Serving Up a Sample of Jimmy's Jams

Jimmy’s Jams is not something to spread on toast.

Instead, it’s the name of a musical thought-project created by my friend, former English teacher extraordinaire Jim Christine.

Like any good puzzle, Jimmy’s Jams is deceptively simple: For every band or artist that you like, pick one song, and one song only, that you could listen to repeatedly without growing tired of it. Pretend the rest of that musician’s work doesn’t exist, because for this project, it doesn’t. You get just that one song.

I have the sneaking suspicion Jimmy’s Jams is a way to collect music to play at one’s funeral, minus the morbidity of calling it Heavenly Hymns or Coronavirus Compositions. But whatever.

The last time I talked with Christine, his list was around 500 songs. That’s 500 tunes by 500 different artists, no repeats. That in itself is intriguing.

The kicker is that each song has to have near-endless repeatability, which eliminates many selections that sound great the first four or five times, but then become the musical equivalent of a mother-in-law prattling endlessly in the backseat. (Jonas Brothers’ “Sucker,” I’m looking at you.)

For some artists, this is easy. The Rolling Stones? “Paint It Black.” Elvis? “Jailhouse Rock.” Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers? “Mary Jane’s Last Dance.” Alice Cooper? “The Ballad of Dwight Fry.” (Trivia time: The Cooper song is named for Hollywood horror actor Dwight Frye, minus the “e” in case Frye’s estate took exception.)

The more you like a band or an artist, the harder it is to cull the herd and find that one special song. I can listen to just about anything by Led Zeppelin frequently, but to narrow it to one song? “Black Dog,” “Rock and Roll,” “The Immigrant Song,” “Whole Lotta Love” — all great, but not enough to sacrifice the others. “Stairway to Heaven” or “Kashmir”? Classics, but overplayed. I guess I have to go with “In My Time of Dying,” which changes tempo and mood often enough to feel like several songs.

If I understand the rules of Jimmy’ Jams correctly, musicians with solo careers before or after their time in a band can have multiple entries, as can musicians who played in multiple bands.

This means the members of the Beatles can make repeat appearances on Jimmy’s Jams. I’ll scrawl down “Paperback Writer” for the band. I imagine John Lennon’s solo song would be “Imagine.” Paul McCartney and Wings land with “Jet.” Ringo Starr’s “It Don’t Come Easy” comes easily to my list. I’ve got my mind set on George Harrison’s “I’ve Got My Mind Set on You.”

Harrison was also a member of the Travelling Wilburys. My Jimmy’s Jams entry for them is “Maxine.” Bob Dylan was also a Wilbury; he makes my track listing as a solo artist, after much soul-searching, with “Like a Rolling Stone,” but it could just as easily have been almost any song from “Blood on the Tracks,” the quintessential album from an artist with a career of quintessential moments.

What about one-hit wonders, you ask? (I know you’re out there because I can hear you breathing.) Does Billy Thorpe make the list with “Children of the Sun”? What about Nine Days and “Absolutely (Story of a Girl)”?

I could not listen to Thorpe endlessly, so no. But Nine Days, yes. And if you were listening to the radio in the summer of 2000, I guarantee you turned up “Absolutely” each of the 1,234 times it played each day.

I need to ask Christine about cover tunes. Specifically, I don’t know if Alien Ant Farm can make the list with “Smooth Criminal” if I’ve already claimed Michael Jackson’s version.

Mentioning Michael Jackson reminds me that Soundgarden’s lead singer, Chris Cornell, did a killer acoustic version of “Billie Jean,” and Alien Ant Farm prompts me to include Dave Matthews’ “Ants Marching” on the list.

Then there’s my opening mention of toast, which reminds me I still need to break the three-way tie among Pearl Jam’s “Yellow Ledbetter,” “Rearviewmirror,” and “Man of the Hour.”

One song and artist leads naturally to the next, and before you know it, you have a pretty tasty spread of Jimmy’s Jams all your own.

Readers inspired to create their own Jimmy’s Jams may send it to me at chris.schillig@yahoo.com. I’ll pass them along to the original Jimmy.