I can’t write an introduction to today’s Random SOTD that’s as succinct and effective as this one from Genius.com:
“Ever write a song so great that the four greatest Outlaw Country singers of all time named their supergroup after it? No? Well, that’s because you’re not Jimmy Webb.”
Indeed, Johnny Cash, Waylon Jennings, Kris Kristofferson and Willie Nelson teamed up for three albums between the mid 80s and mid 90s as The Highwaymen, with this song as their inspiration.
After the sex scandal, Hamilton’s political career is on the rocks but it’s on a personal level that he is truly rocked when his son dies in a duel. The musical takes a somber turn as he and Eliza deal with the loss and eventually reconcile.
Then it’s back to politics, and Hamilton’s fateful decision to support Thomas Jefferson over Aaron Burr in the 1800 election. Jefferson wins, Burr is consumed with jealous rage and pins all of his failures on Hamilton, whom he challenges to a duel. You all know how that turns out.
In addition to his influence on America’s financial system and the whole killed-in-a-duel thing, Alexander Hamilton is noteworthy for being in the center of one of the nation’s first sex scandals.
Hamilton had an affair with a younger, married woman named Maria Reynolds, and paid off her husband in exchange for his silence about the matter. Eventually the details were leaked and to clear his name of charges of political corruption, Hamilton detailed the affair publicly.
That didn’t go over so well with his wife, Eliza.
Alexander Hamilton was George Washington’s right hand man , a status that advanced him and his causes, much to the chagrin of his political enemies. Once Washington voluntarily stepped down from office, Hamilton’s fortunes took a turn for the worse.
In Hamilton, that fateful turn of events is captured in the moving ‘One Last Time,’ a track that lets Washington portrayer (and my wife’s Broadway crush) Christopher Jackson shine.
I mentioned last week that Lin-Manuel Miranda jokingly regrets giving two of the best songs he’s ever written to Leslie Odom Jr.’s Aaron Burr. Here’s the second one.
In ‘The Room Where It Happens,’ Burr watches from the sidelines while Hamilton, Jefferson and Madison make a deal behind closed doors. Known as the “Dinner Table Bargain,” the agreement moved the nation’s capital to Virginia in exchange for the federal government assuming state debts.
Meet Me In Montauk 