too much with whatever else was on the radio.  During the Clinton years, that meant lots of synthesizers, heavy production, and minimal acoustic piano.  So, I cannot stress enough what a breath of fresh air it was to be listen to this song for the first time in the fall of 2001.  You can hear an audible phonograph needle in the opening seconds, and this establishes the tone of the song, and indeed the album, as a return to Elton the singer-songwriter, very much in the keeping of his first 5 or so albums.  There are a couple defiantly stupid lines (the title is made to rhyme with “every inch of us growing like Pinnochio’s nose”), but there are plenty of engaging images (“a state of illusion in a nation of chance”, “the dashboard Madonna smiled back at us kindly”), to redeem the song many times over.

23.  “Postcards from Richard Nixon” (Captain and the Kid)- Another terrific opening track from another “return to roots” album.  This track continues the narrative of the Captain Fantastic LP, and becomes a neat travelogue of Elton and Bernie’s first trip through the United States.  As a McGovern guy, the song’s Nixon-bashing kicks it up several notches in this ranking (“A little camouflage and glue to mask the evil that men do…”)

22.  “I Feel Like a Bullet (in the Gun of Robert Ford)” (Rock of the Westies) Rock of the Westies is a dire album, filled with uninspired uptempo rock numbers tossed off by a coked-up Elton and his obliging backup band.  One beautiful track in this pile of rubbish is “I Feel Like a Bullet,” playing to Elton’s strengths (ballads) and Bernie Taupin’s strengths (western motifs), complete with an allusion to Ford, who shot John Wilkes Booth in the back.  A great metaphor for initiating a painful breakup.

21.  “Blessed” (Made in England) This track takes an earnest look at a topic rarely addressed in Elton’s music: parenthood.  A beautiful expression of wishing for, and indeed loving, a child who does not yet exist.

20.  “Take Me to the Pilot” (Elton John) One of the greatest uptempo numbers of Elton John’s entire career, its rollicking piano part grounds it to earth while Paul Buckmaster’s orchestration takes it to the atmosphere, as its name implies.  Best of all, its cryptic lyrics have driven rock fans batty over the last 4 decades, trying in vain to interpret Taupin’s feckless verses.

19.  “Pinball Wizard” (single, music and lyrics by Pete Townsend): Elton outmaneuvered Rod Stewart in order to appear in the Who’s epic rock opera, Tommy as the aforementioned wizard.  A hit single in its own right, it improves upon the Who’s version in several ways, from a gospel choir introduction, to some of the most aggressive arpeggios Elton ever put to record, and Davey Johnston’s guitar solo is actually every bit as good as Pete Townsend’s one of rock’s five or six best guitarists.  For those of you keeping track, Elton managed to take on both The Beatles and The Who (probably the two best rock bands of all time) and record covers superior to their own efforts.

18.  “Breaking Down Barriers” (The Fox, lyrics by Gary Osbourne) I cannot describe this song except in this way:  it sounds more like a top 10 hit than any other Elton John song that wasn’t a top ten hit.   Listening to its infectious electric piano arpeggios, its soaring falsetto chorus, and its contemporary production, one is incredulous that it was never released as a single in the first place.

17.  “Where To Now, St. Peter?” (Tumbleweed Connection) Pop songs about death can be risky territory.  Oftentimes, such ventures come across as maudlin, grim, or gothic.  This song strikes an intriguing mix of wonder and ambivalence, as its narrator, presumably felled in the Civil War, asks the keeper of the pearly gates about his fate.  Caleb Quaye’s distortion-heavy guitar part lends immeasurable effect to this song.

16.  “Believe” (Made in England)  It is surreal to think that when I first started listening to Top 40 radio in 1995, you could still hear Elton John plugging away, 25 years after “Your Song.”  “Believe” would come on the air juxtaposed to something like TLC’s “Red Light Special” or Montell Jordan’s “This is How We Do It”, which made this weighty song about the perseverance of love over oppression and hatred all the more remarkable.

15.  “Wake Up Wendy” (South Park: Chef Aid) Maybe the single greatest lost opportunity of Elton John’s career.  The best uptempo number he wrote since the 80s got consigned to a one-off ensemble album promoting a show featuring 4 foul-mouthed cartoon grade-schoolers.  What a pity.

14.  “Funeral for a Friend/Love Lies Bleeding” (Goodbye Yellow Brick Road) This is a suitable opening track to a lavish double album.  Goodbye Yellow Brick Road thrives on cinematic lore, but “Funeral for a Friend” is raw progressive rock, with a 6 minute synthesizer-driven instrumental followed by an aggressive 4-minute rock and roll piece.  The transition is seamless, and it is perhaps the finest essay on versatility from 70s rock in a single track.

13.  “Ballad of a Well-Known Gun” (Tumbleweed Connection) Caleb Quaye’s countrified guitar intro kicks off The Tumbleweed Connection in high style.  Elton at his Leon Russell-channeling, honky-tonk best.

12.  “Elton’s Song” (The Fox, lyrics by Tom Robinson) This poignant, and wholly obscure, track from 1981 is a sweet reverie of a schoolboy crush.  The twist is the song’s subtle homoerotic subtext, made more clear in its low-budget music video- for the song is addressed to an upperclassman.  A bold move, for Elton himself was not fully out of the closet as a gay man in ’81.

11.  “Better Off Dead” (Captain Fantastic and the Brown Dirt Cowboy) When a popular music artist wants to branch out, they might resort to a swing dance song, or a country-western number, or an R&B track.  It takes an incredible amount of musical chops to attempt a song in the style of  the English music hall tradition.  “Better Off Dead”‘s staccato delivery (reinforced by Nigel Olsson’s drumming) even channels some Gilbert and Sullivan and Pinafore before the harmonic middle-8 takes us into Beach Boys territory. The best track on Elton John’s best album.

10.  “Can You Feel the Love Tonight?” (Lion King soundtrack, lyrics by Tim Rice) There are some who believe that Elton John sold out in the 90s by doing the music for Disney’s The Lion King.  I do not– Elton took a huge paycheck, but he also delivered some of the finest music of his career in return, often challenging himself to write music in  African idioms.  “Can You Feel the Love Tonight” is anything but the generic love song it is often remembered to be.  It has distinct signs of world-weariness (“restless warrior”, “star-crossed voyager”) and maturity that separate it from not only the other love songs in the Disney canon, but the other love songs that dominated the top 40 at the time.  By any fair metric, this song is a masterpiece of pop songwriting.

9.  “Carla/Etude” (The Fox) A beautiful and stately instrumental from Elton’s most underrated album.

8.  “Sixty Years On” (Elton John) It is staggeringly ambitious for a 22-year-old kid to write a song about an old soldier coming to terms with his mortality- but Bernie Taupin did it, and Elton John wrote a haunting melody with some light Spanish touches to bring his words to life.

7.  “I Guess That’s Why They Call it the Blues” (Too Low for Zero, by Elton John, Bernie Taupin, and Davey Johnston) A staple on adult contemporary radio for 30 years now, this song single-handedly gave Elton John’s career an early-80s shot in the arm.   A somewhat nostalgic piece with some musical throwbacks to the 50s, it is an expertly crafted ode to loneliness.

6.  “Mona Lisa’s and Mad Hatter’s” (Honky Chateau) Written in a NYC hotel while police sirens told of a violent crime nearby, this song ruminates on America’s most complex city.  Elton would go on to write two songs that took a more romantic appraisal of the city (“Wouldn’t Have You Any Other Way” and the awful “Mona Lisa’s, Part 2″).  This first attempt to weigh in on the paradox of New York is much more ambivalent, focusing on the alienation  and the callousness of its denizens (“they don’t know if its dark outside or light”), while finding room for hope (“I thank the Lord for people out there like you.”)

5.  “Latitude” (Made in England) Maybe after two years of a long-term (think different continents!) relationship, “Latitude”‘s significance is very much etched on my mind.  With some evocative portraits of London life (“old posters reading ‘give us your sons’”), this mid-90s track reflects on the illusory nature of physical distance.  Latitude is, after all, just “a cold stretch of black across blue” on any globe.  The hero of this track is former Beatles producer George Martin, who creates a jaunty and distinctly English string section to set the song’s atmosphere.

4.  “Come Down in Time” (Tumbleweed Connection)  As sweet and as vulnerable as “Your Song”, this track off of Tumbleweed has only a small fraction of its fame.  If “Your Song” addresses the speaker’s love interest directly, “Come Down in Time” wonders if she will show up in the first place.  With very little piano, an acoustic guitar and orchestration bear the load on this song, with a remarkably moving effect.  I daresay it is the best Elton John song you won’t hear on the radio.

3.  “Your Song” (Elton John) One of the great love songs written within living memory, its simple accompaniment and Bernie’s youthful lyrics complement one another perfectly.  I love how the narrator stops to clarify his thoughts mid-song (“If I were a sculptor, but then again, no…”) into a fanciful remonstrance of affection.  Elton John rarely writes standard love songs; there is almost always some twist of storytelling involved, and this is a master essay in that craft.

2.  “Rocket Man” (Honky Chateau) This song surpasses its inspiration, David Bowie’s “Space Oddity” with its simpatico and its approachability– Bowie’s Major Tom is a cult hero, but Elton’s Rocket Man is an everyman enduring the drudgery of exploring the cosmos.  Lots of lyrics fans and experts are still untangling- “Mars ain’t the kind of place to raise a kid”- and some of the most memorable and ingenious hooks as the song transitions from its minor verses to its major chorus.  A risky, risky song that could have been an overblown mess but instead became one of the 1970s most memorable songs.

1.  “Tiny Dancer” (Madman Across the Water) It took a movie to remind us how good a piece of music can be.  If you watch 2000′s Almost Famous, at a key point in the film, a weary band and its entourage are re-energized when “Tiny Dancer” comes on the radio, and its Haight-and-Asbury travelogue transcends into an anthemic chorus.  The song’s genius lies in its build-up, progressing from a delicate melody based on a ballerina music-box until it climaxes with “hold me closer, Tiny Dancer”, Elton’s falsetto elevating the tune, punctuated by the violins and cellos of Paul Buckmaster’s orchestration.  Living in its own dimension, it faithfully records the atmosphere of the early 70s counterculture, while also somehow being so timeless and universal that it defies the generations, even in 2013.  If Thucydides had been able to channel Nixon-era FM radio, he might have called it “a possession for all time.”

Top 100 Elton John Songs, #50-26

We have made it to the half-way point, and you intrepid folks have stuck with me.  I thank you!  This third installment includes many of the big hits- including my mom’s (“Daniel”) and my dad’s (“Levon”) favorite Elton John songs.

50.  “Live Like Horses” (The Big Picture):  Some excellent lyrics about freedom and self-discovery, and a dramatic delivery that makes use of Elton John’s  post-throat surgery lower voice register.  Intended, and first recorded, as a duet with Pavaratti, the album version without him stands on its own, although Chris Thomas’s synthesizer-drenched production does it a grave injustice.

49.  “The One” (The One):  A  fuller and more compelling song in the vein of “Sacrifice”, it completes Elton John’s transition into a credible adult-contemporary performer, with a more mature tone.  Surprisingly few big Elton hits have a nice piano solo in the middle, especially from the 90s, but this one does.

48.  “Candle in the Wind” (Goodbye Yellow Brick Road): “What hell, Alex Voltaire?” you are probably thinking.  “Candle in the Wind” barely in the top 50?  Alas, it is so.  Here’s the problem– the entire song runs on a conceit- that nobody, not the movie executives, not the fans, knew Marilyn’s struggles except 22-year-old Englishman Bernie Taupin.  Absurd.  His vision of Marilyn Monroe is every bit as fetishized and sexualized as the heartless suits he derides in his song.  Somehow, despite not being released as a single at first, it became a concert staple and a classic rock evergreen- and to be fair, it also has one of Taupin’s most memorable lines- “your candle burned out long before your legend ever did.”  It is a significant song, but grievously overrated.

47.  “Cage the Songbird” (Blue Moves):  Now this is what a tribute to a deceased entertainer looks like.  Written as a memorial for French songstress Edith Piaf, this track uses much more evocative imagery.  Consider the discovery of a dead body…”cellophane still on the flowers, telegram still in her hand” sounds a lot better than “Marilyn was found in the nude”, right?  “Cage the Songbird”‘s sorrowful lyrics are elevated to new heights by the use of my two favorite background vocalists, David Crosby and Graham Nash.

46.  “Daniel” (Don’t Shoot Me, I’m Only the Piano Player):  A top 10 hit across the Anglophone world, “Daniel” has also generated more backchatter than almost any Elton song.  While some insist it is a coded gay love story, Bernie maintains it is a song about a disillusioned Vietnam veteran finding peace in Iberia.  Taupin’s lyrics outpace Elton’s somewhat pedestrian melody for this one, and the chance for a more thematic song is squandered…a bit of percussion is the only musical hint of the song’s wistful Spanish leitmotif.

45.  “Michelle’s Song” (Friends soundtrack):  A forgotten song from an obscure soundtrack album to a film nobody has seen in years, “Michelle’s Song” is emblematic of the treasures that await a casual Elton John exploring his songwriting outside of the big hits.  A great early effort from 1970 that captures the boyish enthusiasm of the John/Taupin duo when they were just starting out.

44.  “Grey Seal” (Goodbye Yellow Brick Road): If “Daniel” is ambiguous, “Grey Seal” is downright cryptic– a more successful version of what “This Song Has No Title” could have been– an uptempo song narrated by a naif trying to make sense of unfamiliar surroundings.  The song wins plaudits on an element I don’t often praise in these reviews– the capacity of Elton’s band to work as an ensemble, with meaty guitar segments, and expressive drumming from Nigel Olson.

43.  “Sixteenth Century Man” (Road to El Dorado soundtrack, lyrics by Tim Rice):  Please remember, this track was released after a dreary collection of cookie-cutter love songs on The Big Picture, so the sound of hearing Elton John pounding on the piano and rocking out was a welcome one, a change of pace that anticipated his post-2000 return to artistic form.  Intended to be sung from the perspective of two swashbuckling adventurers, the song uses Elton’s vocals double-tracked, but might have been better as an uptempo duet with another artist.

42.  “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds” (single, words and music by Lennon/McCartney):  Call me a bad Beatles fan if you must, but I just don’t dig the original Sgt. Pepper version of “Lucy in the Sky”– Lennon is clearly stoned when singing it, fitting enough given its content, but he sounds like someone phasing out rather than someone compelled by the fascinating imagery he describes.  With help from Gus Dudgeon’s production, this cover of “Lucy in the Sky” is a better soundscape, complete with a surprise reggae middle-eight with John Lennon on guitar.  So, Elton beats the world’s best rock band at their own game, and partly with the help of its principal songwriter.  Lennon, if you are going to write a song about sparkly diamonds and bright colours, you might as well have let a gay guy handle it in the first place.

41.  “Crocodile Rock” (Don’t Shoot Me, I’m Only the Piano Player):  Elton John’s biggest hit in the 1970s, though far from his absolute best work.  As a self-aware nostalgia piece, the song works effectively.  (And indeed, the 1970s were awash in 1950s nostalgia– why was this decade so bad that everyone living in it wished for the Eisenhower era?).  With an infectious electric organ riff, a comic-tragic narrative that makes me laugh every time I hear it (“Susie went and left me for a foreign guy”), and a chorus shamelessly ripped off of Pat Boone’s “Speedy Gonzales”, its components when mixed together make this perhaps the most fun Elton song to listen to.

40. “If the River Can Bend” (The Big Picture):  Elton’s gospel outings work best when he remembers that the point of gospel music is to convey hope.  “If the River Can Bend” does this with panache, with a little assist from a gospel choir.

39.  “Blue Avenue” (Sleeping with the Past):  Elton John made the unusual choice to close the Motown-inspired Sleeping with the Past
with the least Motown-y track on the record.  Yet, the song somehow works, even though every tangible piece of evidence suggests it shouldn’t- from the synthesized trumpet parts, to  lyrics that veer awkwardly between addiction  (“I’ve got to quit this habit”) traffic congestion (“looks like we’ve got a wreck, babe, on Blue Avenue”), and religion (“you linger on my lips like confession”).  The sincerity of Elton’s delivery and the stripped down production on a very production-heavy album ultimately work in the song’s favor, against all odds.

38.  “Bitter Fingers” (Captain Fantastic and the Brown Dirt Cowboy): Ditto for this– another song that shouldn’t work, but does.  Writing a song about one’s frustration with publishing companies doesn’t seem like the best way to pique your audience’s interest.  But Sir Elton pulls a number of melodic tricks to get the point across– he inserts the song’s hook in a line about banal hooks (“I’m sick of tra-la-las and la-de-das”), and gives the verses a lively chord progression that wouldn’t be out of place for a pub pianist in London.

37.  “Bennie and the Jets” (Goodbye Yellow Brick Road):  Inspired by David Bowie’s androgynous stage act, this piece is a nonsensical romp about a fictional band and their fictional frontwoman.  With canned applause, the track is filled with in-jokes; the audience clapping is deliberately off-beat, poking fun at the lack of rhythm his English audiences demonstrated.  As delightful as the studio version was, this song has since become a highlight of nearly every Elton concert since, with long improvisations and feats of daring on the piano ruling the day.

36.  “Goodbye Yellow Brick Road” (Goodbye Yellow Brick Road):  Brilliant and cinematic (appropriate given its Oz allusions), it was rightfully the title track for Elton John’s best-remembered studio album.  But Elton’s melody is so lilting and sweet, especially in its falsetto chorus, that it is easy to miss the pure venom Bernie Taupin injects in the lyrics- “It’d take you a couple of vodka and tonics to set you on your feet again,” “I’d bet that’d shoot down your plane”, “tit-bits like you”.  This vitriol is easy to miss because the melody is so affecting.  When its most memorable hooks are “ooh-oooh-ooh” and an “ahhh-ah-ah”, it is a useful reminder that there are two kinds of Elton songs– those whose melodies complement Bernie’s lyrics, and those whose melodies disguise or compensate for Bernie’s lyrics.  This is one of the latter.

35.  “I’m Still Standing” (Too Low for Zero):  From about 1976 to the present day, most of Elton John’s bigger hits have been love songs and ballads.  So, the leadoff track for 1983′s Too Low for Zero came as a refreshing change of pace as an uptempo single.  In time, the song has taken on a symbol of Elton’s defiance and endurance against long odds– having survived countless brushes with death in his 40+ year career.  It is also responsible for one of the campiest music videos of all time.

34.  “Original Sin” (Songs from the West Coast):  A rare ballad centered on an acoustic guitar part, it uses some neat religious imagery without going overboard– and I love playing it on piano, since its D-flat key means the black keys will get a good workout.

33.  “Skyline Pigeon” (b-side):  Recorded first for Empty Sky, Elton’s mostly-forgotten 1969 debut album, the song’s harpsichord accompaniment weighted down what was supposed to be a song of flight, escape, and freedom.  It was wisely re-recorded as the flip side to “Daniel” with a piano and oboe arrangement that gave some flesh to these themes.  (And I will stand by my belief that no music is as expressive as oboe arrangements in 1970s ballads).  It also, as per “Cage the Songbird”, serves as an effective eulogy or send-off (“fly away…towards the dreams you left so very far behind”), as Elton proved by playing this song at the funeral of Ryan White, the young AIDS victim.

32.  “Sorry Seems to be the Hardest Word” (Blue Moves):  A simple lachrymose ballad of regret, this top 10 hit from 1976 has little more than a piano, accordion, and tubular bells as accompaniment.  The spartan arrangement works, especially with some of Elton John’s most expressive singing and most effective use of his falsetto voice.

31.  “Someone Saved My Life Tonight” (Captain Fantastic and the Brown Dirt Cowboy):  Strangely, this song has followed me my entire life– I once went on a cruise on the S.S. Norway, where this song was composed on board ship (although it was the S.S. France back then), and stayed in London in Highbury very near where the events in the lyrics took place.   On further reflection, the rolling progression of the lower piano part echoes the rolling of the ocean- maybe that influenced how the song took shape.  But at any rate, this song is a masterpiece of lyric and a masterpiece of melody, capturing the drama of one of the darkest hours of Elton John’s life, when he feared the prospect of leaving music to enter a loveless marraige.

30.  “Saturday Night’s Alright for Fighting” (Goodbye Yellow Brick Road):  Rock and roll is not Elton John’s best medium.  He can play boogie-woogie piano with the best at them, but if I were to ever create a Bottom 100 Elton John songs, it would be full of failed attempts to write a rock and roll standard.  (For examples, go listen to “Lil’ Frigerator” and “Slow Down Georgie” from the Breaking Hearts album, or for that matter, the second side of Rock of the Westies.)  This song works– and part of the answer why is that it embraces its Englishness, and doesn’t try to emulate American rock and roll without irony or without being self-aware.  The Anglicisms- “my mates” instead of “my friends”, references to the working class– show the song has no pretensions– and that is the essence of successful rock and roll.

29.  “Chameleon” (Blue Moves): Written for the Beach Boys, “Chameleon” was a well-crafted song with a ponderous introduction, great build-up along the verses, and exquisite vocal harmonies throughout.  Inexplicably, the Beach Boys passed on this song (and to put this in perspective, remember that this was the time when they were recording Mike Love’s pieces about transcendental meditation and songs Brian Wilson had written while playing in a sandbox.)  The Beach Boys’ loss was Elton John’s gain, and the result was perhaps the saddest and sweetest song on Elton John’s saddest and sweetest album.

28.  “Honky Cat” (Honky Chateau): When my mum got Elton John’s first greatest hits album on cassette tape (oh, how I miss the early 90s), this was, to me, the least interesting track on the album– too repetitive, too invasive a horn section, not as melodic or timeless as the other tracks.  It wasn’t until I heard this song coming out of a smoky dive bar many years later that I finally “got” it.  With its honky-tonk piano part, the song is wisely ambiguous as to whether the country boy who sings this song is going to “get back” to his rustic roots or strike it out in New Orleans.  And as a piano player, I learned that this is one of the most fun Elton John songs to play, with plenty of room for improvisation during its drawn-out coda.

27.  “Circle of Life” (Lion King soundtrack, lyrics by Tim Rice): Hardcore Elton fans are a bit bearish about the Lion King material.  My reply is that this track is just as strong, if not stronger, than the other material from this time period– remember, Elton’s last album before working on the film was an absolutely abominable duets album (you know, the one where he and RuPaul redid “Don’t Go Breaking My Heart”.)  Nope- this is better by far.  Elton’s smartest move in this regard was to make his own version substantively different than the track heard in the film, to the point of having Tim Rice write very nearly a different set of lyrics.  The cinematic but saccharine lyrics and delivery that work well in the film aren’t suited to commercial radio, and subsequently Elton’s retooling became a hit, a well-earned reward for his work with Disney.

26.  “Levon” (Madman Across the Water):  This is one of Bernie Taupin’s better lyrics, and perhaps his finest character sketch to date, portraying a quasi-dysfunctional family of Albert, Levon, and Jesus Tostig.  It has each of the hallmarks of a great early Elton John song between the character sketch, Elton’s soaring chorus, and Paul Buckmaster’s swooping orchestration.

Top 100 Elton John Songs, #75-51

And now, the continuation of the Top 100 Elton John songs!

75.  “Amoreena” (Tumbleweed Connection)- Heather is not the biggest fan of this song, but I see it as a highlight of one of Elton John’s best albums.  It is a delightful honky-tonk romp about a youthful love affair somewhere in the rural South.  Unpretentious and fun, the track also has some of the best piano fills from Elton’s early albums.

74.  “Madman Across the Water” (Madman Across the Water)- I was pretty critical of lyricist Bernie Taupin in the last batch of songs, but this song is a lovely testament to how well he and Elton work together and how their abilities draw out the best in one another.  Bernie’s lyrics are delightfully cryptic and suggestive of a degenerative mental state- “there’s a board on a reef with a broken back, and I can see it very well”, complemented by Elton John’s intentionally disjointed piano playing, and swooping, disorienting orchestration by Paul Buckmaster.  This track is one of the best early signs of just how good Elton John was going to be.

73.  “This Train Don’t Stop There Anymore” (Songs from the West Coast)- An exhausting and world-weary conclusion to the very fine Songs from the West Coast, Elton sounds tired and demoralized– and somehow, it makes for a beautiful track.  It takes some cheek to repudiate his reputation as a balladeer- “all the purple prose you bought from me….the sentimental things I write never meant that much to me.”

72.  “Are You Ready for Love?” (Thom Bell Sessions, lyrics and music by L. Bell and C. James)-  Although he was happy with any chart success he has, Elton was always most pleased when he did well outside the Top 40, considering it a great accomplishment when something like “Bennie and the Jets” topped the R&B charts, demonstrating its popularity with black audiences.  Similarly, Elton always wanted to have a big dance hit, and it finally happened in 2003 with a remix and re-release of “Are You Ready for Love?”  The track was first recorded in the late 70s with the help of Thom Bell, the producer of the Spinners and many of the other great Philly soul groups from that era.  The result is delightful, and yes, danceable.

71.  “I Think I’m Gonna Kill Myself” (Honky Cat)- The theme of this song is morbid and wicked and hilarious at the same time.  Taupin writes a set of lyrics about teenage angst and overblown threats if they don’t get their way, to “hear what the papers say on the state of teenage blues.”  While such a song probably couldn’t be released today with heightened awareness of teen suicide, in its 1972 context, the song works just fine.  Its black humor is enhanced on the track by “Legs” Larry Smith’s tap-dancing, but like “Crazy Water” on the last list, this song is best heard live, with Ray Cooper providing the percussion.

70.  “Elaborate Lives” (Aida, lyrics by Tim Rice)- With AIDA, Rice and Elton John tried to revive their Lion King magic with this re-imagining of the famous Verdi opera.  “Elaborate Lives” is probably the best song from the project, a piece that works well in the musical’s context, but touches on the universal theme of two people leading demanding public lives with too many outstanding commitments to make love work.  John, to his credit, writes the vocal parts for Broadway voices, with plenty of room for acting and plenty of room for belting.

69.  “Too Many Tears” (Peachtree Road)- I am not the biggest fan of 2004′s Peachtree Road, filled as it is with lyrics praising the unreconstructed South a bit too uncritically for my taste.  I want to make an exception, though, for this fine track, tackling the subject of overcoming grief.  Lyrically, there is a strong connection to the tragedies of the 60s, with allusions to JFK’s death (“did you go to Dallas on that day?”), and Martin Luther King’s assassination (“a balcony in Memphis, Tennessee”).  I suppose out of all of Elton’s songs, this one is dearest to me, since this song was very appropriately playing in my room when I heard about my grandfather’s death.

68.  “Sacrifice” (Sleeping with the Past)- Unbelievably, Elton John did not have a #1 hit on his own in the U.K. until “Sacrifice” came along (#67 on this list was also a #1 hit, but it was credited as a duet.)  Another love song with a twist, this song takes the perspective of love going through a mid-life crisis, and accordingly, the song drips maturity and remains a standard on adult contemporary radio.  Even its very late-80s production does nothing to detract from it, and the song has become a classic, second only to “I Guess That’s Why They Call it the Blues” as his most well-loved song from the 1980s.

67.  “Don’t Go Breaking My Heart” (single release)- Throughout the 1970s, Elton John tried in vain to promote the career of his young protege, Kiki Dee, hoping she would be the next Dusty Springfield, when at best, she was the next Leslie Gore (and I am being generous here.)  This upbeat duet is delightfully, hypnotically stupid, complete with the paint-by-numbers string section on the instrumental break and lyrics like “nobody told us, ’cause nobody showed us.”  This song wasn’t going to outsmart anybody, but it outdumbed the entire record buying public, became a karaoke mainstay, and turned Kiki Dee into the eternal Trivial Pursuit answer.

66.  “This Song Has No Title” (Goodbye Yellow Brick Road)-  This is perhaps the most frustrating track in the entire Elton John corpus.  It begins well enough, with lyrics and a simple earnest melody about wanting to discover more of life.  It had the makings of a really good song- until it is ruined by a chorus awash in sound effects and throwaway lyrics- “this song has no title, just words and a tune.”  Bernie does naivity well in his lyrics, but Bernie’s lyrics, Elton John’s melody, and Gus Dudgeon’s production, all lay eggs simultaneously, ruining what could have been one of the best hidden gems in the Elton John discography.  But maybe that is the point– the song’s content and title is unfinished and still in progress, much like the wide-eyed young narrator’s  life.

65.  “Tell Me When the Whistle Blows” (Captain Fantastic and the Brown Dirt Cowboy)- A great narrative piece from Captain Fantastic, and driven by an excellent string section, conveying the unfulfilling workaday labour Bernie performed before striking it big in show business.

64. “Hey, Ahab” (The Union)- A lot of us in Elton Land were apprehensive when we heard he had agreed to record an entire album with Leon Russell.  Our trepidation was in vain; for the result was one of Elton John’s (and certainly one of Leon Russell’s) greatest artistic and commercial successes in decades.  Awash in literary allusions to Moby Dick, this is the album’s finest track with a simple but effective piano riff.  It was wonderful to see Elton and Leon play this song on Saturday Night Live and other venues, the first time in what seemed like decades that a ballad hadn’t been the first song promoted on an album.  (As an aside, look up Leon Russell’s life story sometime on wikipedia.   He has had a truly insane career as a sideman, playing piano on everything from “Strangers in the Night” to “Monster Mash.”)

63.  “Something About the Way You Look Tonight” (The Big Picture)- Technically, this is the best-selling single of Elton’s career, although that honor is due to its more famous B-side, the “Candle in the Wind, 1997″ written as a memorial for Princess Diana.  Nevertheless, this is one of the classiest love songs in the canon, and Heather and I gave it serious consideration as the first-dance song for our wedding.

62.  “The Bitch is Back” (Caribou)- For all the misogyny that Bernie Taupin got away with in the mid-70s (go ahead- listen to “Dirty Little Girl” from Goodbye Yellow Brick Road.  I’ll wait.) “The Bitch is Back” is actually about Elton John himself, and his infamous temper tantrums.  While the recording has some great Stax-style horn parts, the song works even better live, when John breaks out the barrel-house piano riffs, preens on top of the piano, and Davey Johnston’s guitar lead is set loose.  This song uses the word “bitch” more often than any other top 40 hit, a feat even Rick James could not surpass.

61.  “Look Ma, No Hands” (Songs from the West Coast)- Elton’s career made an artistic, though not quite commercial, comeback in 2001 with the release of Songs from the West Coast, abandoning the heavy production style of Chris Thomas, in favor of more acoustic piano and stripped-down recording as in the days of old.  “Look Ma, No Hands” is a great example of its success, with the piano at the front of the mix, and some of Bernie’s better lyrics: “I’ll take a rainy day/and make a champagne shower/poach some horn and tusk/to build an ivory tower.” Great stuff.

60.  “The Trail We Blaze” (The Road to El Dorado soundtrack, lyrics by Tim Rice)-  I would argue that this is the finest traveling song that Elton John wrote.  He and Tim Rice reunited for the Dreamworks picture The Road to El Dorado, and in keeping with its homage to the Bing Crosby and Bob Hope travel films of the 40s, the two songwriters produce an evocative song about the open road, “turning myth into truth” along the way.  The track was used to great effect in the film as a travel montage.

59.  “Made in England” (Made in England)- One of the best rock songs in Elton John’s catalog, and far more biographical than nationalist.  I love, especially, its defiant final verse: (“You can still say ‘homo’, and every laughs/But the joke’s on you/you never read the song/they all think they know, but they all got it wrong.”)  To what could Bernie and Elton be referring?

58.  “Captain Fantastic and the Brown Dirt Cowboy” (Captain Fantastic and the Brown Dirt Cowboy)- This opening song on this autobiographical concept album introduces us to our two heroes.  Elton, our Captain Fantastic, is growing up a well-mannered boy in the London exurbs, while the rustic Bernie Taupin, the Brown Dirty Cowboy, is romping in the fields learning his craft of songwriting.  The verses drag on, and the chorus isn’t quite great enough to reward the wait, but nonetheless, “Captain Fantastic” lays all the necessary groundwork for the rest of album, which I consider to be the finest of Elton’s career.

57.  “My Father’s Gun” (Tumbleweed Connection)- I have already made it clear how unhappy I am with Bernie’s rose-coloured Gone with the Wind view of the South, which has been thoroughly discredited by serious historians for generations now.  But I can’t help but give a pass to this lovely, epochal song that closes the first half of Tumbleweed Connection about a son’s loyalty to his father’s cause.

56.  “Holiday Inn” (Madman Across the Water)- One of the only Madman tracks clocking in under 5 minutes, Holiday Inn takes us on the road with Elton and Bernie, through the ennui and repetition of going from one indistinguishable city to another.  They wisely took off the third verse of the song, which took rock star self-pitying to an unseemly extreme: “The tv won’t work, and the french fries are cold/And room service ended ’bout an hour ago.”  Davey Johnston’s mandolin part is his first substantive contribution to a recording, and he is still part of Elton John’s band 40 years later.

55.  “Tinderbox” (Captain and the Kid)- A great opening lyric- “Nostradamus said ‘I predict that the world will end at half past six’, what he didn’t say was exactly when.”  One of the hallmarks of the Captain and the Kid is Elton’s use of subtle pieces of earlier songs, and this one hearkens back to “Rocket Man”, particularly the spacey guitar part that leads into the final chorus.

54.  “Tower of Babel” (Captain Fantastic and the Brown Dirt Cowboy)- Never has mid-70s depravity been portrayed so elegantly and tragically. And it has maybe the most thought-provoking line Bernie ever wrote: “Jesus don’t save the guys in the Tower of Babel,” an ingenious mixing of biblical metaphors, suggesting salvation does not come in time to the people who need it most.

53.  “Don’t Let the Sun Go Down on Me” (Caribou)- As a track that nearly didn’t make it onto the Caribou album, it went on to becoming one of Elton John’s most famous songs.  (Incidentally, the live version with George Michael is the only #1 hit to be recorded outdoors, at a concert in Wembley Stadium.)  I don’t care for it as much as others do- “but losing everything” is a dumb way to lead into the song’s title, and the verses, like “Captain Fantastic”‘s, drag on too long.  But there is no denying the song’s power, and its opportunities it provides the singer with its expressive chorus– for no small reason has it become de rigueur on American Idol.

52.  “Philadelphia Freedom” (single release)- Like “Big Dipper,” this song is a triple, and possibly a quadruple entendre.  It is, all at once, a tribute to the Philadelphia soul sound, an homage to Billie Jean King’s tennis club, and a cash-in for the bicentennial.  (The presumed fourth meaning is this- I am not sure if the song was written as a gay anthem or not.  Some of the lyrics can be read suggestively, and the city is, of course, one of “brotherly love.”)  At any rate, the song is a triumph, a completely justified #1 hit, with some great electric piano parts and some of the best falsetto singing of Elton’s career.

51.  “One Horse Town” (Blue Moves)- “One Horse Town” is an obscure track with multiple movements, and it should be more widely known.  Lyrically, this is vintage Bernie, betraying affection for and frustration with his rural origins, and at the same time, and imagining a life beyond in the big city.  The allure and disorientation of the metropolis is reflected in Elton’s musical choices, with swooping string sections and a psychedelic middle-eight.

Top 100 Elton John Songs, #100-76

It has been a while since I have come up with a new list for you.  Going back through the archives, I was surprised to see that I never a list of Top 100 Elton John songs, so this is my ideal chance to do so.  Elton is my second-favorite artist after The Beatles, and his career is one of the longest in the pantheon of pop music.  For nearly thirty years, from 1970 to 1999, he had at least one top 40 hit each year, a feat unmatched by any other pop musician.  While his chart success is impressive, what amazes me most is Elton’s almost unparalleled ability to hop between genres so easily that even many of his closest listeners do not notice.  Consider how he moved from prog rock (“Funeral for a Friend”), 50s sock-hop music (“Crocodile Rock”), soul (“Philadelphia Freedom”), and singer-songwriter (“Rocket Man”, “Your Song”, etc.)  so effortlessly within the span of a few years.  Over his career, he racked up over two dozen studio albums, and more Top 40 singles than all but a small handful of his rivals.  He has created some of rock’s most memorable moments (Diana’s funeral, the Central Park concert, Lennon’s last live performance at a show in Madison Square Garden), to say nothing of his outrageous fashion statements.

Here, then, are my own very subjective choices for the best 100 Elton John songs during an unusually long and productive career.  Several of the songs, including many higher-ranking choices, are album tracks that were never hits, and never entered the public consciousness, but deserve a listen.  Conversely, since I am opposed to celebrating bad music in any of its forms, several hits do not appear on this list on grounds of mawkishness (“Empty Garden”), cluelessness (“Nikita”…it is a bloody boy’s name in Russia, Bernie!), or giving shocking levels of offense (“Island Girl”).

I include here the album from which the song came, and a link to a noteworthy performance of the song.  Music is by Elton John, and lyrics are by Bernie Taupin, unless otherwise noted.  I do apologize for oftentimes being difficult toward Bernie Taupin.  He is capable of poignancy, and while often baffling, is almost never boring– but as a historian, and as a conscientious listener of music, I do need to take him to task sometimes for his absurd caricaturizations of other cultures, strange turns of phrase, and misogyny in the 70s.  (And to be fair, these were not uncommon among 1970s songwriters.)

100.  ”Bad Side of the Moon” (B-side): Released in 1970 as the flip side of “Border Song”, this is a track not familiar to many Elton fans, although it was a staple of his early live shows.  With a bombastic chorus common to many songs of John-Taupin’s early years, this song deserves far better than its current obscurity.

99.  ”Heavy Traffic” (Reg Strikes Back): The only song in the top 100 appearing from the tepid 1988 release Reg Strikes Back, it features some of the best piano fills that Elton has played on record, while the lyrics convey an intriguing ambiguity as to whether this song is about a traffic jam or drug smuggling.  A quirky bright spot during one of Elton’s longest dry periods.

98.  ”Step into Christmas” (single): A perennial favorite on Christmastime radio, this seasonal hit succeeds at creating a festive sonic landscape, thanks in part to the redoubtable Ray Cooper’s ability to rock the sleigh-bells.  With its multi-layered and echo-drenched atmosphere, it is an effective pastiche of Phil Spector’s Christmas tracks from the early 60s.  Perhaps the most bizarre element of this song is its long-forgotten B-side, titled “Ho Ho Ho (Who’d be a Turkey at Christmas).”

97.  ”The Heart of Every Girl” (Mona Lisa Smile soundtrack): Elton goes vintage in this track from the early 2000s.  Never released on a true Elton John album, he evokes a 1950s Tony Bennett style with smooth vocals and halcyon lyrics, apropos of the setting for the film Mona Lisa Smile.

96.  ”Blue Eyes” (Jump Up!, lyrics by Gary Osbourne) Let me rephrase my earlier comment- the entire 1980s was fallow decade for Elton artistically, with only a few brief glimpses of the old magic.  But 1982′s Jump Up album contained this beautifully simple track, a love song without some twist or other.  While a song like this could not sustain an entire career, it is a delightful tonic to the ambitious, cryptic, or bet-hedging love songs that make up the bulk of Elton’s catalog, memorable though they are.

95.  ”Harmony” (Goodbye Yellow Brick Road): This is the closing track to what many (though not I) consider to be Elton John’s finest album.   The boyish buoyancy Elton provides to lift the chorus is an intriguing counterpoint to the song’s harsh and critical verses, tinged with the smug condescension directed toward its female subject, an unfortunate hallmark of many Bernie Taupin lyrics.   (“Have you quit doing time for me, or are you still the same spoilt child?”)

94.  ”Legal Boys” (Jump Up!, lyrics by Tim Rice): I am shocked that I put two songs on this list from such an uneven album.  Yet this song merits inclusion in the top 100– if only because Elton’s partnership with Tim Rice anticipates their fruitful collaborations for the Lion King, El Dorado, and Aida.  The effect is striking– a dramatic, and appropriately theatrical, account of separation and divorce that succeeds where Elton’s earlier effort, 1981′s “Nobody Wins” fails in the most Europop fashion imaginable.

93.  ”Right Before My Eyes” (Lestat soundtrack): I probably would not have found this track had I not been directed to it by another list of Top 100 Elton songs.  Alas, it hails from one of Elton’s most ill-fated and critically panned projects, a musical on Anne Rice’s vampire saga designed to cash in on both the Wicked phenomenon and the Twilight phenomenon at the same time.  A shame, really, because this song, as performed by Elton when promoting his musical, is an affecting song about longful desire and the consequences of self-interest.  And it is made all the more poignant by the fact that this is one of the only love songs in John’s catalog narrated by a male character to another male character.  (For the most famous gay celebrity on the planet, the lyrical content of Elton’s material rarely ventures explicitly into that world.)

92.  ”High Flying Bird” (Don’t Shoot Me, I’m Only the Piano Player): The closing track to an album released at Elton John’s commercial zenith, this continues Bernie Taupin’s aviary thematics (see also “Cage the Songbird” and “Skyline Pigeon”).  A great analogy for seeing someone you love leave you for greener pastures without regret, it makes use of Elton’s penchant for writing soaring, swooping and anthemic choruses.  Sir Elton wisely revived this track for his 60th Birthday concert about five years ago at Madison Square Garden,  giving it some well-deserved exposure.

91.  ”The Captain and the Kid” (The Captain and the Kid): Another closing number from a fine album.  This sequel to Captain Fantastic takes their autobiographical journey up to the present day, and this is the very image that the song evokes– with the glamorous and sartorial Elton traversing the planet on a world tour, while Taupin seeks solace in the Mountain West.  ”You can’t go back,” it reminds us, “and if you try it fails.”  Other hardcore Elton fans regard this track more highly, but for me, it is too self-referential to generate much interest outside of its immediate context.  There isn’t anything in it for someone who isn’t already a fan.

90.  “Sad Songs (Say so Much)” (Breaking Hearts): One of my favorite stories in the Elton John legendarium is when Bernie dropped off a sheaf of lyrics to Elton’s home in the mid-80s, and walked back to his own flat, a process that took about 20 minutes.  By the time Taupin got home, Elton had composed the melody for this song, and left a short demo on his answering machine.

89.  “I Need You to Turn To” (Elton John)- Soft, understated, and sincere, this track is barely two minutes long, and is decorated with some harpsichord parts that give the song a distinct baroque air.  The piece is charmingly straightforward, and 1970′s Elton John album, filled to the brim with heavy orchestration and ambitious themes, could very well have collapsed of its own weight if not for this song’s counterbalance.

88.  “We All Fall in Love Sometimes” (Captain Fantastic and the Brown Dirt Cowboy)- This is the first part of the closing suite on the album, and perhaps the best song that Elton John and Bernie Taupin wrote about their musical partnership.  The song’s feel is distinctly European, with a minor chord sequence and the use of synthesizers typical of continental music at the time. It complements Bernie’s tale about two people learning their craft together, stumbling at first (“writing notions that were childish/simple tunes that tried to hide it.”)

87.  “Border Song” (Elton John)- This was Elton’s first true exercise in the gospel medium and is in many respects a success.  Covered by Aretha just before Elton’s version was released, it utilizes soulful vocals and some biblical allusions (“Holy Moses”) to carry across its message of universal bonhomie.  From all accounts, John wrote the third verse himself (“He’s my brother, let us live in peace.”), a rare contribution from a man terrified of writing his own lyrics.  Despite not being an especially big hit, this track found its way to Elton’s best-selling first greatest hits album in 1974.

86.  “I Never Knew Her Name” (Sleeping with the Past)- Speaking of impressive gospel-tinged tracks, this number adds a great deal to Elton’s Motown and soul homage, 1989′s Sleeping with the Past album.  Lyrically and musically, this song about watching an unrequited love tie the knot is far, far superior to his similar top 20 hit from 1983, “Kiss the Bride.”

85.  “Tonight” (Blue Moves)- Blue Moves has something of a mixed record among critics.  There are a number of undeniable high spots, but written as it was during a painful breakup for Bernie Taupin, the lyrics are consistently morose and dreary.  The burden was on Elton to come up with some engaging melodies and instrumental parts for this depressing material, and “Tonight” is one of the best results.  Creating a mini opus, Elton starts off the track with a quasi-classical introduction, bolstered by some orchestration by James Newton Howard.  (By the way, between Howard, Paul Buckmaster, Del Newman, and George Martin, Elton John  has had uncanny  luck getting good help to write the orchestral pieces so critical to his music.)

84.  “Blues Never Fade Away” (Captain and the Kid)- One of the darker themes within this autobiographical album is the death of dear friends and old colleagues along the way– how did Elton, one of the more reckless 70s pop stars, survive while so many others didn’t?  “Blues Never Fade Away” ponders this existential question- “how did we get so lucky?  (We’re) targets on a rifle range”, musing on the deaths of a young girl Bernie knew, a restauranteur who died of AIDS, fashion designer Gianni Versace, and John Lennon.

83.  “Passengers” (Breaking Hearts)- Elton John’s attempt to weigh in on apartheid, with the metaphor of passengers denied a berth on a train (echos of “freedom train”?)  With a mindless, repetitive refrain, and 80s synthetic versions of African instruments, “Passengers” is rather silly and juvenile, and its purpose isn’t very clear.  But then, the same could be said of apartheid.

82.  “Goodbye” (Madman Across the Water)- Madman is, like the Elton John album, a very good piece of work whose only major flaw is the weight of its orchestration and its onslaught of five or six-minute anthems.  “Goodbye” tries to wrap up the album in a quieter fashion, a maudlin (“I’m sorry I took your time/I am the poem that doesn’t rhyme”), but brief and simple, conclusion to an album that had no shortage of heavy, leaden tracks like “Tiny Dancer” and “Levon”.

81.  “Big Dipper” (A Single Man, lyrics by Gary Osbourne)- Despite what I wrote about “Right Before My Eyes” this song is, by any fair measure, the “gayest” song in Elton’s catalog.  Riddled with innuendo and camp, the song’s title is a triple-entendre, referring to the constellation, the British term for a roller coaster, and phallic imagery at the same time, all performed in the idiom of New Orleans dixieland swing.   Unbelievably, Elton got the entire Watford football club to sing the background vocals on this.  Must be nice to be the owner.

80.  “You Can Make History (Young Again)” (Love Songs)- It drives me batty when musicians greenlight a compilation album with “two new tracks” tacked on, which are of no interest to casual fans buying the compilation, yet compel hardcore fans who need to collect everything to buy an awful lot of redundant tracks in order to get the new material.  (My third favorite artist, Chicago, is notorious for this practice.)  I’ll give Elton a pass because of this sweet and heartfelt love song that grapples with the aging process.  As a historian, I suppose, the concept of making history young rather appeals to me.

79.  “Country Comfort” (Tumbleweed Connection)- The first of an amazing 6 songs on Tumbleweed Connection to make this list.  Part of Bernie’s idyllic imagery of the undeveloped West, it catalogs the narrator’s return to his rural roots, looking at alarming changes along the way– grandma’s farm is in disrepair, new machines are replacing manual labor.  The song has perhaps one more verse than necessary, but it is the only time in Elton’s career that he could have pulled such a song off– for the Elton John of even a few years later, wearing absurd costumes on stage, could not credibly sing about longing for a simpler life away from the public spotlight.

78.  “Roy Rogers” (Goodbye Yellow Brick Road)- Speaking of westerns, this song is also a nice indicator of Bernie’s love affair with that particular piece of Americana.  Elton makes sitting at home, watching old heroes on the television seem cathartic and almost triumphant, no small accomplishment.

77.  “On Dark Street” (The One)- This is an obscure album track off of an early 90s album that isn’t very well remembered.  The One is overcome with world-weariness, though, between songs about AIDS (“The Last Song”), industrial malaise (“Sweat it Out”), and the closing of factories (“The North”), making this an album whose political commentary is so subtle that it takes several listens to notice.  The best example of this, though, is “On Dark Street”, an upbeat track cleverly designed to disguise its sense of hopelessness.  A damning indictment of the Thatcher/Major administrations, it catalogs the pay cuts and contracted opportunities in the Manchester region, and has a great line- “I dreamed about an island, but all I got was a bucket of sand.”  I included this track in my list of 50 social justice songs, back in the day.

76.  “Crazy Water” (Blue Moves)-  A rousing upbeat track that cuts against the grain of this depressing album, the hero of the day is percussionist Ray Cooper.

the top 100 NBA players of all time: the consensus view

This feels like a facetious title, doesn’t it?  The NBA has only been in existence for less than 70 years, so “All time” doesn’t have quite the wallop it might ordinarily have.  It’s not like they have to compete against, say, late medieval NBA players.  Although that would be awesome.

Nevertheless, choosing the greatest players in its pantheon raises a number of questions of interest to a historian.  How, exactly, do you quantify or measure or compare greatness?  And is it anachronistic to compare very different eras, different standards, and in some cases different rules?  Consider someone like George Yardley– a late 1950s perennial all-star on the Fort Wayne Pistons (yes, I am afraid to say that the NBA was so low-market that Fort Wayne had its own NBA team.  As did Rochester.  As did Syracuse.  Come to think of it, I am amazed that the league survived when these were the sort of places where they placed their teams.)  Anyway- does Yardley, a 6-5 small forward who wasn’t terribly fast and used a set shot compare to the small forwards of today– Kevin Durant, or LeBron James, or Carmelo Anthony?  Although the older players had, perhaps, a deeper commitment to practice and the fundamentals, and endured a more physical and roughneck style of play, probably not.  In fact, the players of the 1990s would be playing in a very different environment today.  New medical technologies and training techniques have given uncannily long careers today.  Give Larry Bird access to today’s medical technology, and I’ll bet he lasts more than 12 seasons.  Ditto Ralph Sampson, Bernard King, Bill Walton and dozens of other players whose careers were derailed and cut short by injury.

I digress.  As part of my recent project of delving into the NBA’s social, cultural, and political history, I began exploring various lists where the top 100 players were ranked.  What was fascinating was the relative degree of consensus.  The same 12 players almost always showed up in the top 15- Jordan, Bill Russell, Wilt Chamberlain, Kareem, Magic, Larry Bird, Tim Duncan, Shaq, Kobe, Hakeem, Jerry West, Julius Erving.  Like clockwork.  Moreover, Jordan is always first.  And indeed, over 70 players showed up on the six different lists I consulted.  I cannot imagine that this level of consensus would exist if one were to rank the top 100 baseball or football players- but I am happy to be proven wrong.  So, I came up with a project of devising the consensus ranking of these NBA legends.

I simply wrote down the number at which each player was listed, and added the total.  The lower their total, therefore, the higher their rank.  If a player did not show up on one list, I added a 150 point penalty, and if he did not show up on multiple lists, I added a 160 point penalty for each list on which he did not appear.    And here are the results, for your consideration.  Do you agree with the “scholarly consensus” on where these stars stand with respect to each other?  (I have also listed the team(s) where the player spent his prime, and his active years, not counting any short-lived and ill-considered comeback attempts.)

1. Michael Jordan  (Bulls, 1984-1998)
2. Bill Russell  (Celtics, 1956-169)
3. Kareem Abdul-Jabbar    (Bucks/Lakers, 1970-1989)
4. Wilt Chamberlain   (Warriors/76ers, Lakers, 1959-1973)
5. Magic Johnson   (Lakers, 1979-1991)
6. Larry Bird  (Celtics, 1979-1992)
7. Kobe Bryant   (Lakers, 1996-present)
8. Shaquille O’Neal  (Magic/Lakers/Heat, 1992-2011)
9. Tim Duncan  (Spurs, 1997-present)
10. Oscar Robertson  (Royals/Bucks, 1960-1974)
11. Hakeem Olajuwon  (Rockets, 1984-2002)
12. Jerry West   (Lakers, 1960-1974)
13. Moses Malone  (Rockets/76ers, 1976-1995)
14. Elgin Baylor  (Lakers, 1958-1971)
15. Bob Pettit  (Hawks, 1954-1965)
16.  Karl Malone  (Jazz, 1985-2004)
17. Julius Erving  (76ers, 1976-1987)
18. John Havlicek  (Celtics, 1962-1978)
19. Charles Barkley  (76ers/Suns, 1984-2000)
20. Lebron James   (Cavs/Heat, 2003-present)
21. Bob Cousy  (Celtics, 1950-1963)
22. Kevin Garnett  (Timberwolves/Celtics, 1995-present)
23. Isaiah Thomas  (Pistons, 1981-1994)
24. David Robinson  (Spurs, 1989-2003)
25. Rick Barry (Warriors, 1965-67, 72-80)
26. George Mikan  (Lakers, 1947-54, 56)
27. John Stockton  (Jazz, 1984-2003)
28. Scottie Pippen (Bulls, 1986-2004)
29. Dirk Nowitzki (Mavericks, 1998-present)
30. Walt Frazier  (Knicks, 1967-1980)
31. Elvin Hayes  (Rockets/Bullets, 1968-1984)
32. Dave Cowens  (Celtics, 1970-1983)
33. Allen Iverson   (76ers, 1996-2010)
34. Kevin McHale  (Celtics, 1980-1993)
35. Dwyane Wade   (Heat, 2003-present)
36. Willis Reed  (Knicks, 1964-1974)
37. Dolph Schayes  (Nationals, 1948-1964)
38. Jason Kidd (Mavericks/Nets, 1995-present)
39. Patrick Ewing (Knicks, 1985-2002)
40. Steve Nash  (Mavericks/Suns, 1996-present)
41. George Gervin  (Spurs, 1976-1986)
42. Clyde Drexler  (Trailblazers/Rockets, 1983-1998)
43. Gary Payton (Supersonics, 1990-2007)
44. Nate Thurmond  (Warriors/Bulls, 1963-1977)
45. Wes Unseld  (Bullets, 1968-1981)
46. Jerry Lucas  (Royals/Knicks, 1963-1974)
47. Dominique Wilkins (Hawks, 1982-1999)
48. Bob McAdoo  (Braves/Lakers, 1972-1986)
49. Billy Cunningham  (76ers, 1965-1972, 74-76)
50. Nate Archibald  (Royals/Kings/Celtics, 1970-1984)
51.  Sam Jones (Celtics, 1957-1959)
52. Paul Arizin  (Warriors, 1950-1962)
53. Bill Walton  (Blazers, 1974-1987)
54. Paul Pierce  (Celtics, 1998-present)
55.  James Worthy (Lakers, 1982-1994)
56. Hal Greer  (76ers, 1958-1973)
57. Reggie Miller (Pacers, 1987-2005)
58.  Ray Allen (Bucks/Sonics/Celtics, 1996-present)
59. Bill Sharman  (Celtics, 1950-1961)
60. Dennis Johnson  (Sonics/Suns/Celtics, 1976-1990)
61. Robert Parish (Celtics, 1976-1997)
62. David Bing (Pistons, 1966-1978)
63.  Bernard King (Knicks, 1977-1991)
64. Pete Maravich  (Hawks/Jazz, 1970-1980)
65. Alex English (Nuggets, 1976-1991)
66. Earl Monroe  (Bullets/Knicks, 1967-1980)
67. Lenny Wilkens  (Hawks/Sonics, 1960-1975)
68. Dave DeBusschere  (Pistons/Knicks, 1962-1974)
69. Joe Dumars (Pistons, 1985-1999)
70. Artis Gilmore  (Spurs, 1976-1986)
71. Tommy Heinsohn  (Celtics, 1956-1965)
72. Adrian Dantley  (Jazz, 1976-1991)
73. Dennis Rodman  (Pistons/Bulls, 1986-2006)
74. Chris Webber  (Kings, 1993-2008)
75. Dwight Howard  (Magic, 2004-present)
76. David Thompson  (Nuggets, 1976-1984)
77. Chris Mullin (Warriors, 1985-2001)
78.  Bob Lanier (Pistons/Bucks, 1970-1984)
79. Neil Johnston  (Warriors, 1951-1959)
80. Walt Bellamy  (Bullets/Knicks, 1961-1974)
81. Tracy McGrady  (Magic/Rockets, 1997-2012)
82. Vince Carter  (Raptors, 1998-present)
83. Grant Hill (Pistons, 1994-present)
84. Alonzo Mourning (Hornets/Heat, 1992-2008)
85. Dikembe Mutombo  (Hawks/76ers, 1991-2009)
86. Sidney Moncrief  (Bucks, 1979-1991)
87. Gail Goodrich  (Lakers, 1965-1979)
88. Connie Hawkins (Suns, 1969-1976)
89. Tim Hardaway  (Warriors/Heat, 1989-2003)
90. Ed Macauley  (Celtics/Hawks, 1949-1959)
91. Jack Twyman   (Royals, 1955-1966)
92. Kevin Johnson (Suns, 1987-2000)
93. Bobby Dandridge (Bucks/Bullets, 1969-1981)
94. Kevin Durant  (Thunder, 2007-present)
95. Chris Paul  (Hornets/Clippers, 2005-present)
96. Spencer Haywood (Sonics, 1970-19800
97. Mitch Richmond  (Kings, 1988-2002)
98. Dan Issel  (Nuggets, 1976-1985)
99. Paul Westphal  (Suns, 1972-1984)
100. Pau Gasol (Grizzlies/Lakers, 1998-present)

Sources used: Bill Simmon’s Book of Basketball, Doug Collins’ NBA List Jam, SLAM magazine, a cooperative ranking from the Inside Hoops message board, and two anonymous blogs.

The All-Star House: the 435 Greatest Representatives

When talking with my colleague Neil about the All-Star Senate project, he jokingly asked me if I had done a similar project for the much more numerous House of Representatives.  As it turned out, I did- a year ago.  And just forgot to post it on the Northumbrian Countdown until my conversation with Neil.  So– here is my list for the greatest members of the House of all time, with respect to legislative accomplishment, parliamentarian skill, and when applicable, humanitarian vision.  To avoid repetition, no member of my All-Star Senate was eligible for this project, so that is why you won’t see Clay, Claude Pepper, and other prominent congressmen here.  The number of congressmen allotted to each state corresponds to the historical average of congressmen they have had since admission to the union, and the occasional personal bias (e.g. fleecing the South at the expense of New York and Massachusetts.  Reconstruction, fools!)  The total comes to 435, the number of voting members in the current House of Representatives.  I put in bold the names of figures who I thought were especially interesting, but are not well known, if any of you want to follow up on this project with some reading of your own.

Maine (4):

1. James G. Blaine (Republican, 1863-1876)
2. Thomas Reed (Republican, 1877-1899)
3. Charles Boutelle (Republican, 1883-1901)
4. Robert Hale (Republican, 1943-1959)

II.  New Hampshire (2):

1. John P. Hale (Free Soil, 1843-1845)
2. Robert C. Smith (Republican, 1985-1990)

III.  Vermont (3)

1. William Slade (Anti-Mason, 1832-1843)
2. Justin Morrill (Whig, Republican, 1855-1867)
3. Bernie Sanders (Independent, 1991-2007)

IV.  Massachusetts (16):

1. Fisher Ames (Federalist, 1789-1797)
2. Josiah Quincy (Federalist, 1805-1813)
3. John Quincy Adams (National Republican, Whig, 1831-1848)
4. Horace Mann (Whig, 1848-1853)
5. Nathaniel P. Banks (American, Republican, 1853-1857, 1865-1873, 1875-1879, 1889-1891)
6. Henry L. Dawes (Republican, 1857-1875)
7. Benjamin Butler (Republican, 1867-1875, 1877-1879)
8. George F. Hoar (Republican, 1869-1877)
9. John W. Weeks (Democrat, 1905-1913)
10. George Tinkham (Republican, 1915-1943)
11. Joseph William Martin Jr. (Republican, 1925-1967)
12. Tip O’Neil (Democrat, 1953-1987)
13. Silvio Conte (Republican, 1953-1991)
14. Robert Drinan (Democrat, 1971-1981)
15. Joe Moakley (Democrat, 1973-2001)
16. Barney Frank (Democrat, 1981-Present)

V.  Rhode Island (2):

1. Clark Burdick (Republican, 1919-1933)
2. John Fogarty (Democrat, 1941-1967)

VI.  Connecticut (5):

1. Roger Griswold (Federalist, 1795-1805)
2. Benjamin Talmadge (Federalist, 1801-1817)
3. Emilio Daddario (Democrat, 1959-1971)
4. Nancy Johnson (Republican, 1983-2003)
5. Rosie DeLauro (Democrat, 1991-Present)

VII.  New York (35):

1. Stephen Van Renssellaer (National Republican, 1822-1829)
2. Millard Fillmore (Whig, 1833-1835, 1837-1843)
3. Fernando Wood (Democrat, 1841-1843, 1863-1881)
4. Washington Hunt (Whig, 1843-1849)
5. John W. Taylor (D-R, National Republican, 1813-1833)
6. Reuben Fenton (Democrat, Republican, 1853-1864)
7. William A. Wheeler (Republican, 1863-1869, 1869-1877)
8. Sereno Payne (Republican, 1883-1914)
9. James Sherman (Republican, 1887-1909)
10. Lucius Littaeur (Republican, 1897-1907)
11. Meyer London (Socialist, 1915-1919, 1921-1923)
12. Bertrand Snell (Republican, 1915-1939)
13. Fiorello Laguardia (Republican, 1917-1919, 1923-1933)
14. Hamilton Fish III (Republican, 1920-1945)
15. Emanuel Celler (Democrat, 1923-1973)
16. Robert Bacon (Republican, 1923-1938)
17. James Wadsworth Jr. (Republican, 1933-1951)
18. Adam Clayton Powell Jr. (Democrat, 1945-1971)
19. Jacob Javits (Republican, 1947-1954)
20. Edna Kelly (Democrat, 1949-1959)
21. William E. Miller (Republican, 1951-1965)
22. Samuel Stratton (Democrat, 1959-1989)
23. Otis Pike (Democrat, 1961-1979)
24. Shirley Chisholm (Democrat, 1969-1983)
25. Jack Kemp (Republican, 1971-1989)
26. Bella Abzug (Democrat, 1971-1977)
27. Charles Rangel (Democrat, 1971-present)
28. Norman Lent (Republican, 1973-1993)
29. Benjamin Gilman (Republican, 1973-2003)
30. Geraldine Ferraro (Democrat, 1979-1985)
31. Sherwood Boehlert (Republican, 1983-2007)
32. Gary Ackerman (Democrat, 1983-present)
33. Amo Houghton (Republican, 1985-2005)
34. Louise Slaughter (Democrat, 1987-present)
35. Peter King (Republican, 1993-present)

VIII.  New Jersey (13):

1. Jonathan Dayton (Federalist, 1791-1799)
2. William McAdoo (Democrat, 1883-1891)
3. Charles A. Eaton (Republican, 1925-1953)
4. Charles Wolverton (Republican, 1927-1959)
5. Mary Norton (Democrat, 1933-1951)
6. Peter Rodino (Democrat, 1949-1989)
7. Edward J. Patten (Democrat, 1963-1980)
8. Joseph Minish (Democrat, 1963-1985)
9. James J. Howard (Democrat, 1965-1988)
10. William J. Hughes (Democrat, 1975-1995)
11. Chris Smith (Republican, 1981-present)
12. Rodney Frelinghuysen (Republican, 1995-present)
13. Rush Holt (Democrat, 1999-present)

IX.  Pennsylvania (27):

1. Frederick Muhlenberg (Pro and Anti-Administration, 1789-1797)
2. William Findley (Democratic-Republican, 1791-1799, 1803, 1817)
3. John Sergeant (D-R, National R., Whig, 1815-1823, 1827-1829, 1837-1841)
4. James Buchanan (Federalist, Democrat, 1821-1831)
5. Thomas McKennan (Anti-Mason, Whig, 1831-1839, 1842-1849)
6. Lewis Charles Levin (Know-Nothing, 1845-1851)
7. Thaddeus Stevens (Whig, Republican, 1849-1868)
8. Galusha A. Grow (Democrat, Republican, 1851-1863, 1894-1903)
9. John Covode (Whig, Republican, 1855-1863, 1867-1869)
10. William D. Kelly (Republican, 1861-1890)
11. Samuel J. Randall (Democrat, 1863-1890)
12. John Dalzell (Republican, 1887-1913)
13. James F. Burke (Republican, 1905-1915)
14. William S. Vare (Republican, 1912-1927)
15. James Wolfenden (Republican, 1928-1947)
16. Francis Walter (Democrat, 1933-1963)
17. Hugh Scott (Republican, 1941-1959)
18. Daniel J. Flood (Democrat, 1945-1947, 1949-1953, 1955-1980)
19. John P. Saylor (Democrat, 1949-1973)
20. Robert Nix (Democrat, 1958-1979)
21. Richard Schweiker (Republican, 1961-1969)
22. Gus Yatron (Democrat, 1961-1993)
23. Bud Shuster (Republican, 1973-2001)
24. John Murtha (Democrat, 1974-2010)
25. Paul Kanjorski (Democrat, 1985-2011)
26. Curt Weldon (Republican, 1987-2007)
27. Phil English (Republican, 1995-2009)

X. Delaware (2)

1. Louis McLane (Federalist, National Republican, 1817-1827)
2. Mike Castle (Republican, 1993-2011)

XI.  Maryland (9)

1. Samuel Smith (Democratic-Republican, 1793-1803, 1816-1822)
2. George Corbin Washington (Anti-Jacksonian, 1827-1837)
3. Henry Winter Davis (Democrat, Republican, 1855-1861, 1863-1865)
4. John Charles Linthincum (Democrat, 1911-1932)
5. Thomas D’Alesandro Jr. (Democrat, 1939-1947)
6. J. Glenn Beall (Republican, 1943-1953)
7. Parren Mitchell (Democrat 1971-1987)
8. Barbara Mikulski (Democrat, 1977-1987)
9. Steny Hoyer (Democrat, 1983-present)

XII.  Virginia (16)

1. James Madison (Pro and Anti-Administration, 1789-1797)
2. Richard Bland Lee (Pro-Administration, 1789-1795)
3. John Randolph of Roanoke, (D-R, 1799-1813, 1815-1817, 1819-1823)
4. Philip P. Barbour (Democratic-Republican, Democrat, 1814-1825, 1827-1830)
5. John Tyler (Democratic-Republican, 1816-1823)
6. Charles F. Mercer (Federalist, National Republican, Anti-Jacksonian, Whig, 1817-1839)
7. John Floyd (Democratic-Republican, 1817-1829)
8. Henry A. Wise (Democrat, Whig, 1833-1844)
9. Robert M.T. Hunter (Democrat, 1837-1843, 1845-1847)
10. John Randolph Tucker (Democrat, 1875-1887)
11. William Atkinson Jones (Democrat, 1891-1918)
12. Howard W. Smith (Democrat, 1931-1967)
13. Richard Harding Poff (Republican, 1953-1972)
14. Joel Broyhill (Republican, 1953-1974)
15. James Moran (Democrat, 1991-present)
16. Eric Cantor (Republican, 2001-present)

XIII.  North Carolina (8)

1. D.L. Russell (Greenback, 1879-1881)
2. Alonzo C. Shuford (Populist, 1893-1899)
3. Claude Kitchin (Democrat, 1901-1923)
4. Robert Doughton (Democrat, 1911-1953)
5. Harold D. Cooley (Democrat, 1934-1967)
6. Jim Broyhill (Republican, 1969-1986)
7. Charlie Rose III (Democrat, 1973-1997)
8. Howard Coble (Republican, 1985-present)

XIV.  Florida (12)

1. Paul Rogers (Democrat, 1955-1979)
2. Dante Fascell (Democrat, 1955-1993)
3. Sam Gibbons (Democrat, 1963-1997)
4. Bill Young (Republican, 1973-present)
5. Earl Hutto (Democrat, 1979-1995)
6. Bill McCollum (Republican, 1981-2001)
7. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (Republican, 1989-present)
8. Cliff Stearns (Republican, 1989-present)
9. Lincoln Diaz-Barlat (Republican, 1992-2011)
10. Joe Scarborough (Republican, 1994-2002)
11. Debbie Wasserman-Schultz (Democrat, 2005-present)
12. Alan Grayson (Democrat, 2009-2011)

XV.  Missouri (12):

1. John S. Phelps (Democrat, 1845-1863)
2. Francis P. Blair (Democrat, Unionist, 1857-1859, 1860, 1861-1862, 1863-1864)
3. Henry T. Blow (Republican, 1863-1867)
4. Richard P. Bland (Democrat, 1873-1895, 1897-1899)
5. Champ Clark (Democrat, 1893-1895, 1897-1921)
6. Richard Bartholdt (Republican, 1893-1915)
7. Dorsey Shackleford (Democrat, 1899-1919)
8. Milton Romjue (Democrat, 1917-1943)
9. Clarence Cannon (Democrat, 1923-1964)
10. Bill Clay (Democrat, 1969-2001)
11. Dick Gephardt (Democrat, 1977-2005)
12. Ike Skelton (Democrat, 1977-2011)

XVI.  South Carolina (9)

1. Langdon Cheves (Democratic-Republican, 1810-1815)
2. George McDuffie (Democrat, 1821-1834)
3. Preston Brooks (Democrat, 1853-1857)
4. Joseph Rainey (Republican, 1870-1879)
5. Asbury Francis Lever (Democrat, 1901-1919)
6. James F. Byrnes (Democrat, 1911-1925)
7. L. Mendell Rivers (Democrat, 1941-1970)
8. Jim Clyburne (Democrat, 1993-present)
9. Mark Sanford (Republican, 1995-2001)

XVII.  Georgia (9)

1. Alexander H. Stevens (Whig, Democrat, 1843-1859, 1873-1882)
2. Howell Cobb (Democrat, 1843-1853)
3. James Henderson Blount (Democrat, 1873-1893)
4. Charles Frederick Crisp (Democrat, 1883-1896)
5. Carl Vinson (Democrat, 1914-1965)
6. John S. Gibson (Democrat, 1941-1947)
7. Philip Landrum (Democrat, 1953-1977)
8. Newt Gingrich (Republican, 1979-1999)
9. John L. Lewis (Democrat, 1987-present)

XVIII.  Alabama (7)

1. Williamson Cobb (Democrat, 1846-1861)
2. Henry Steagall (Democrat, 1915-1943)
3. William B. Bankhead (Democrat, 1917-1940)
4. Carl Elliot (Democrat, 1949-1965)
5. Jack Edwards (Republican, 1965-1985)
6. John Hall Buchanan (Republican, 1965-1981)
7. William Flint Nichols (Democrat, 1967-1988)

XIX.  Mississippi (7)

1. Lucius Q. C. Lamar (Democrat, 1857-1860, 1873-1877)
2. John R. Lynch (Republican, 1873-1877, 1882-1883)
3. John Sharp Williams (Democrat, 1893-1909)
4. William Colmer (Democrat, 1933-1973)
5. James L. Whitten (Democrat, 1941-1995)
6. Gillespie V. Montgomery (Democrat, 1967-1997)
7. Trent Lott (Republican, 1973-1989)

XX.  Louisiana (7):

1. Benjamin Flanders (Unionist Republican, 1863-1864)
2. James Aswell Jr. (Democrat, 1913-1931)
3. Felix Edward Hebert (Democrat, 1941-1977)
4. Hale Boggs (Democrat, 1947-1972)
5. Otto Passman (Democrat, 1947-1977)
6. Bob Livingston (Republican, 1977-1999)
7. Joseph Cao (Republican, 2009-2011)

XXI.  Arkansas (5)

1. James M. Hines (Republican, 1867-1868)
2. Thomas C. McRae (Democrat, 1885-1903)
3. Wilbur C. Mills (Democrat, 1939-1977)
4. Brooks Hays (Democrat, 1943-1959)
5. John P. Hammerschmidt (Republican, 1967-1993)

XXII.  Kentucky (10)

1. Matthew Lyon (D-R, 1797-1801, 1803-1811)
2. Richard Mentor Johnson (D-R, Democrat, 1807-1819, 1829-1837)
3. Charles A. Wickliffe (Democrat, Whig, Unionist, 1823-1833, 1831-1863)
4. Linn Boyd (Democrat, 1835-1837, 1839-1855)
5. J. Proctor Knott (Democrat, 1867-1871, 1875-1883)
6. John G. Carlisle (Democrat, 1877-1889)
7. Alben Barkley (Democrat, 1913-1927)
8. Brent Spence (Democrat, 1931-1963)
9. Romano Mazzolli (Democrat, 1971-1995)
10. Hal Rogers (Republican, 1981-present)

XXIII.  Tennessee (11)

1. James K. Polk (Democrat, 1825-1839)
2. Davy Crockett (Anti-Jacksonian, 1827-1831, 1833-1835)
3. John Bell (Democrat, Whig, 1827-1841)
4. Horace Maynard (Whig, Republican, 1857-1863, 1866-1875)
5. Walter Brownlow (Republican, 1896-1910)
6. Cordell Hull (Democrat, 1907-1921, 1923-1931)
7. Estes Kefauver (Democrat, 1939-1949)
8. Joe L. Evins (Democrat, 1947-1977)
9. Marilyn Lloyd (Democrat, 1975-1995)
10. Jimmy Duncan (Republican, 1988-present)
11. Harold Ford Jr. (Democrat, 1997-2007)

XXIV.  West Virginia (4)

1. William Lynn Wilson (Democrat, 1883-1895)
2. Nathan Goff, Jr. (Republican, 1883-1889)
3. Jennings Randolph (Democrat, 1933-1947)
4. Nick Rahall (Democrat, 1977-present)

XXV.  Ohio (20):

1. Thomas Corwin (Anti-Jacksonian, Republican, 1833-1840, 1859-1861,
2. Robert C. Scheneck, (Whig, Republican, 1843-1851, 1853-1871)
3. Joshua R. Giddings (Whig, Free Soil, Republican, 1838-1858)
4. John A. Bingham (Whig, Republican, 1855-1863, 1865-1873)
5. George Pendleton (Democrat, 1857-1865)
6. Clement Vallandigham (Democrat, 1858-1863)
7. James Garfield (Republican, 1861-1881)
8. William McKinley (Republican, 1877-1883, 1885-1891)
9. Nicholas Longworth (Republican, 1903-1913, 1915-1931)
10. Roy G. Fitzgerald (Republican, 1921-1931)
11. Francis Bolton (Republican, 1940-1969)
12. William M. McCullough (Republican, 1947-1973)
13. John Ashbrook (Republican, 1961-1982)
14. Clarence E. Miller (Republican, 1967-1993)
15. Louis Stokes (Democrat, 1969-1999)
16. Mike Oxley (Republican, 1981-2007)
17. Mary Kaptur (Democrat, 1983-present)
18. John Boehner (Republican, 1991-present)
19. Rob Portman (Republican, 1993-2005)
20. Dennis Kucinich (Democrat, 1997-present)

XXVI.  Indiana (11):

1. Caleb Blood Smith (Whig, 1843-1849)
2. William H. English (Democrat, 1853-1861)
3. Schuyler Colfax (Republican, 1855-1869)
4. Daniel W. Voorhes (Democrat, 1869-1873)
5. James E. Watson (Republican, 1895-1905)
6. Louis Ludlow (Democrat, 1929-1949)
7. Samuel Pettingill (Democrat, 1931-1939)
8. Charles A. Halleck (Republican, 1935-1969)
9. John Brademas (Democrat, 1959-1981)
10. Lee Hamilton (Democrat, 1965-1999)
11. Mike Pence (Republican, 2001—present)

XXVII.  Illinois (21):

1. John Alexander McClerand (Democrat, 1843-1851, 1859-1861)
2. Abraham Lincoln (Whig, 1847-1849)
3. Elihu B. Washburne (Whig, Republican, 1853-1869)
4. Owen Lovejoy (Republican, 1857-1864)
5. John F. Farnsworth (Republican, 1857-1861, 1863-1873)
6. Joe Cannon (Republican, 1873-1891, 1893-1913, 1915-1923)
7. William M. Springer (Democrat, 1875-1895)
8. James Robert Mann (Republican, 1897-1922)
9. Henry Thomas Rainley (Democrat, 1903-1921, 1923-1934)
10. Ira Copley (Progressive, Republican, 1911-1923)
11. Oscar De Priest (Republican, 1929-1935)
12. Leslie Arends (Republican, 1935-1974)
13. William L. Dawson (Democrat, 1943-1970)
14. Sidney R. Yates (Democrat, 1949-1963, 1965-1999)
15. Robert H. Michael (Republican, 1957-1995)
16. Dan Rosetenkowski (Democrat, 1959-1995)
17. Dennis Hastert (Republican, 1987-2007)
18. Bobby Rush (Democrat, 1993-present)
19. Luis Gutierrez (Democrat, 1993-present)
20. Ray LaHood (Republican, 1995-2009)
21. Judy Biggert (Republican, 1999-present)

XXVIII.  Michigan (14):

1. Robert McClelland (Democrat, 1843-1849)
2. Kinsley Bingham (Democrat, 1847-1851)
3. Julius C. Burrows (Republican, 1873-1875, 1879-1883, 1885-1893)
4. Joseph W. Fordney (Republican, 1899-1923)
5. Roy Woodruf (Progressive, Republican, 1913-1915, 1921-1953)
6. John Dingell Sr. (Democrat, 1933-1955)
7. George Anthony Dondero (Republican, 1933-1957)
8. Gerald R. Ford (Republican, 1949-1973)
9. John Dingell Jr. (Democrat, 1955-present)
10. Martha Griffiths (Democrat, 1955-1974)
11. John Conyers, Jr. (Democrat, 1965-present)
12. Guy Vander Jadt (Republican, 1966-1993)
13. David Bonoir (Democrat, 1977-2003)
14. Paul Henry (Republican, 1985-1993)

XXIX.  Wisconsin (11)

1. Charles Durkee (Free Soil, 1949-1953)
2. Henry A. Cooper (Republican, 1893-1919, 1921-1931)
3. John Esch (Republican, 1899-1921)
4. Irvine Lenroot (Republican, 1909-1919)
5. Victor Berger (Socialist, 1911-1913, 1922-1929)
6. Melvin Laird (Republican, 1953-1969)
7. David Obey (Democrat, 1969-2011)
8. Les Aspin (Democrat, 1971-1993)
9. Tom Petri (Republican, 1979-present)
10. Paul Ryan (Republican, 1999-present)
11. Tammy Baldwin (Democrat, 1999-present)

XXX.  Minnesota (9)

1. William Windom (Republican, 1859-1869)
2. Ignatius Donnally (Republican, 1863-1869)
3. Andrew Volstead (Republican, 1903-1923)
4. Harold Knudsen (Republican, 1917-1949)
5. Walter Judd (Republican, 1943-1963)
6. John Blatnik (Democrat, 1947-1975)
7. Eugene McCarthy (Democrat, 1949-1959)
8. Jim Oberstar (Democrat, 1975-2011)
9. Collin Peterson (Democrat, 1991-present)

XXXI.  Iowa (8)

1. James Weaver (Greenback, Populist, 1879-1881, 1885-1889)
2. William Peters Hepburn (Republican, 1881-1887, 1893-1909)
3. David B. Henderson (Republican, 1883-1903)
4. Gilbert Haugen (Republican, 1899-1933)
5. William R. Green (Republican, 1911-1928)
6. Lester J. Dickinson (Republican, 1919-1931)
7. John Culver (Democrat, 1965-1975)
8. Jim Leach (Republican, 1977-2007)

XXXII.  North Dakota (2)

1. William Lemke (Republican/Non-Partisan League, 1933-1941, 1943-1950)
2. Byron Dorgan (Democrat, 1981-1993)

XXXIII.  South Dakota (2)

1. Charles H. Burke (Republican, 1899-1907, 1909-1915)
2. Karl Mundt  (Republican, 1939-1948)

XXXIV.  Nebraska (6)

1. William McKeighan (Populist, 1891-1895)
2. William Jennings Bryan (Democrat, 1891-1895)
3. Moses Kincaid (Republican, 1903-1922)
4. Carl Curtis (Republican, 1943-1955)
5. Virginia D. Smith (Republican, 1975-1991)
6. Doug Bereuter (Republican, 1979-2004)

XXXV.  Kansas (7)

1. Martin Franklin Conway (Republican, 1859-1863)
2. John Davis (Populist, 1891-1895)
3. Jerry Simpson (Populist, 1891-1895, 1897-1899)
4. Daniel Read Anthony, Jr. (Republican, 1907-1929)
5. Frank Carlson (Republican, 1935-1947)
6. Pat Roberts (Republican, 1981-1997)
7. Todd Tiahrt  (Republican, 1995-2011)

XXXVI.  Montana (2):

1. Jeanette Rankin (Republican, 1917-1919, 1941, 1943)
2. Pat Williams (Democrat, 1979-1997)

XXXVII.  Idaho (2)

1. Burton French (Republican, 1903-1909, 1911-1915, 1917-1933)
2. Compton White (Democrat, 1933-1947, 1949-1951)

XXXVIII.  Wyoming (1)

1. Frank Mondell (Republican, 1899-1923)

XXXIX.  Utah (2)

1. Don B. Colton (Republican, 1921-1933)
2. K. Gunn McKay (Democrat, 1971-1981)

XL.  Colorado (5)

1. John F. Shafroth (Silver Republican, 1895-1904)
2. Edward Thomas Taylor (Democrat, 1909-1941)
3. Wayne Aspinall (Democrat, 1949-1973)
4. Pat Schroeder (Democrat, 1973-1997)
5. Tom Tancredo (Republican, 1999-2009)

XLI.  Oklahoma (6)

1. Bird Segle McGuire (Republican, 1907-1915)
2. James S. Davenport (Democrat, 1909-1919)
3. Wilburn Cartwright (Democrat, 1927-1943)
4. Carl Albert (Democrat, 1947-1977)
5. James Robert Jones (Democrat, 1973-1987)
6. J.C. Watts (Republican, 1995-2003)

XLII. Texas (22)

1. John Henninger Reagan (Democrat, 1857-1861, 1875-1883)
2. John Nance Garner (Democrat, 1903-1933)
3. Sam Rayburn (Democrat, 1913-1961)
4. Hatton Summers (Democrat, 1913-1947)
5. Morris Sheppard (Democrat, 1913-1940)
6. John Marvin Jones (Democrat, 1917-1940)
7. Wright Patman (Democrat, 1929-1976)
8. Martin Dies, Jr. (Democrat, 1931-1945, 1953-1958)
9. Albert Thomas (Democrat, 1937-1966)
10. George Mahon (Democrat, 1935-1979)
11. Jack Brooks (Democrat, 1953-1995)
12. Jim Wright (Democrat, 1955-1989)
13. Henry Gonzalez (Democrat, 1961-1999)
14. J. J. Pickle (Democrat, 1963-1995)
15. Kika de la Garza (Democrat, 1965-1997)
16. Charles Wilson (Democrat, 1973-1996)
17. Ron Paul (Republican, 1976-1977, 1979-1985, 1997-2013)
18. Ralph Hall (Democrat, Republican, 1981-present)
19. Dick Armey (Republican, 1985-2005)
20. Tom DeLay (Republican, 1985-2006)
21. Lamar S. Smith (Republican, 1987-present)
22. Eddie Bernice Jordan (Democrat, 1993-present)

XLIII.  New Mexico (3)

1. Joseph Montoya (Democrat, 1957-1964)
2. Bill Richardson (Democrat, 1983-1997)
3. Heather Wilson (Republican, 1998-2009)

XLIV.  Arizona (5)

1. John Jacob Rhodes (Republican, 1953-1983)
2. Morris Udall (Democrat, 1961-1991)
3. John McCain (Republican, 1983-1987)
4. Raul Grijalva (Democrat, 2003-present)
5. Gabrielle Giffords (Democrat, 2007-2012)

XLV.  Nevada (3)

1. Francis G. Newlands (Democrat, 1903-1917)
2. Walter Bering (Democrat, 1949-1953, 1053-1973)
3. Barbara Vucanovich (Republican, 1983-1997)

XLVI.  California (25)

1. William Rosencrans (Democrat, 1881-1885)
2. Julius Kahn (Republican, 1899-1903, 1905-1924)
3. Joseph Knowland (Republican, 1904-1915)
4. John A. Elston (Progressive, 1915-1921)
5. Phil Swing (Republican, 1921-1933)
6. Bertrand Gearheart (Republican, 1935-1949)
7. Jerry Voorhis (Democrat, 1937-1947)
8. Richard Nixon (Republican, 1947-1951)
9. James Roosevelt (Democrat, 1947-1957)
10. James B. Utt (Republican, 1953-1970)
11. John E. Moss (Democrat, 1953-1978)
12. Alphonzo Bell Jr. (Republican, 1961-1977)
13. George Brown Jr. (Democrat, 1963-1971, 1973-1999)
14. Pete McCloskey (Republican, 1967-1983)
15. Barry Goldwater Jr. (Republican, 1969-1983)
16. Pete Stark (Democrat, 1973-present)
17. Henry Waxman (Democrat, 1975-present)
18. Norman Mineta (Democrat, 1975-1995)
19. Robert Dornan (Republican, 1977-1983, 1985-1997)
20. Duncan Hunter (Republican, 1981-2009)
21. David Drier (Republican, 1981-present)
22. Nancy Pelosi (Democrat, 1987-present)
23. Christopher Cox (Republican, 1989-2005)
24. Xavier Beccera (Democrat, 1993-present)
25. Jane Harman (Democrat, 1993-1999, 2001-2011)

XLVII: Oregon (4)-

1. Willis C. Hawley (Republican, 1907-1933)
2. Les AuCoin (Democrat, 1971-1993)
3. Peter DeFazio (Democrat, 1987-Present)
4. Earl Blumenauer (Democrat, 1996-Present)

XLVIII.  Washington (6)

1. Wesley Livsey Jones (Republican, 1909-1932)
2. William LaFollette (Republican, 1911-1919)
3. Albert Johnson (Republican, 1913-1933)
4. Tom Foley (Democrat, 1965-1995)
5. Norman Dicks (Democrat, 1977-present)
6. Jim McDermott (Democrat, 1989-present)

XLIX.  Alaska (1)

1. Don Young (Republican, 1973-present)

L.  Hawaii (2)

1. Spark Matsunaga (Democrat, 1963-1977)
2. Patsy Mink (Democrat, 1965-1977, 1990-2002)

An All-Celebrity Senate? Alex Voltaire speculates…

The 2012 presidential election was barely recorded history before the speculation began on the 2014 mid-term elections.  Alas, with a perpetual need to raise funds and remind voters you exist, today’s statesman is trapped into a never-ending cycle of campaigning- even the U.S. senator, with a lofty six year term.  One of the more interesting rumors about 2014 involved country singer and actress Ashley Judd, challenging Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell in his home state of Kentucky.  Soon, even more outlandish rumors surfaced– James Taylor running in the special election for John Kerry’s old seat?  Geraldo Rivera running as a Republican in New Jersey when Frank Lautenberg retires?

All of this got your faithful blogger to thinking– what if the eligibility requirements for the Senate were altered in such a way that only celebrities could run for office?   Now- would the liberal inclinations many perceive in Hollywood and the music industry alter the partisan composition of Congress?  Could such a legislative body still function?

So, I set about creating a list of who would serve in our Celebrity Senate.  Of course, just like in real life, there had to be two people per state.  I bent the rules a bit for representation– if a celebrity was born in a state, or grew up in a state, or even had a vacation home in the state, it could count.  Any place, essentially, where our star or starlet could credibly say “I’m returning to my roots, and taking (your state’s name here)’s values to Washington!”  I then determined who would be the most likely politically engaged celebrities to run, and what party they would belong to.  One thing I could not do was extrapolate their party affiliation based on stereotypes (i.e., a PETA supporter was probably a Democrat, or an NRA supporter was probably a Republican)- there had to be a formal endorsement of a candidate, a clear declaration of ideology, or a money trail of political donations.  For high-population states with lots of celebrities, I tried to choose the ones who could most plausibly get elected in their state under ideal conditions.  For example, in Michigan, a gun-toting jackass who threatens the president (*cough*Ted Nugent) probably couldn’t win, but a more civil Republican like Kid Rock very well might.  Finally, the celebrities at hand could not have staked their claim to fame principally on politics or political commentary– so, no talk-radio, no journalists, no television anchors.  (This, sadly, robbed us of Jon Stewart representing New York and Rush Limbaugh representing Missouri.)

I tried to respect each state’s political inclinations, but it didn’t always work.  Blue states like Maryland and Vermont ended up sending two Republicans to the Senate, while red enclaves like Mississippi and South Carolina sent Democrats to D.C.  I have my list here, as follows, with some commentary at the end:

1. James Taylor (folk-rock musician)- Massachusetts- Democrat
2. Matt Damon (actor)- Massachusetts- Democrat
3. Ken Burns (documentarian)- New Hampshire- Democrat
4. Sarah Silverman (comedienne)- New Hampshire- Democrat
5. Stephen King (author)- Maine- Democrat
6. Noel Paul Stookey (folk musician)- Maine- Democrat
7. James Woods (actor)- Rhode Island- Republican
8. Seth McFarlane (television writer)- Rhode Island- Democrat
9. Orson Bean (actor)- Vermont- Republican
10. Joe Perry (musician)- Vermont- Republican
11. John Ratzenberger (actor)- Connecticut- Republican
12. Vince McMahon (professional wrestling impresario)- Connecticut- Republican
13. Alec Baldwin (actor)- New York- Democrat
14. Tina Fey (actress, writer)- New York- Democrat
15. Bruce Springsteen (musician)- New Jersey- Democrat
16. Alan Alda (actor)- New Jersey- Democrat
17. Bill Cosby (actor, comedian)- Pennsylvania- Democrat
18. Lynn Swann (athlete)- Pennsylvania- Republican
19. Stephen Marley (musician)- Delaware- Democrat
20. Valerie Bertinelli (actress)- Delaware- Democrat
21. Tom Clancy (author)- Maryland- Republican
22. Calvin Ripken, Jr. (athlete)- Maryland- Republican
23. Warren Beatty (actor)- Virginia- Democrat
24. Barbara Kingsolver (author)- Virginia- Democrat
25. Sidney Poitier (actor)- Florida- Democrat
26. Andy Garcia (actor)- Florida- Republican
27. Michael W. Smith (musician)- West Virginia- Republican
28. Mary Lou Retton (athlete)- West Virginia- Republican
29. Richard Petty (race-car driver)- North Carolina- Republican
30. Maya Angelou (poet)- North Carolina- Democrat
31. Pat Conroy (author)- South Carolina- Democrat
32. Elizabeth Colbert Busch (Stephen Colbert’s sister)- South Carolina- Democrat
33. Travis Tritt (musician)- Georgia- Republican
34. Jeff Foxworthy (comedian)- Georgia- Republican
35. John Grisham (author)- Mississippi- Democrat
36. Morgan Freeman (actor)- Mississippi- Democrat
37. Karl Malone (athlete)- Louisiana- Republican
38. Tim McGraw (musician)- Louisiana- Democrat
39. Charles Barkley (athlete)- Alabama- Independent
40. Taylor Hicks (musician)- Alabama- Republican
41. Al Green (musician)- Arkansas- Democrat
42. Billy Bob Thornton (actor)- Arkansas- Democrat
43. Gretchen Wilson (musician)- Missouri- Republican
44. Ed Asner (actor)- Missouri- Democrat
45. Fred Thompson (actor)- Tennessee- Republican
46. Samuel L. Jackson (actor)- Tennessee- Democrat
47. George Clooney (actor)- Kentucky- Democrat
48. Ashley Judd (musician)- Kentucky- Democrat
49. Drew Carey (comedian)- Ohio- Republican
50. Jerry Springer (talk-show host)- Ohio- Democrat
51. Peyton Manning (athlete)- Indiana- Republican
52. John Cougar Mellencamp (musician)- Indiana- Democrat
53. Oprah Winfrey (talk-show host)- Illinois- Democrat
54. Roger Ebert (critic)- Illinois- Democrat
55. Aretha Franklin (musician)- Michigan- Democrat
56. Kid Rock (musician)- Michigan-Republican
57. Bart Starr (athlete)- Wisconsin- Republican
58. Ron Kovic (author)- Wisconsin- Democrat
59. Garrison Keiller (radio personality)- Minnesota- Democrat
60. Al Franken (comedian)- Minnesota- Democrat
61. Fred Grandy (actor)- Iowa- Republican
62. Kurt Warner (athlete)- Iowa- Republican
63. Phil Jackson (athlete, coach)- North Dakota- Democrat
64. Angie Dickinson (actress)- North Dakota- Democrat
65. January Jones (actress)- South Dakota- Democrat
66. Shawn Colvin (musician)- South Dakota- Democrat
67. Warren Buffett (investor)- Nebraska- Democrat
68. D. Lawrence Whitney (Larry the Cable Guy)- Nebraska- Republican
69. R. Lee Ermy (actor)- Kansas- Republican
70. Kirstie Alley (actress)- Kansas- Democrat
71. John Elway (athlete)- Colorado- Republican
72. Duane “Dog” Chapman (bounty hunter)- Colorado- Republican
73. Harrison Ford (actor)- Wyoming- Democrat
74. John Perry Barlow (lyricist)- Wyoming- Natural Law Party/Independent
75. Ben Stein (actor, game show host)- Idaho- Republican
76. Bruce Willis (actor)- Idaho- Republican
77. Ted Turner (media guru)- Montana- Democrat
78. Patrick Duffy (actor)- Montana- Democrat
79. Shawn Bradley (athlete)- Utah- Republican
80. Donny Osmond (musician, talk show host)- Utah- Republican
81. Merle Haggard (musician)- Oklahoma- Democrat
82. Anita Bryant (musician)- Oklahoma- Republican
83. Wayne Newton (musician)- Nevada- Republican
84. Andre Agassi (athlete)- Nevada- Democrat
85. Linda Ronstadt (musician)- Arizona- Democrat
86. Alice Cooper (musician)- Arizona- Republican
87. Neil Patrick Harris (actor, Alex Voltaire lookalike)- New Mexico- Democrat
88. Val Kilmer (actor)- New Mexico- Democrat
89. Gary Busey (actor)- Texas- Republican
90. Chuck Norris (actor, martial artist)- Texas- Republican
91. Barbara Streisand (musician, actress)- California- Democrat
92. George Takei (actor)- California- Democrat
93. Bill Walton (athlete)- Oregon- Democrat
94. Matt Groening (television writer)- Oregon- Democrat
95. Bill Nye (scientist, television personality)- Washington- Democrat
96. Ken Jennings (game show contestant)- Washington- Democrat
97. Todd Palin (First Dude, snowmobiler)- Alaska- Republican
98. Curt Schilling (athlete)- Alaska- Republican
99. Bette Midler (musician, actress)- Hawaii- Democrat
100. Woody Harrelson (actor)- Hawaii- Democrat

Here’s the statistics– 59 Democrats, 39 Republicans, two Third-party guys (the mercurial NBA veteran Charles Barkley and Grateful Dead lyricist John Barlow.)  If this seems like a rout for the Democrats, you are right, it is.  However, these numbers are almost identical to the Senate that served from 2009 to 2011, and the Democrats would require either Barkley or Barlow’s help to reach the crucial filibuster-proof majority of 60 votes.  Ergo, celebrity culture is not, in fact, any more Democratic-leaning than the voting public was 4 years ago.

I like this Senate a lot– don’t you?  You get high comedy, astute social observations, and in Orson Bean,  Morgan Freeman, and especially Sidney Poitier, a great deal of dignitas, a quality I wish to see restored to the Senate.   But good heavens- we have some messes in here, don’t we?  Between Gary Busey, Alec Baldwin, and Val Kilmer, you could hold a subcommittee meeting in rehab or anger management class.  Majority Leader Oprah will announce that there is a $100 Target gift card under every senator’s seat.  R. Lee Ermy will shout insults at everybody in a traumatizing flashback to his drill sergeant days, while Phil Jackson zones out zen-Buddhist style, and diagrams a way to penetrate through the opposition to get to the Senate floor.  Think about Tina Fey, Larry the Cable Guy, Sarah Silverman, Drew Carey, and Jeff Foxworthy trading barbs in committee rooms, or Joe Perry, James Taylor, John Mellencamp, and Bruce Springsteen having a jam session in the spacious Senate cloakroom.  And the few people in the chamber who are actually knowledgeable and focused enough to be competent lawmakers– Ben Stein, Warren Buffett, and Bill Nye– will fervently and thanklessly do the people’s work as George Clooney and Harrison Ford head to happy hour for a martini.

Some other notes:

• One celebrity (Al Franken) remains in the Senate, one (Fred Thompson) comes out of retirement, and one (Fred Grandy- who played Gopher on The Love Boat) is an ex-congressman who gets bumped up to the Senate.
• The number of African-Americans serving goes up– from 2 in real life (and both appointed, at that), to 12, nearly hitting their exact proportion in the U.S. population.  Also, one Asian-American (Takei), and one Hispanic (Garcia).
• The number of women actually goes down slightly, from 20 to 18.
• If you think this project is silly, consider the following: in the last 30 days, the Senate’s members have had a DUI (Michael Crapo), a possible money-laundering-plus-Dominican-Republic-prostitution scandal (Robert Menendez), and even some alarming neo-McCarthyism at the Chuck Hagel hearing (Ted Cruz).  Would the 100 celebrities I picked really be appreciably more dysfunctional?
• I toyed with the idea of putting Arnold Schwarzenegger on the list, but given that he secretly fathered his maid’s child and he left the governorship deeply unpopular, I don’t think he would win, and there would be plenty of Democratic celebrities eager to run against him.  If pitted against Babs, Arnold would probably get the blue-collar vote, the frat boy vote, and the anti-homicidal robot from the future vote, but most other demographics fall in line for Streisand.  If this were 2009, Arnold would probably win easily, but not anymore, methinks.
• My favorite delegation is from Washington– wouldn’t Ken Jennings and Bill Nye actually be a great pair of representatives in real life?