Body and Soul

Six months into my biography project. If you’re new, or just not paying attention, I have decided to dedicate this year to the study of biographies (and autobiographies) or musicians and dancers. Why musicians and dancers? The simplest answer is these are the two topics that have always kept my full attention. Ballet, specifically, fascinates me with its aesthetic, grace, precision, and discipline. The finest dancers possess strength, musicality and astounding control. 

I was fortunate to study ballet while pursuing a dance minor at college. I enjoyed the jazz and modern classes, but always took more ballet classes than was strictly necessary. The feeling of executing a perfect pirouette or moving through an extended adagio combination without losing your balance is absolutely thrilling. I managed to progress enough to try some work en pointe, which is every bit as challenging as it appears to be. After a nearly 10 year lay-off, I have finally returned to a ballet studio. It is so difficult, but I love every minute of it.

At the end of last year I read Apollo’s Angels: A History of Ballet, by Jennifer Homans. This well-researched book chronicles ballet through its beginning in 17^th century France, its move through Italy, its subsequent grip on Russia, all before launching itself upon the world. Because so much of the history of ballet is tied to aristocracy and politics, I wound up learning more about European history than I ever did in history class. 

My biographies started with the sublime Dame Margot Fonteyn and has, up to now, taken me through the lives of Maria Tallchief, Jacques D’Amboise, Suzanne Farrell, George Balanchine, and Gelsey Kirkland (whose autobiography I have now read three times). Not surprisingly, they all dance through each others’ books, as they ballet world is rather small. The composers who write through this world include Stravinsky, Tchaikovsky, Chopin, Debussy, among many others.

The musician side of this project is, for better or for worse, heavily weighted in the jazz genre. My jazz foundation began when I was a kid, just starting to notice this thing called jazz. One of my first long reports in school was one of the history of jazz (I also did a report on the history of ballet). I learned about jazz’s beginnings in New Orleans (the history of which is only just now beginning to be clarified) and how it made its way to Chicago and Kansas City and then to New York as it spread itself throughout the nation and the world. Since that initial research, and forevermore, New Orleans has held a special place in my heart as the birthplace of such an intriguing art form. So perhaps it may have been a bit cloying to start the musician side of this project with Terry Teachout’s Pops. Considering Louis Armstrong’s influence on so many musicians since he picked up a horn, it just made sense to me to start the project this way. Following Louis, I have read my way through the lives (and times) of Artie Shaw, Lawrence Welk, Benny Goodman, Charlie Parker, and Woody Herman.

Biographies are brilliant ways to learn history, as no one lives in a vacuum. I have also found them to be a great source of inspiration. The great musicians and dancers are great for a reason. They have talent, certainly, but they also possess ideas, grit, determination, and absolute dedication to their craft. These are qualities that should be acknowledged, admired, and held up as an example of what an individual can accomplish.

Looking forward to the rest of the year, I notice that female musicians are under-represented, so I will be on the lookout for some good women. In the stack of books, though, are the lives of Vaslav Nijinsky, Bob Fosse, Miles Davis, Count Basie, Dizzy Gillespie, the Dorsey brothers, and Lionel Hampton. 

Now if you’ll excuse me, I have some reading to do.

You read it here first! Probably.

Interview with a Bass Flute

A Music Zombie Exclusive!

Recently, Music Zombie had the chance to meet a Bass Flute.  After some bargaining, and maybe just a little bit of blackmail, the Bass agreed to an interview.  What follows is the transcript of that interview.

Music Zombie:  Thank you so much for agreeing to speak with me.  It's not everyday that I get the chance to meet such an unusual instrument.

Bass Flute:  Well, I am not that unusual.  But I suppose that I don't make as many appearances in bands and orchestras as my higher-pitched relatives.  They like to be heard, I guess.  I prefer to just support the low end of the section.  Occasionally, I will take solos, but because I am hard to hear at times, I often need extra amplification from those nerdy sound-crew people.  And, well, you know how they can be...they're all "Can you move closer to the microphone?"-this and "can you play any louder?"-that.  Sheesh...

MZ:  Still, you make an interesting sound.  You really add something extra to flute choirs.  More depth to the sound, certainly.

BF:  I suppose.  Did you know that I read the same music as C flutes, but the sound I produce is a full octave lower?  Sort of the opposite direction that a piccolo will take.  You know those piccolos like to shriek above the music a full octave higher than the flute.  Haha!  Squeaky little things!

MZ:  Isn't it true, though, that you share some things in common with the piccolo, in terms of construction?

BF:  Well, yes.  Oftentimes, we are made without the extra keys as the foot joint (or completely missing the foot joint, as in the piccolo's case) and I lack trill keys.  I don't suppose folks have any interest in hearing basses trill. 

MZ:  Say, what is the funny foot thing you've got there near your left hand key section?

BF:  My crutch?  Well, I'm glad you noticed! Because my tube is so large, and I am quite a bit heavier than the small flutes, this crutch allows my player a more comfortable hand position.  Here, give it a try.  You will notice that it feels more stable when your left hand has more support.

MZ:  You're right!  That feels pretty comfy!  I did notice that your keys aren't really that much farther apart than on a regular flute, but the hands are more spaced apart. That means that your tube is much longer than a regular flute...but that is to be expected for a low-sounding instrument...care to elaborate?

BF:   Exactly!  Longer tubes equal lower tones.  Again, compare me to the high-sounding, short-tubed piccolo!  However, because my tube is so long, my head joint is usually built with a crook in it.  This brings the hand closer to the player.  This wasn't always the case.  The great instrument designer, Theobald Boehm, made a straight model.  It is reported to have great tone and power, but is really hard to hang on to while playing.  So, most of us nowadays are given curves.

MZ:  Fascinating!  One more thing I couldn't help but notice--your lip plate has a wall on it!  Tell me about that!

BF:  Oh that?  That little wall on my embouchure plate makes me a bit easier to produce a reliable tone.  Because flute players need to create their own back pressure, and I require so much air to play, adding a bit of built in resistance makes me speak better.  What can I say?  I guess I like to play hard-to-get!

MZ:  Well, thank you so much for agreeing to speak with me!  My readers will be delighted to hear what you had to say, and you've certainly taught me a lot!

BF:  You're welcome, I guess.  I guess I'll go back to my case now and take a nap.  Please, no more pictures.

"I SAID NO MORE PICTURES!!"

Put it all on Seabiscuit's nose!

I finally read Laura Hillenbrand's account of the life and times of Seabiscuit the racehorse.   Great book about a great story.  Why am I mentioning this?  She had mentioned in the book that somewhere out there is a disco song referencing the Biscuit.  So I looked for it.  And there is.  I'm just as surprised as you.  I probably shouldn't be, but I am.

It's full title is Seabiscuit in the Fifth, and the song has a fairly typical disco beat with a groovy-ass bass line.  It was released in 1980, performed by Belinda West.   The title refers to a tipster telling the listener to bet on Seabiscuit on the fifth race of the day.  The lyrics also makes mention to "Secretariat in the Derby", which of course is a reference to another famous racehorse at the Kentucky Derby (Secretariat was the 1973 Triple Crown Champion).

Most of the lyrics reference the typical "man, why don't you do me right?" that is so common in pop songs, but the integration of the horse race-speak is unique.  And, she knows something ain't right, and she got it "straight from the horse's mouth." 

Now, if I can just find some footage of Seabiscuit playing the piano...

H2O

I'm around water a lot now (with the new job.  It's going well, BTW).  So, it isn't too much of a leap to start thinking about music and songs about water.  After some thought, I realized that there are less songs about water than there are about songs about activities on or in the water.  Let's dive right in, shall we?

Starting on the west coast: try Surfin' USA with the Beach Boys.  Or, if you aren't a very good surfer, you can Wipe Out with the Surfaris.  If are prefer to stay on dry land, you could just practice the different swimming strokes to Bobby Freeman's C'Mon and Swim (1964).

But why stay out of the water, landlubber?  Join Ariel the mermaid and her aquatic friends in a cheerful Caribbean calypso rendition of Under the Sea.  This song was featured in Disney's 1989 The Little Mermaid, in which Sebastian the crab tries to convince the finned girl to stay in the sea where she belongs instead of trying to sprout legs and run off with some land prince she just met and barely knows.

Water music isn't such a new thing, though.  Just ask England's King George in 1717.  He wasn't doing so well in the popularity polls, so his advisers suggested to him that he throw a boating party on the Thames River.  The King's composer, George Frideric Handel, was given the task of writing the music for the party (all good parties need music).  When Handel's Water Music was ready for performance, the King and his buddies listened from one barge, while the musicians performed from another.  It was a huge success, and Handel's watery suites are still recognizable and popular today.

At the end of a long day of swimming, surfing, and boating the Thames, you can relax with Otis Redding, just (Sittin' on) the Dock of the Bay (1967), wasting time.  Watching the boats cruise in and out of the harbour and hearing the seagulls shriek.  Redding wrote the song while literally sitting on the dock of a bay (well, maybe a houseboat).  I've read that the whistling at the end was an impromptu addition at the recording session; apparently, there was some time to fill.  Sadly, Redding died in a plane crash in Lake Monoma, (near Madison, WI) shortly after the song's release.  He never saw his song become a hit.

And with that, I'll leave you to swim around in your own thoughts. 

Nuts and Bolts

Wow.  Do you ever go back and re-read stuff you wrote a long time ago?  Kind of embarrassing.  It probably means nothing to you, my loyal Zombielets, but I have updated/edited/made less dumb-sounding the "About this Blog" and "What is a Music Zombie" pages.

I feel better now.  Until I read them again in a year.

Writing is hard.

Haha!

:-)

I had better include something musical though, so your time reading this won't be completely lost.

Here ya go:

Beethoven composed 32 piano sonatas.

What do you mean "Is that all?"  How many piano sonatas have you written?!

Atonality

Okay. Pay attention.

I have been doing a bit of reading lately about "Twentieth century" music.  The Twentieth century title really describes music from the early 1900s to present day, so perhaps historians need to come up with a few new labels.  Anyway.

A big part of the Twentieth century revolution in music is something called atonality.  You may surmise, from the "a" in front of "tonality", that atonal music is not tonal.  You would be correct.  But, what does that mean?  Let's look a bit closer at atonality, because I don't want to you be lost later.

Tonality is what we understand best (or, at least, it is what we are most accustomed to hearing).  Pop music is tonal, folk tunes and nursery songs are tonal, much of the Classical genre is tonal.  By calling something tonal, we really mean that there is a pitch that the music centers around.  It is scalar and diatonic in derivation and harmonic function.  In short, stuff works in a fairly predictable way.  A V chord will typically make its way to a I chord, without much weird motion in between.  And even if there is some unusual harmonic motion, the resolution will arrive, even if it is delayed for some reason.

I picture tonal music like this:

The rest of the pitches within the scale gravitate to the tonal center.  The picture illustrates a regular, non-intimidating C major scale.  If you played or sang a major scale and stopped just before you reached the tonic (notice the root of that word is ton) you would have a feeling of unrest.

Try it now: Do re mi fa sol la ti 
If you grew up surrounded by tonal music, as many people do, you may experience a sensation of being unsettled.  We "want" that final do to sound.  You probably silently gave yourself the resolution anyway.  I always do, even if I don't vocalize it.  Tonality is like coming back home after a long vacation.

Atonality is different.  There is no tonal center.  No gravity.  It is kind of like this:

All tones are equal.  No tone in particular is given any sort of function.  Initially, this can seem like chaos, but some atonal music can be quite lovely.  Even listenable.  Arnold Schoenberg wrote some very interesting and listenable atonal music.  He was also one of the first Twentieth century composers to delve into atonality with any seriousness.  Schoenberg will show up again on Music Zombie later. Remember his name.

♫ On the 8th day...

...of Christmas, my Zombie gave to me: ♫

8 Mile Marshall
7 minute music
6 ft. tall Grace Jones
Ben Folds Fiiiiiive
4/4 time
3 Pips and Gladys
2 Live Crew
and Tom Waits living in a treeeeeeee!

Eminem, AKA Slim Shady, AKA Marshall Bruce Mathers III is an American rap artist that got his start by hustling his self-made tracks to record stores.  He was discovered in the 1997 Rap Olympics (who knew that kind of thing existed?! Amazing.) in LA by producers from Interscope, who gave his demo disc to Dr. Dre.  Dr. Dre tracked him down and the rest is proverbial history.  In 2002 he starred in a semi-autobiographical movie called 8 Mile about a struggling rap artist. 

I've always had a bit of a fascination with rap music.  It isn't my go-to music on an ordinary basis, but it is interesting to hear the inventiveness from some of the best rap artists.  Their ability to free-form in rhythm and rhyme (all the while making their story coherent) is not unlike what a skilled jazz musician can do.  And Eminem is one of the best, for sure.

The State of Pop Music

From the eyes (and ears) of a moderate pop-music consumer.

Lately I've been switching my radio station from the usual classic rock station (there's only so many times you can hear Brown Eyed Girl or anything by Steely Dan, regardless of quality) to the local pop music station.  I will admit that I picked up this habit while driving around Iowa and Nebraska this summer.  A change will do you good, says Sheryl Crow.  After listening to the output of the summer and last few months, these are some of my impressions:

Most of it is just bad.  Lousy hooks, uninspired lyrics, bad songwriting.  Also, as much as I try to listen with an open mind, everything I've heard from Justin Bieber is over-processed and unoriginal.  He has perhaps some moderate talent, but he is all engineered, bolstered-by-collaborations-with-other-artists, and clever marketing.

At some point over the summer months, stations decided to play Demi Lovato's one, and seemingly only, hit Give Your Heart a Break and didn't stop playing it.  Ever.  Honestly, this song irritated me from the very first time I heard it, and it just got worse when radio stations would play it Every. Single. Hour.  I wanted to kill my radio. Then she suddenly appeared on American Idol as a "judge", but, really, American Idol isn't really relevant anymore, and is hopefully in its death throes as a hackneyed, sensationalized vehicle for cliched emotional cloying for ratings.  It even fails as compelling reality TV.

Edit: I realized later that Lovato is a judge on The X Factor, not American Idol.  Simon Cowell is involved with both, hence my confusion.  However, I still stand by my sentiments.

Some of the music is okay though, which is what probably keeps me tuning in.  Ke$ha managed to release a pretty good party song with Die Young, even though the accompanying video is kind of dumb.  Oh well, no one watches music videos anyway.  And, speaking of American Idol, Phillip Phillips (the Dave Matthews doppelganger and season 11 winner of American Idol), has released a nice song in Home.  Belgian-Australian Wally DeBacker, AKA Gotye, was also a pleasant discovery, with his 2011 song Somebody That I Used to Know (a song I like so much I am arranging it for clarinet quartet) and for a short time even that song was a bit overplayed, but it is nowhere near as irritating at the Lovato song.  Consider me a newborn Gotye fan.  I am also brave enough to admit my appreciation for LMFAO, as cornball as they can sometimes be.  I guess I'm a gooey dance-party fan wrapped in a jazz musician's crunchy layer.  Drizzled with a sweet classical coating. 

And that is just a few of the observations I've made through my probably very biased lens.  I know that many types of people make the musical world go 'round, but sometimes bad music should just be called out.  But, maybe I'm just getting old.  Maybe.  <End Rant>

Are you okay?

I will soon be getting re-certified for CPR/AED first responder and lifeguarding.  Thinking back on my first go-round with CPR training, I remember Resuscitation-Annie (or Anne, depending on who you talk to).  Resusci-Annie is the dummy-torso that is used when training for CPR (cardiopulmonary resuscitation).  It has a set of "lungs" and "trachea" that are set up to work like a real human adult so the trainee can learn and practice rescue breathing and chest compressions.

Thinking about Resusci-Annie brings up another Michael Jackson tidbit: in his 1988 hit Smooth Criminal, the lyrics ask "Annie are you okay?  So, Annie are you okay?  Are you okay, Annie?"  This is basically what CPR trainees are taught to ask the victim before they begin any assistance.  If the individual can speak, CPR is really unnecessary. 

Annie never spoke back to us in CPR class, so we would always proceed with rescue methods.

You know you're a musician when...

You have a well-stocked closet of black clothing.  And, if your regular gig requires it, a second-hand black suit jacket to create the illusion of a tuxedo.  Because, you know, you're a broke musician who can't afford a real suit jacket.

You only know the first bit of a song, because then you have to start playing and can't pay attention to the lyrics.

You see the word "beetle" and have to remind yourself that there is also an insect with that name, and it is not spelled wrong.

You are familiar with the back entrances of venues and bars all over town.  You only occasionally get to see the lobby, and even then it's only to pickup a copy of the program.

You know every possible version of Brown Eyed Girl.  You also know that most drunken "guest" singers really don't know the words...but they think they do!

You can point out the girls (or guys) in the bar who are most likely to try to play one of the instruments on stage or try to sing into the microphone.

You keep music stands, horn stands, and stand lights in your car.  Just in case.

You know what "circle of fifths/fourths" means.

You know the difference between valve oil and rotor oil.  And the difference between valves and rotors.

When attending concerts, you watch for things like hand positions and fingerings and listen for intonation and articulation.  Also, you start counting, through shear habit, when the orchestra starts to play.  Only about 8 measures in do you realize that you can just relax and listen this time.

You can't go see your friends' bands because you've got a gig that night.

You know all of the "fast, cheap, quick" repairs for on-the-job breakdowns.

You've continued a performance through a power outage or blackout.  The show must go on, dammit!

What did I miss?

Mmmmm...broccoli...

I just learned that for the last chunk of the third chorus of Michael Jackson's Wanna Be Startin' Somethin' is:

"You're a vegetable, you're a vegetable.

Still they hate you, you're a vegetable.

You're just a buffet, you're a vegetable.

They eat off of you, you're a vegetable."

Wow.

Alice?! Who the hell is Alice?

There is a Thanksgiving tradition that is far more interesting than bird meat and mashed potatoes.  One I hadn't learned of until way too late.  Every Thanksgiving day, Arlo Guthrie's musical monologue Alice's Restaurant Massacree (1967) is played on the radio.  Probably not on all stations, as I can't see the local pop station that plays LMFAO's I'm Sexy and I Know It or anything by Justin Beiber also playing music from more than 10 years ago (though they do seem to be stuck on Eminem's Lose Yourself lately).  For those who feel like they've heard the Guthrie name somewhere before, Arlo is Woody Guthrie's son.  Yes, that Woody Guthrie.

Alice's Restaurant is a song-story based on true events.  It is about, as Arlo tells us from the start, Alice and her restaurant.  The catchy refrain, accompanied by a lone ragtime guitar, draws you in and  you are eventually encouraged to sing along, with feeling (and four-part harmony). After the business of establishing a legit song is taken care of, the monologue continues over the guitar accompaniment.

Launching into the song about Alice, Arlo describes an instance of littering.  He and a friend had been visiting Alice, who lived in an old church that had been turned into a house, and noticed that she had quite a bit of garbage piling up.  Being the kind gentlemen they were, they decided to collect the garbage and haul it away to the dump.  The dump was closed on Thanksgiving Day, so the fellows drive away, with tears in their eyes, to find another place to put the garbage.  The garbage is dumped over a cliff, on top of another pile of garbage, because "one big pile is better than two little piles."  He is subsequently arrested for littering.

Arlo sings the rest of the tune in a way that can't be beat, so I'll let him do that, but the saga rounds in on itself as he relates a second story about the military draft.  After being "inspected, injected, detected, infected, neglected, and selected" he is interviewed about any run-ins with the law where he relates to the sergeant his litterbug tale.  The song does a good job of pointing out that no matter how inconsequential the crime, anyone convicted of breaking the law could make the offender ineligible for the Vietnam War draft.  Oh, the irony.

Join me now, in four-part harmony and feeling:

 You can have anything you want
At Alice's Restaurant (excepting Alice)
You can have anything you want
At Alice's Restaurant.
Walk right in, it's around the back
Just a half a mile from the railroad track
You can have anything you want
At Alice's Restaurant!

Sparkle, sparkle!

Random factoid of the day.  I have a fondness for PBS programming, especially when it concerns music and the performing arts.  On a recent program about the history of Broadway music and theatre, there was a reference to Broadway as "The Great White Way." Why is it called that?  What's up with the nickname?

Like any good Zombie, I researched it.

Broadway is a 12 block stretch in New York City.  It is bound between W 41st and W 53rd streets.  Four theatres are on the street proper, with many other theatres are situated east or west of Broadway.  This is the current configuration.  Theatres have been in this area since 1810, and the parameters of this entertainment district have changed a bit over the decades.

Lost of things have changed since then, actually.  Electricity had a huge impact on the district, so much so that the area looked completely different by the turn of the century with the hundreds of lights and shining marquees surrounding the playhouses.  All of these lights and sparkling billboard displays inspired a journalistic nickname of the "Great White Way."

So now you know that it has nothing to do with a large aquatic predator or racial disparity.  On with the show!

The Man in Black

I am almost finished reading Johnny Cash's autobiography (written by Johnny Cash-with Patrick Carr).  It's a good read.  Autobiographies are fascinating to me because they help to push away notions about a person that is sometimes put on them by industry, fans or critics.  By that I mean: you think you know someone, but you are almost always wrong in some respect.

Mr. Cash had plenty of demons, which he addresses in his book.  His struggles with drug abuse and dealing with fame are fairly well-known (and this isn't his first book, Man in Black by Johnny Cash was published in 1975), as well as his TV show and public persona.  He is the Man in Black.  But he wasn't always in black.  When he wasn't on stage or in the public eye, he wore whatever he wanted.  Early in the autobiography, he addresses three big questions that he's asked most often, one of which is the man in black thing.  Much of the reason is explained in what you hear in his song Man in Black (written in 1971): he wears the black "for the poor and beaten down, livin' in the hopeless, hungry side of town," and "for the prisoner who has long paid for his crime, but is there because he's a victim of the times."  He wore the black for "the sick and lonely old" and "the reckless whose bad trip left them cold."  He maintained these sentiments right up until his death in 2003.

But the other reason he wore the black comes from when he started performing, way back before the recording and record deals and touring and fame.  He was in a band (a trio with Marshall Grant and Luther Perkins) and they were deciding what they should wear for their first show.  All the men had a black shirt and blue jeans, so that became the uniform of sorts.

See? You think you know someone and it turns out you know nothing.  But you can always learn. 

Music Skeleton

I've got parodies on the brain.  A parody is any form of copying or mimicking of an existing work or person's style.  Parodies are used for satirical purposes, commentary, critique, or just to be funny.  What really defines the parody is the re-use of original material, and the art of parodying music has been around much longer than you may think, though not always in the now-prevalent humorous sense.  Early composers fused older works into their own, hybridizing the result.  It is hard not to just chalk this up as plagiarism, because the difference is subtle.  The difference is easier to see with humorous parodies.

"Weird Al" Yankovic built his career around the Fair Use (Section 107) of the Copyright law.  He takes popular songs and rewrites the lyrics, but keeps the spirit of the song intact (and usually everything else).  Under Fair Use, parodies are allowable because the parodied result does not detract from the marketability of the original.  Fans will still go out an buy the original music and not the altered version.  They may still buy the funny version anyway, but it won't take away from original artist's work because the original artist still created the work in the first place.

Another kind of funny parody is "genre parody", where a group reworks songs within a specific genre, such as rap or heavy metal and presents it in a radically different way, such as in Renaissance style or lounge music.  Think Pat Boone singing Metallica's Enter Sandman, among others.

I'm going to bum you out now

It was "One hit wonder day" at the local radio station.  It's a classic rock station, so the selections skewed mostly towards hair band and hard rock of the 1980s and 90s, but they also played a few selections from the 1970s.  The music of the 70s is a varied lot.  Much of it is silly (Disco Duck, anyone?), danceable (more disco, sans ducks), wonderfully weird (Hocus Pocus, by Focus!), or ABBA.  At least it was, until punk music came crashing in.

But there are a few songs from that decade that are just depressing.  The Night the Lights Went Out in Georgia (1972), by Bobby Russell (sung by his then-wife Vicki Lawrence) tells a sad story about a sister who kills the cheating wife of her brother, but her brother gets hanged for the crime.  In a way, it's a commentary on the occasional injustice of the justice system.  Another song by David Geddes, called Run Joey Run (1975), tells the tragic tale of a father killing his daughter.  Told from the perspective of the daughter's boyfriend, who had come to her house after she and her father had a fight over what I presume to be a pregnancy by the narrator.  Ah, it's the classic story of girl meets boy, boy impregnates girl, father finds out, father beats up girl, boy tries to come to girl's rescue, but girl takes the bullet intended for boy.

Then, to make you even more depressed, there is the 1975 song by Gordon Lightfoot that describes the sinking and death of all 29 crew of the bulk freighter the Edmund Fitzgerald (The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald).  The freighter went down in bad weather on Lake Superior the night of November 10, 1975.  And, if by now you don't already feel like burying your head in your pillow and sobbing, you can pop in a recording of Don McLean's ode to three freshly dead musicians: American Pie (1971).  The three dead musicians in question were, of course, Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, and The Big Bopper.

So, who needs a drink?

Off the Shelf: Bob Dylan

Sorry for the hiatus.  My non-blogging life got a bit out of hand.  But I'm back with a long overdue Off the Shelf installment: Bob Dylan (told you it was a chewy one). 

I randomly selected from Ye Olde CD Shelfe The Best of Bob Dylan, a disc I picked up while going through a mild Bob Dylan phase (actually I picked up at least 3 Dylan discs during that time).  I've touched on the genius of Dylan already; very briefly in one of the Billy Joel/We Didn't Start the Fire variations, but I think I can give you a bit more.

The Best of disc features many of the greatest hits (as you would expect from something with "best of" in the title) from Dylan over the course of his career.  The liner notes are quick to tell us that it's impossible to put all of Dylan's greatest songs onto one single disc, which is true, but this one is still a good representation his work, starting with Blowin' in the Wind, passing through All Along the Watchtower, and briefly into his more recent work. 

Dylan made waves with a stream-of-consciousness, politically charged, confessional style of folk music.  One the songs that really caught my attention was Hurricane, co-written with Jacques Levy in 1975.  The song describes, in true folk-song narration, the accusation, trial, and imprisonment of boxer Rubin "Hurricane" Carter, who was a friend of Dylan.  Carter was accused of robbery and murder, in accomplice with two other accused men.  The initial trial gave him a guilty sentence, but Dylan, among other supporters, felt that the trial was racially charged, and so, in protest to what he felt was an unfair trial and sentence, wrote the song.  He was forced to re-record it to avoid potential lawsuits concerning the details about the actions of the other two men in the trial.  The song eventually stirred things up enough to get Carter a second trial.  In 1988, all charges against Carter were dropped.

I couldn't help but notice how many Dylan songs end up as hit cover songs by other artists.  Watchtower has been covered countless times, from the "definitive" cover by Jimi Hendrix to my favourite cover by the Dave Matthews Band.  Knockin' on Heaven's Door was covered most notably by Eric Clapton, but also by Guns N' Roses, Booker T and Ladysmith Black Mambazo.  Blowin' in the Wind was made a hit by Peter, Paul & Mary (not to mention all the renditions sung around campfires, by church groups, and by protesters protesting anything.)

Truthfully, this entry will not be as complete as I'd like it to be.  The story of Bob Dylan is just too big for me to take in right now.  But I'll keep turning it over in my brain, like a rolling stone.

Elwood Blues

With some help from IMBD.com, today I'd like to feature the speech that Elwood Blues gives the rest of the band when they all want to give up and go home before making the trip into Louisiana to audition for Queen Mousette so they can play in the battle of the blues bands.  The speech comes from the second movie of the Blues Brothers franchise.  The original 1980 movie is by far the better of the two, but the 2000 film has its merits, too.

Take it away, Elwood.

ELWOOD: [addressing the rest if the band] You may go if you wish. But remember this: walk away now and you walk away from your crafts, your skills, your vocations; leaving the next generation with nothing but recycled, digitally-sampled techno-grooves, quasi-synth rhythms, pseudo-songs of violence-laden gangsta-rap, acid pop, and simpering, saccharine, soulless slush. Depart now and you forever separate yourselves from the vital American legacies of Robert Johnson, Muddy Waters, Willie Dixon, Jimmy Reed, Memphis Slim, Blind Boy Fuller, Louie Jordon, Little Walter, Big Walter, Sonnyboy Williamson I and II, Otis Redding, Jackie Wilson, Elvis Presley, Lieber and Stoller, and Robert K. Weiss.

DONALD "DUCK" DUNN: Who is Robert K. Weiss?
[the rest of the band shrug]

ELWOOD:  Turn your backs now and you snuff out the fragile candles of Blues, R&B and Soul, and when those flames flicker and expire, the light of the world is extinguished because the music which has moved mankind through seven decades leading to the millennium will whither and die on the vine of abandonment and neglect.
[he walks off, followed by Buster, Mack and then the rest of the band]

 And, scene.
Nicely spoken, Elwood.

P. S.  Robert K Weiss was the producer for the original Blues Brothers movie, and the reference is given as an inside joke when Weiss told Dan Aykroyd and director John Landis not to give up on the film.  Don't give up on the film and don't give up on the Blues.

Off the Shelf: Ella Fitzgerald

The CD plucked off the shelf this week is another cheap disc I picked up during my high school days:  Ella Fitzgerald: Flying Home.  It is a compilation of recordings of the great jazz singer.  The liner notes are lacking (that is, there aren't any) so I had to do a bit of fact-checking.  The second track on the disc is a song that is now virtually owned by Fitzgerald: How High the Moon (it is also one of about three songs that I've ever done the karoake thing to.  Tee hee.)  There is a story behind the scat-singing on that track, but as I haven't found a documented source of that story yet, I can't tell you whether it's true or not.  The story goes like this:  During a concert, performing said song, Ella forgets the lyrics, and so makes them up.  However, other accounts tell me that she didn't forget the words, but instead uses the tune as a way of forging and refining her style to integrate into the bepop scene (she in fact, quotes several bars of Charlie Parker's Ornithology, a song that shares the chord progression with How High the Moon).  Ella fully embraced the bebop movement.

The nonsense syllables are called "scatting," and are similar to the non-lexical vocables that we learned about with Mr. Trololo (see the post about Trolololo-ing).  It is a technique that requires the singer to impersonate musical instruments.  Fitzgerald happened to be very good at this, and she used it extensively in her later recordings.

She had a consistently successful career as a jazz singer, her lovely voice contributing to recordings of covers of songs by Cole Porter, the Gershwins, Johnny Mercer, Irving Berlin, Rodgers and Hart, and Duke Ellington.  She worked a lot with Louis Armstrong, recording several albums with him.  On the 3rd track of my cheap CD is Basin Street Blues, she does an impersonation of Armstrong's distinctive singing voice.  He sings with her on A Foggy Day and Moonlight in Vermont, and you can hear his trumpet skillfully navigating the changes on several other tracks.

I suspect the recordings of Oh Lady Be Good and How High the Moon are the famous 1947 versions, and the Flying Home track was recorded in 1945.  My personal favourites are Angel Eyes and Lullaby of Birdland, two songs that always made me dream of becoming a jazz singer (Peggy Lee has had the same effect on me).  But I can't scat sing.  At least not with the ease, inventiveness, and grace of Ella.  In 1987, she was presented with the much-deserved National Medal of Arts, and a few years later France awarded her their Commander of Arts and Letters award.

Ella Fitzgerald left this world on June 15, 1996.  She was 79 years old.

Yummy Rummy

If you like pina coladas,
And getting caught in the rain.

This tune has been stuck in my head for the past couple of days.  It was written by Rupert Holmes and released in 1979 as the single from the album Partners in Crime.  It's commonly referred to as "The Pina Colada Song", but its actual title is Escape, (and later referred to as Escape (The Pina Colada Song).

The song is about a man who is unhappy in his marriage and so peruses the personal ads.  He notices one ad in particular that outlines several intriguing interests.  He responds in kind with another personal ad and arranges to meet the woman who placed the original ad.  When the pair finally meet at a bar named O'Malley's, they discover that they are already married and actually do have more in common than they had realized.  The song ends on a cheerful note, despite the fact that both partners were seeking new relationships.

This song made Rupert Holmes famous, with the cruel irony that it became his defining success.  Holmes is also an accomplished author and composer, and has a long list of acclaimed works that have nothing to do with coconut-flavoured beverages.  He is the first person in Broadway history to win Best Book, Best Music and Best Lyrics for his (The Mystery of Edwin) Drood, which also won a Tony award for best musical (1985).  He has published two novels (one of which has been made into a movie with Kevin Bacon).  It's actually embarrassing how he is best known for one pop tune, when so much of his work has appeared in television, movies, and on the Broadway stage.

In reference to the song, though, the line was originally If you like Humphrey Bogart, but, because he had decided that he was using a lot of movie references in his work, he chose to change it to a different form of "escape."  At almost the last minute, he changed the lyric to one of the first exotic-sounding cocktail he could think of: pina colada (made with rum, pineapple juice, and coconut cream).

Now we know.