I love the internet. After listening to my “Back Where I Come From” playlist six or seven times in a row (I can do that, actually I love to do that, to find a song I like so much that I can play it ad infinitum, locking into a mental groove, just me and my music, making me happy) I decided to delve into Jimmy Buffett’s catalog. His best and most poignant song, albeit with a sense of humor, is ” A Pirate Looks at Forty,” but I was looking for something a bit more upbeat, so I played “Son of a Son of a Sailor.” And then Spotify presented me with a playlist, “Country Rock Classics.”

The problem with these classic playlists is there’s no discovery, you know the songs already, so I don’t find them fulfilling. HOWEVER, have you tried the Spotify AI playlist generating feature yet? It’s GENIUS! Far better than the curator constructed stuff and far better than the radio feature because you can put in acts or songs that no algorithm would think go together, never mind a curator believing the same person liked both. Like I put in Chris Stapleton and Luke Bryan, both of whom I adore, but the former is credible and the latter is seen as bro country and a bit of a sellout now that he’s a judge on “American Idol,” but the playlist generated…and it has to think for a while…turned me on to a song that I never knew about that you probably do which is great, “Wagon Wheel,” in this case by Darius Rucker. I said to myself, THIS IS A HIT! And then I did a bit of research and found out it already was! Multiple times! That Ketch Secor had added to a Bob Dylan chorus and… That’s what I discovered via Spotify’s AI generated playlist feature, it’s a breakthrough, no matter how you feel about AI, you should try it out.

ANYWAY, I’m looking at the tracks in the “Country Rock Classics” playlist and it starts with “Amie,” certainly a classic, but I wasn’t in the mood for that, so I scrolled down and that’s when I saw Poco’s “Heart of the Night.”

I knew it was from when Timothy B. was gone, not to mention Richie Furay, never mind Jim Messina, and… I started to wonder, did Rusty Young sing this song? I mean he was never a singer before, but I knew that he was the vocalist on one latter day Poco hit so…

I went to Wikipedia and found out it was Paul Cotton. But that was not the most interesting thing I learned. Turned out that when Timothy B. had exited for the Eagles, Cotton and Young auditioned for ABC as a duo, under the name “The Cotton-Young Band.” And having passed the audition they recorded the album “Legend” and the execs liked it so much that they canned the planned live album with Timothy B., a coda to Poco’s career, and decided to release this new project under the name Poco. Which turned two studio musicians, Steve Chapman and Charlie Harrison, into members of the new band.

I DIDN’T KNOW THAT!

Nor did I know that the sax was played by Phil Kenzie, since I never owned the album and therefore never read the credits. And I knew Kenzie played on that second Cretones album, but doing a bit of research on the chairlift I found out he was the one who played the sax on Al Stewart’s “Year of the Cat” and he was ENGLISH!

Now the amazing thing is after ten previous LPs, seven on Epic and three on ABC, after songs that were dorm room classics, heard on FM now and then, when all the original core members other than Young were gone, Poco had a HIT!

Believe me, it was a surprise.

“In the heart of the night

In the cool southern rain

There’s a full moon in sight

Shining down on the Pontchartrain”

I liked “Heart of the Night” from the first time I heard it, always made me smile when I heart it on the radio, driving in my car I’d turn it up.

And there are great changes, and that indelible sax solo, but I’ve got to say what made the song stand out for me was the use of “Pontchartrain,” how it was sung with emphasis, a word that you’d think could never be worked into a song. In an era when unless you’d been to New Orleans, chances were you didn’t know where or what it was… As for me, I knew it was a river or lake down there somewhere, but my vision was hazy, I didn’t make it to N.O. until this century.

So Paul Coton was recruited from the Illinois Speed Press to fill the hole Jim Messina left in Poco. And that was when the band went into the wilderness, they had hard core fans, the music was good (listen to the two CD package “The Forgotten Trail,” it will blow your mind), but listeners were dwindling.

And then came “Heart of the Night.”

I’m listening after reading that it was Paul Cotton on vocals, and that he’d written it, and then it occurs to me that Paul Cotton is dead, he doesn’t realize how much I’m enjoying listening to his song, that it has lasted.

Furthermore, Rusty Young has passed too. That made a bigger news splash, but the two of them and their latter-day Poco have not been embraced by the younger generations, at least not to my knowledge, and then…

I realize “Heart of the Night” was a hit in 1979! And that Cotton and Young basked in their breakthrough for forty years before they passed, both in 2021 (and that’s weird).

So maybe you remember or maybe you don’t, but one thing is for sure, the song remains, and it’s the same. And it evokes a feeling… Not one readily found in today’s music…the Spotify Top 50 is all flash, too often melodyless, and if you’re not streaming a ton of product you can’t afford to create a pristine recording on a par with “Heart of the Night.”

Still, there’s music that is not made for dancing, that is not background, just grease for everyday living. There are tracks that change your thinking, put you in a mood, make you reflect, think about life…

And that’s “Heart of the Night.”

Darius Rucker’s “Wagon Wheel”: