My track-by-track tales follow this bare-bones list.

1. Pete Townshend and Ronnie Lane, April Fool
2. Deep Purple, You Fool No One
3. Steely Dan, Only A Fool Would Say That
4. The Rolling Stones, Just Your Fool
5. Shirley Bassey, The Fool On The Hill
6. Robin Trower, The Fool And Me
7. Buddy Holly, Fool’s Paradise
8. Joe Jackson, Fool
9. Johnny Winter, Be Careful With A Fool
10. Jerry Lee Lewis, Fools Like Me
11. Van Halen, Fools
12. Aretha Franklin, Chain Of Fools
13. UFO, You Don’t Fool Me
14. Elvis Costello & The Attractions, You Little Fool
15. Bobbie Gentry, Find ‘Em, Fool ‘Em And Forget About ‘Em
16. Thin Lizzy, Fools Gold
17. Little Village, Fool Who Knows
18. Nazareth, Fool About You
19. Rod Stewart, Fool For You
20. Gene Clark, Life’s Greatest Fool
21. Gary Moore, Only Fool In Town
22. Family, No Mule’s Fool
23. Gov’t Mule, Towering Fool
24. Groundhogs, Still A Fool
25. Buddy Guy, Who’s Been Foolin’ You
26. Quicksilver Messenger Service, The Fool
27. Pretenders, Fools Must Die
28. Peter Green, A Fool No More

    My track-by-track tales:

    1. Pete Townshend and Ronnie Lane, April Fool . . . Beautiful song, written and sung by Lane, of Faces fame, on the amazing album he and Townshend collaborated on, released in September 1977 and featuring such musical luminaries as Charlie Watts, Eric Clapton and John Entwistle on various tracks. Instant buy for me back then, being a Who and Faces fan. Endlessly rewarding.
       
    2. Deep Purple, You Fool No One . . . Boogie rock tune with typically great drumming from Ian Paice. It’s from 1974’s Burn, the first album with David Coverdale (lead vocals) and Glenn Hughes (bass/vocals) replacing Ian Gillan and Roger Glover, respectively. Well, Hughes replaced Glover on bass. Glover never sang.
       
    3. Steely Dan, Only A Fool Would Say That . . . I just played Steely Dan (King Of The World) on Monday in my ‘songs from 1973’ show but unless it’s my favorites the Stones, I try to mix things up and don’t often play the same artist again so quickly. But, believe it or not, I hadn’t thought of an April Fool’s-themed show, likely because I usually don’t like doing the obvious, until maybe Tuesday of this past week. That’s when I thought, I wonder if I can come up with enough songs, particularly deep cuts, with ‘fool’ or ‘foolish’ etc. in the title to fill my two-hour slot. Silly me. It turned out it was far easier than I envisioned; I had about four hours worth of songs in the system before I called a halt to the exercise and started shaving things down to fit the show. Anyway, the first song that came to mind in all of this was this one, from Steely Dan’s debut, Can’t Buy A Thrill, the first in a long line of consistently top-notch songs and albums from Messrs. Walter Becker (RIP) and Donald Fagen and their cast of collaborators over the years.
       
    4. The Rolling Stones, Just Your Fool . . . Little Walter tune, with Mick Jagger proving Keith Richards’ contention that when Jagger plays harmonica, he’s at his best. It’s from Blue & Lonesome, the Stones’ 2016 blues covers album that remains their last full studio release since 2005’s A Bigger Bang. There’s long been talk of a new album of original material and the band was apparently working on one when the sessions took the blues direction that resulted in Blue & Lonesome. But nothing new and original has been heard from the Stones since A Bigger Bang other than occasional new songs/singles like Doom and Gloom and One More Shot, on the 2012 compilation Grrr! or more recently, the pandemic-themed single Living In A Ghost Town, in 2020.
       
    5. Shirley Bassey, The Fool On The Hill . . . I first became aware of Welsh singer Bassey’s powerful voice via Goldfinger, to me the best of her three James Bond movie theme credits. The others are Diamonds Are Forever and Moonraker. Her cover of this Beatles song made No. 48 on the UK charts in 1971. The Fool On The Hill was also nicely done by American artist Bobbie Gentry, who I’m playing, albeit a different song, later in the set.
       
    6. Robin Trower, The Fool And Me . . . From 1974’s Bridge Of Sighs, Trower’s second solo album after he left Procol Harum to team with singer/bassist James Dewar and drummers Reg Isidore and later Bill Lordan for a fine run of albums into the early 1980s.
       
    7. Buddy Holly, Fool’s Paradise . . . Rockabilly-type tune I pulled from a 50-song, double disc compilation of Holly’s I own. It’s all quality stuff, too, his big hits and the deeper cuts. All of that highly influential output and he was just 22 when he died in a 1959 plane crash along with Ritchie Valens and “The Big Bopper” J.P. Richardson, the tragedy later immortalized in Don MacLean’s song American Pie as ‘the day the music died’.
       
    8. Joe Jackson, Fool . . . I suppose the obvious thing to do would be to play Jackson’s well-known Fools In Love from his 1979 debut album Look Sharp! And I did consider it. But . . . that’s just what you’d be expecting. So I went with Fool, the title cut to the eclectic JJ’s most recent studio album, released in 2019. It’s rock, it’s jazz, it’s funk, it’s great. No matter where Jackson’s travelled musically – new wave, rock, reggae/ska, big band, jazz, classical – I’ve always followed, never been disappointed.
       
    9. Johnny Winter, Be Careful With A Fool . . . A typical guitar on fire cover of a blues tune, this one a B.B. King-penned number that appeared on Winter’s self-titled second album, released in 1969.
       
    10. Jerry Lee Lewis, Fools Like Me . . . Known for his wild rock and roll playing and shows, The Killer could also deliver aching tunes like this one, apparently a favorite of John Lennon’s.
        
    11. Van Halen, Fools . . . David Lee Roth does his best Janis Joplin vocalization impersonation before all hell breaks loose on this one from 1980’s Women And Children First album. A commenter on YouTube describes it as ‘tribal boogie.” Well put.
        
    12. Aretha Franklin, Chain Of Fools . . . Interesting, perhaps, when you haven’t listened to something in a long time. Sounds crazy, I realize but, somehow, the title and the tune didn’t connect for me at first when I was looking at the track list to an Aretha album I own. Then, hmm, it has Fools in the title, that might work, so I put it on and, bingo, immediately, oh, right, THAT one. Idiot (me). What a song, what a voice, what a performer the Queen of Soul was. A deserved No. 1 R & B and No. 2 pop hit for her in 1967.
        
    13. UFO, You Don’t Fool Me . . . Terrific rhythmic track featuring the usual guitar fireworks from Michael Schenker. It’s from the band’s Obsession album, released in 1978.
        
    14. Elvis Costello & The Attractions, You Little Fool . . . The first single from Costello’s 1982 critically acclaimed album Imperial Bedroom. I didn’t ‘get’ the record at first but as with some if not many good albums, sometimes it takes a while. It’s full of good songs – Beyond Belief, Shabby Doll I’ve always liked, Almost Blue and the second single and to me the album’s best cut, Man Out Of Time. However neither Man Out Of Time or You Little Fool cracked the top 50 in the UK, Costello’s home turf. Geoff Emerick, known for his sound engineer work with The Beatles on Revolver, Sgt. Pepper and Abbey Road, produced the album.
        
    15. Bobbie Gentry, Find ‘Em, Fool ‘Em And Forget About ‘Em . . . Soul country, I suppose one would describe this one from the Ode To Billie Joe singer, one of the first American women to compose and produce her own material. She had 11 chart hits, including Billie Joe, the 1967 No. 1 that propelled her to stardom. Some years ago I was listening to Ode To Billie Joe, amazing song of course, and decided to dig deeper into Gentry’s work. I’ve been reaping the rewards ever since. One of those music mysteries, too. She was active until April, 1982 when she left the industry and essentially disappeared off the face of the earth after appearing at a country music awards show. She’d just had enough, apparently, which I find kinda cool. I’m done, see ya. She’d be 80 now, with various reports having her living in a gated community near Memphis, Tennessee. Or Los Angeles, depending on one’s source. She was once briefly married to casino magnate Bill Harrah and later to Jim Stafford, known for the 1970s hits Spiders & Snakes and the double entendre My Girl Bill.
        
    16. Thin Lizzy, Fools Gold . . . Do a show using the word ‘fool’ in the song titles and you realize how may songs, unsurprisingly I suppose, titled Fool’s Gold are out there, using apostrophes or, in Thin Lizzy’s case, not. Lizzy is, apparently, like AC/DC: off the top of my head AC/DC’s Razors Edge album and song, no punctuation, come to mind. Also up for consideration in the final analysis were Graham Parker’s Fool’s Gold (apostrophe) and the full near 10-minute version of Fools Gold (no apostrophe) by The Stone Roses. I rolled dice in a three-band round-robin tournament and Thin Lizzy won with its tale of the Irish Famine from the 1976 album Johnny The Fox. A final point on punctuation: Next show might be a grammar gig where I’ll play Frank Zappa’s album and song Apostrophe (‘). Actually, no. Not yet, anyway. I have another idea in mind for Monday’s set.
        
    17. Little Village, Fool Who Knows . . . From the one and only album, released in 1992, by the supergroup of Ry Cooder, John Hiatt, Nick Lowe and everyone’s session drummer Jim Keltner. The foursome had originally worked together on Hiatt’s 1987 album Bring The Family. Hiatt did most of the singing on Little Village but Fool Who Knows was written and sung by Lowe.
        
    18. Nazareth, Fool About You . . . Country-ish tune from the band’s second album, 1972’s Exercises. I’ve heard the song, and the album in general, referred to as uncharacteristic of Nazareth and I suppose that’s true, given that, besides the ballad Love Hurts, the band is arguably best known as a hard rock outfit. But deeper investigation of the discography reveals Nazareth as a diverse band that tried various styles, with often mixed results. But at least they didn’t sit still.
        
    19. Rod Stewart, Fool For You . . . Terrific ballad, written by Stewart, from his blockbuster 1976 album A Night On The Town that yielded the No. 1 hit Tonight’s The Night. Fool For You wasn’t a single, but easily could have been.
        
    20. Gene Clark, Life’s Greatest Fool . . . From the former Byrds-man’s fourth solo album, No Other, released in 1974. My favorite song on the album is the title cut, which I’ve played before, but the record, despite being front-to-back solid, was a critical and commercial failure upon release. Yet many of the same critics who at first derided it now refer to it as a lost masterpiece, which it is. But, I get it. Sometimes, as I mentioned earlier in my blurb about Elvis Costello’s Imperial Bedroom, albums take a few listens to sink in. Often, those wind up becoming your favorites – Exile On Main St. by The Rolling Stones is one of those, for me and if push came to shove it would be my desert island disc. But music journalists don’t always have that luxury, deadline for the review is tomorrow, or in our web world, right now, so instant and often flawed judgments can result.
        
    21. Gary Moore, Only Fool In Town . . . Guitar shredding from sometime metallic man Moore on this one from After Hours, his 1992 blues rock followup to his hit album and single Still Got The Blues two years earlier.
        
    22. Family, No Mule’s Fool . . . A folk rocker from a band that dabbled in progressive rock, psychedelia and jazz. It was released in the UK as a standalone single and later wound up on North American pressings of the 1970 album A Song For Me.
        
    23. Gov’t Mule, Towering Fool . . . Dark, bluesy tune from the band’s second album, Dose, released in 1998.
        
    24. Groundhogs, Still A Fool . . . Cover of the Muddy Waters song, from the British blues/rock band’s 1968 debut album, Scratching The Surface.
        
    25. Buddy Guy, Who’s Been Foolin’ You . . . Speaking of Muddy Waters, Buddy sounds just like Muddy, to my ears, on this cut from Guy’s excellent 2001 album Sweet Tea. The record is named for the Oxford, Mississippi studio in which it was recorded.
        
    26. Quicksilver Messenger Service, The Fool . . . Extended (12-minute) spooky, psychedelic piece from the San Francisco band’s self-titled 1968 debut album. I love the sort of barking, or ripping, guitar sound around the five-minute mark, but the whole thing is a trip.
        
    27. Pretenders, Fools Must Die . . . Kick butt, short but oh so sweet tune from 2002’s Loose Screw album. Few people seem to talk about it much, but it’s a terrific record I’ve mined before. Full of good songs – this one, Lie To Me, Complex Person, Kinda Nice, I Like It, Walk Like A Panther . . . worth checking out.
        
    28. Peter Green, A Fool No More . . . Long, slow, beautiful blues from the Fleetwood Mac founder’s 1979 album In The Skies.