This song has always hit very close to home for me, having seen my father for the last time in 1970 and then my parents divorcing in 1972 when this monster-hit was always on the radio...The still-beating heart of the soundtrack of my childhood. — 180 Proof
Beginning with an extended instrumental introduction (3:53 in length), each of the song's three verses is separated by extended musical passages, in which Whitfield brings various instrumental textures in and out of the mix. A solo plucked bass guitar part, backed by hi-hat cymbals drumming, establishes the musical theme, a simple three-note figure; the bass is gradually joined by other instruments, including a blues guitar, wah-wah guitar, electric piano, handclaps, strings and solo trumpet; all are tied together by the ever-present bass guitar line and repeating hi-hat rhythm. — Wiki - 'Papa Was a Rollin' Stone'
Thanks for posting that list. I'd only become aware of a number of those songs years later as a (pre)teen when my started listening to music in earnest. — 180 Proof
"Papa was a Rollin' Stone", however, was played a lot back then in the Bronx, Brooklyn & Harlem (places where I'd had family). Many black kids in the early 70s, not just me and my brother, had 'dead beat dads' or 'absentee fathers' and were growing up in single mother homes (or raised by grandparents or in foster care). — 180 Proof
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=i-R9qiS_n50
Full circle: "Papa was a Rollin' Stone" because he was raised to be a "Manish Boy". No wonder I've gathered no moss ... :sweat: — 180 Proof
"Mannish Boy" features a repeating stop-time figure on one chord throughout the song and is credited to Waters, Mel London, and Bo Diddley.[3]
Although the song contains sexual boasting, its repetition of "I'm a man, I spell M, A child, N" was understood as political. Waters had recently left the South for Chicago. "Growing up in the South, African-Americans [would] never be referred to as a man – but as 'boy'. In this context, the song [is] an assertion of black manhood."[4] — Wiki: Mannish Boy
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