The Ukulele Alphabet: St. Robinson in His Cadillac Dream by Counting Crows

Letter C, Week 1
“St. Robinson in His Cadillac Dream” by Counting Crows

I have a confession: If I were to pick my favorite song off This Desert Life to play for you here, it would be “Mrs. Potter’s Lullaby.” But that’s an almost-eight-minute song and it’s a bit repetitive without a full band, so I picked my second-favorite.

And this is one of the great album-ender songs from the Counting Crows catalog — they are quite good at closing an album down with a gorgeous vibe. Should I have gone with “A Murder of One” instead? Thought about it, but everyone knows their first album so well.

And This Desert Life might be my overall favorite Counting Crows album. It came out in 1999, so of course I bought it on CD, as one did back then.

So I always listened to this song complete with the hidden track, “Kid Things,” that popped up almost four minutes¹ after “St. Robinson…” ended. Dan and I still make the joke “vocals are go for recording” from the banter at the very very end of the track, in fact.

Since everyone began shuffling and streaming instead of listening to albums from start to finish, I feel like hidden tracks have basically gone extinct. I edited and ripped the ones from my CDs so they still show up as individual songs when I’m shuffling through my digital catalog, and that makes me giggle every time.

I did not do a hidden track on this video, so don’t go waiting around for it. I’m sorry. But vocals and ukulele are still go for recording here.

Listen to the original version of “St. Robinson in His Cadillac Dream”:

What’s the Ukulele Alphabet?

Read all about my 2025 ukulele performance project (and its rules) here.

I want to A-B-SEEEE some more!

Watch all the performances in the Ukulele Alphabet project.

1. Remember fast-forwarding on CDs? It was in fact possible! ↩︎