Sunday June 5, 2022 “Everything I Own” Bread
We’ve never had the David Gates band Bread on song of the day before because I always want to seem hip and detached, a musical elitist and purveyor of clever songs by progressive artists, about timely things and not necessarily moved at all by popular music, but I heard this song on the radio the other day and it just crushed me.
And perhaps as importantly it reminded me that David Gates wrote some perhaps underappreciated classics, so I put aside my prejudices and just went with the music.
Let’s start at the beginning with multi-instrumentalist, singer/songwriter David Gates who would be in a high school band with fellow classmate and future musical star Leon Russell and then he would go on to Oklahoma University where he was studying law and pre-med but would ultimately be drawn back into music writing the 1964 top five hit “Popsicles & Icicles” for the Murmaids (spelling correct).
You know my fascination with band names and the convoluted way they are arrived at, well this one is pretty straightforward according to David Gates who said, “A bread truck came along right at the time we were trying to think of a name. We had been saying, "How about bush, telephone pole? Ah, bread truck, bread." It began with a B, like the Beatles and the Bee Gees. Bread also had a kind of universal appeal. It could be taken a number of ways. Of course, for the entire first year people called us the Breads.”
Bread would have ten top twenty hits and sell more than ten million albums.
Stay safe and well…and let’s make this a guilty pleasure for me and anyone else who might enjoy this song and the band Bread (David Gates).