Song of the Day 10/18: The Avett Brothers, “Early in the Morning”

HBO is running a “West Wing” reunion show with an interesting twist — the cast assembles for a stage reading of a highly-regarded episode that originally aired in February 2002. The actors slipped into their old roles easily, but IMO the most interesting part was the way director Thomas Schlamme adapted the TV script for the stage (it was filmed in an empty LA Orpheum). Of the incongruously utopian fantasy it depicted — a chess-playing president who exhibits wisdom in a crisis, and his smart, selfless, public-spirited aides — I will say no more.

Advance publicity for the special promised a live-on-tape performance by the Avett Brothers as a finale, probably as a lure for millennials. With barely a minute and a half left in the hour-long special, they appeared, playing a spirited but obscure tune from the days of the Great Folk Music Scare.

At first I wondered how the Avetts settled on a song written by Noel “Paul” Stookey and released as the first track on “Peter, Paul and Mary,” the group’s 1962 debut LP. Then I came across this 1965 appearance by the trio on the BBC. The arrangement is identical to the one the Avett Brothers used, and so is the duration — 1:32.