Richard Harris, "My Boy"

OK, this song deserves a twin-spin. When my friend Mike claimed in yesterday's comments that Richard Harris's original was the superior version, I decided it was worth revisiting. (It also gives me a chance to correct a failed fact check: Harris released several singles between "MacArthur Park" and "My Boy," which did not come until 1972.)

I'm still standing by Elvis Presley's subsequent bigger hit with it. One thing Elvis had going for him was that, after years of recording hundreds of tracks, he by this point had developed an uncanny ability to correct himself within milliseconds on the fly melodically, ensuring he'd never thoroughly flub a note as Harris reliably did every time he sang. Unfortunately, this didn't carry over to correcting himself lyrically - pills make for sloppy copy - and so in his "My Boy," "because" became "becod" - three times. But damn he was still a true salesman of that magnificent melody.

So back to Richard Harris - who I actually did not know until yesterday played Dumbledore, such is the blind spot in my pop-culture radar. I know him as Camelot and a Man Called Horse and a man who in an odd and frankly uncomfortable way resembles my biological father in this clip of him singing "My Boy."

Harris acquits himself a bit better in the studio version, though something just doesn't feel quite right. Maybe it's the way he ends his line with flourish, at moments where I wouldn't think flourish was called for.

Or maybe I'm just really uncomfortable with the scenario as rendered by someone more intrinsically believable than caricature-ready '70s Elvis. Harris forces the boy to be aware of and think about every argument he's had with his wife, the boy's mother. How much it hurts him to stay. And frankly, I'm dubious as to the effectiveness of "staying together for the sake of the children" in the first place. Oh, and: "If I stay"? Is this ongoing negotiation? Elvis, being Elvis, inherently has enough ironic distance from his material to get away with this. Richard Harris, being such a good actor, is all too believable as a father who's threatening to inflict some serious psychic pain and weight on his beloved son. Good thing he was still asleep.

I'm still thinking about this one.