Song of the Day 2/2: Delbert McClinton, “Weatherman”
As my late colleague Allan Loudell used to say, “It’s Groundhog Day all over again.” I’ll watch the 1993 cult classic again tonight as a tonic against our vile, egotistic times. I’ll bet the Young Chud Generation sees no reason for Phil Connors to change his behavior, which might be why we’re stuck in our own Groundhog Day.
Director Harold Ramis used a wide mix of songs in the movie, most famously Sonny and Cher’s “I Got You Babe,” but also tracks by Ray Charles, Frankie Yankovic and Rachmaninoff. But he didn’t have one for the opening credit sequence, so he wrote the lyrics to “Weatherman.” The music was written by George Fenton, an English composer who wrote TV themes for dozens of British TV shows and scored more than 100 feature films, including “Groundhog Day.”
To sing it the producers hired Texas country/blues singer-songwriter Delbert McClinton, whose career was on the upswing in the early ’90s. He had recently won a Grammy for a duet with Bonnie Raitt, and his LP “Never Been Rocked Enough” put him back on the Billboard charts for the first time in over a decade in 1992. McClinton included “Weatherman” on his eponymous 1993 album.
When Chekhov saw the long winter, he saw a winter bleak and dark and bereft of hope. Yet we know that winter is just another step in the cycle of life. But standing here among the people of Punxsutawney and basking in the warmth of their hearths and hearts, I couldn’t imagine a better fate than a long and lustrous winter. From Punxsutawney, it’s Phil Connors.