Five Enduring Songs Span Generations

Several enduring songs began with unusual or deeply personal stories. “Dancing in the Moonlight” was written by Sherman Kelly while recovering from a violent 1969 attack in St. Croix, as he imagined a peaceful world far removed from his experience. Freddy Fender wrote “Wasted Days and Wasted Nights” during a difficult period involving financial hardship and marital problems, but the song’s release was delayed by his imprisonment and later became a signature hit. Jackson Browne wrote “These Days” as a teenager, drawing on his own feelings of regret and disappointment; the song was later recorded by artists including Nico, Tom Rush and Gregg Allman. Starbuck’s “Moonlight Feels Right,” recorded in Georgia in 1975, became a No. 3 hit after its distinctive marimba solo helped define its sound. Arlo Guthrie’s “Alice’s Restaurant Massacree” transformed a real Thanksgiving littering arrest into an 18-and-a-half-minute folk satire of bureaucracy and the Vietnam-era draft.