Shel Silverstein is mostly unknown today, and that’s a shame. I got my kids a book of his poems for kids, which were clever and slightly naughty.
It was only recently I found that he’d written several of Dr. Hook’s hits. Also about a year ago I was trying to find a song called “Beans Taste Fine”, by an old folky named Papa John Kolstad. Turns out Shel Silverstein wrote that as well.
I’ve always like the line
“The world is funny, and people are strange,
And man is a creature of constant change, and
After you’ve been havin’ steak for a long time
Beans, beans taste fine.”
And of course there’s that Boy named Sue.
He was quite a real personality and talent. We don’t have them anymore, unfortunately. Everything is run though a marketing company and then an auto tune.
—he and Bobby Bare did some great stuff, too—
I bumped into him early one Sunday morning (about 2 am) on West End in Nashville in the parking lot of the old 'Ferrari's' restaurant.
I'm going to my car in a poorly-lit parking lot when I see this sort of ominous-looking tall-ish beaded man with a slick head and a beard wearing an ankle-length off-white muslin tunic striding energetically across the parking lot in the opposite direction. I was a bit alarmed at first until I realized, "Holy hell, that's Shel Silverstein!"