The recent hoo-hah about the "Rise Up Singing" songbook prompted me to pull my copy of RUS off the shelf and flip through the pages. I was very pleased to happen upon this song, which I absolutely loved many years ago but had completely forgotten.

I know the song from Tom Rush's recording, which was (I believe) the "original" in the sense that he recorded it before before Joni herself (the songwriter). Now, I'm not familiar with the Dave Van Ronk version, which may or may not predate Tom's. I do know that Dave was a notable champion of fledgling songwriters in general and of the young Joni Mitchel in particular, and I am certainly familiar with the very early DVR recording of "Both Sides Now," aka "Clouds."

Tom Rush was also a great one for recording the works of young unknown songwriters. I'm pretty sure that his rendition of "These Days" was the first recording of anything written by the then-very-young Jackson Browne, and I think it's also likely that his "Urge for Going" might have been the first recording of anything by the almost-as-young Joni Mitchell.

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Another thought that crossed my mind when I rediscovered this song: has any aging and incontinent folkie ever made a parody of Urge for Going? A scatological interpretation of the title phrase would seem to be pretty obvious. Of course, that very lovely and evocative melody might be just too incongruous to accommodate lyrics about adult diapers and skidmarked drawers....