Susan Jacks’ “I Thought Of You Again” was her first solo single, which came out on Goldfish Records in 1973. With her husband Terry, they were the fine AM pop group The Poppy Family, often characterized as the “Canadian version of the Carpenters.” It’s a cute phrase, and not badly off, but the Poppy catalogue is actually deeper than that of their more famous American equivalent, and Terry Jacks’ compositional style and chops are really more in the range of someone like Lee Hazlewood. In 1973, Terry decided groups were passé and the duo decided to try their hands at solo singles (which were really still collaborations) — Terry penned this original for his wife and recorded an adaptation of a Jacques Brel song himself.¹ Well, Terry’s “Seasons In The Sun” ended up going to number one in every anglophone market. “I Thought Of You Again” didn’t chart. A year later the couple split. Susan’s single may be the weaker of the two, but it is full of craft, bottom to top with typically lush orchestration.

It’s also a lyrically dextrous homage to “I Thought About You,” the 1939 standard by Johnny Mercer with music by Jimmy Van Heusen.² The Mercer song is a pinnacle of economical pop writing, only two verses and no chorus:

I took a trip on a train and I thought about you
I passed a shadowy lane and I thought about you
Two or three cars parked under the stars, a winding stream
Moon shining down on some little town
And with each beam, the same old dream

Terry Jacks squeezes six unique verses and a soaring chorus into two and a half minutes, and with a narrative twist! Mercer’s song turns on a line about looking at the train track tracing back to his origin and “What did I do? I thought about you.” Jacks rather neatly embeds the reference into the song (with, if I hear correctly, a musical quote in the background):

The train moved on
And with my nose against the glass I hummed a song
It made me smile and for a while
I just forgot that you were gone
But when I came to that line
‘Bout the one left behind I almost cried
And as we rolled around the bend
I thought of you again one more time

1. It seems not improbable that he took a cue from Pearls Before Swine, the eccentric psychedelic folk band led by Tom Rapp, who recorded a very good version of that song in 1970.

2. Sinatra put a heavy stamp on it with his version on Songs for Swingin’ Lovers, but I think the one with Mildred Bailey backed by Benny Goodman is more in the spirit of the tune.