Song of the Day 10/7: Fred Neil, “Dolphins”

Guest post by Nathan Arizona

Fred Neil wrote a sad, beautiful and enduring song called “The Dolphins” as a Greenwich Village folk singer in the mid-1960s. “I’ve been searching for the dolphins in the sea,” he sang plaintively. He doesn’t find them.

Neil, who suffered from stage fright, soon dropped out of the music business despite cult popularity, critical acclaim and one hit song, “Everybody’s Talkin’,” the theme for the movie “Midnight Cowboy,” as sung by Harry Nilsson.

And then he found the dolphins. Not the metaphorical kind, though. He moved to Florida and teamed with a professional dolphin trainer and helped save actual dolphins. Sometimes he got right into the water and sang to them. Maybe he sang “The Dolphins.”

But the metaphorical dolphin lived on in covers of the song and a small but devoted following. Tim Buckley’s 1968 live performance in Britain is often considered the best version. Richie Havens covered the song, as did Linda Ronstadt, It’s a Beautiful Day, Billy Bragg, rock band The The, Beth Orton and many others. Just recently, Dave Alvin sang a version with his new psychedelic Americana band The Third Mind.

The elusive dolphin is more than a dolphin from the first. It stands for innocence and peace, while war in the human world seems endless and his ex-lover won’t return. “And sometimes I wonder/Do you ever think of me?” Sometimes he “think(s) about Saturday’s child” and the “times that we were running wild.”

It’s all a little jumbled and dreamy, but it feels right. The four concise stanzas are like fine poetry as one thought glides into the next over the plaintive music. Here’s Fred Neil.

Tim Buckley performed his version in England with backup including bassist Danny Thompson of Pentangle and his regular guitarist Lee Underwood. I think it’s safe to say “Dream Letter: Live in London 1968” is one of the best live albums ever. Buckley had been present at the Neil’s original recording session.

Tim was the father of Jeff Buckley, whose music career was skyrocketing before he drowned mysteriously in the Mississippi River in 1997 at age 30. Tim died of a drug overdose at 28 in 1975. Tim left the family just before Jeff was born. They met only once. I’d argue that Tim was the slightly better musician, as well as the wilder one.

British singer-songwriter Beth Orton was joined by cult singer Terry Callier for a version of the song performed on Jools Holland’s London TV show in 1998.