Call and response antiphonal pop songs

You, then you.

call and responseOne of my oldest friends, Carol in Texas, wrote: In your thousands of blog posts you may have covered this, but I’m wondering what your favorite call and response songs are. 

We happened to be listening to classic vinyl on Sirius radio when they played Pinball Wizard. I hadn’t recalled that it included that lyric “how do you think he does it’… ‘I don’t know.'” Led me to wonder what other songs with that device I love and the obvious With a Little Help from My Friends popped up, and Jefferson Starship’s  Miracles, sort of, and… such fun, especially when you sing along.

Well, Carol, I had NOT put together a list of pop songs with call and response. I started going down a rabbit hole in noting that what is called the antiphon existed in 5th century Christianity. Classical composers as early as Handel and Bach used it. In jazz, the call and response might be instrumental.

Antiphony

“The looser term antiphony is generally used for any call and response style of singing, such as the kirtan or the sea shanty and other work songs, and songs and worship in African and African-American culture.” I even found a dissertation on antiphony in hip hop. I associate it with both children’s songs, and Marines running and responding to the drill sergeant’s chants.

Any time the singer in a band asks the audience to echo what they sing, that’s antiphony. Think Freddie Mercury of Queen at Wembley Stadium. There’s a scene in One Night in Miami, where Sam Cooke is leading the audience in antiphony.

It is interesting that you noted Pinball Wizard. One of the most referenced antiphonies I found was another Who song, My Generation. Now, the FIRST piece I thought of was part 2 of What’d I Say by Ray Charles.

I was always fond of the bit by Diana Ross and the Supremes in Love Child. Most of the time the lyric by the backup singers, the Andantes would echo Diana. But in one case they had lyrics that propelled the message:
Love child, never meant to be
Love child, (scorned by) society

Songs

Here are some more, by no means a complete list, because there are zillions of them. Some of my favorite songs are here.

Going to the Mill – Chambers Brothers. This is for me, the epitome of call-and-response.
Oh, Happy Day – The Edwin Hawkins Singers, featuring Dorothy Combs Morrison. You may say this isn’t pop, but it went to #4 pop and #2 RB for two weeks in 1969.
Lay Down (Candles In The Rain) – Melanie with the Edwin Hawkins Singers. I seriously love this song.

Midnight Train to Georgia – Gladys Night and the Pips. In 1977, the Pips (minus Gladys) appeared on comedian Richard Pryor’s TV special that aired on NBC. They sang their normal backup verses for the song. During the parts where Gladys would sing, the camera panned on a lone-standing microphone.
A Girl Like You – Edwyn Collins. Note the response is instrumental, not vocal.
A Girl Like You – the Young Rascals.
Good Lovin’ – The Young Rascals, first recorded by Lemme B. Good.

Itchycoo Park  – Small Faces.
It Hurts To Be In Love  – Gene Pitney.

Come and Get Your Love – Redbone.
I’ll Take You There – The Staple Singers. I adore this song.
Mickey’s Monkey – Smokey Robinson and the Miracles. Motown is chockablock with call and response.
Jocko Homo – Devo.
Loves Me Like a Rock – Paul Simon with the Dixie Hummingbirds. My favorite PS solo song.
Respect – QoS.

Shout – The Isley Brothers.
Twist and Shout – The Beatles.
My Sweet Lord  – George Harrison.
He’s So Fine  – The Chiffons. 
Once in a Lifetime – Talking Heads.

Night Time Is the Right Time – Ray Charles.
I Don’t Need No Doctor – Humble Pie.
Haul Away Joe – the Longest Johns.
The Banana Boat Song (Day-O) – Harry Belafonte. Of course.

Movie review: Blow The Man Down

Greek chorus

Blow the Man DownThe movie Blow The Man Down begins with David Coffin and other men singing the title song. You may know the tune from Popeye cartoons. The singers are a Greek chorus of sorts, I suppose. I enjoyed them quite a lot.

The story proper begins with the funeral of Mary Margaret Connolly in Easter, Cove, Maine. She had two adult daughters, Priscilla (Sophie Lowe) and Mary Beth (Morgan Saylor). The mom had three good friends Susie (June Squibb), Doreen (Marceline Hugot), and Gail (Annette O’Toole) who say they’ll be there for the daughters.

Part of the trio’s mission is to change the profile of the local, er, B and B, run by their former colleague, Enid Nora Devlin (Margo Martindale). The proprietor seems disinclined.

Meanwhile, a murdered body washes up on the shore. Officer Coletti (Skipp Sudduth) and his younger, more eager colleague, Officer Justin Brennan (Will Brittain) are investigating the homicide.

That’s all I’ll say about the plot. The story was written and directed by Bridget Savage Cole and Danielle Krudy.

Satisfaction

Leonard Maltin’s observations seem applicable. “Blow the Man Down hasn’t great ambitions but fulfills its modest goals nicely. It’s well worth streaming, especially if you have a cup of chowder handy.” In fact, 98% of the critics gave the film a thumbs up, ranking #29 on the Rotten Tomatoes list for 2020.

General audiences were a bit more critical, with 75% liking it. Some found it too slow, or too much like Fargo. A few complained about the resolution; I thought it was one of the best elements. Others didn’t like the singing fishermen, for which I say, FIE!

Maybe it is that I am particularly fascinated with family secrets, many of which do not come to light until after someone dies. This narrative felt emotionally true for me.

I’ve liked June Squibb ever since I saw her in the movie Nebraska back in 2014. But the scene-stealer in this film is Margo Martindale, who is the focus of every scene she’s in.

I watched Blow the Man Down on Amazon Prime.

The origin of the word Lent

Christian and pagan

Gabriel in Leonardo's Annunciation
Gabriel in Leonardo’s Annunciation

A very erudite buddy of mine shared this with our fellow Bible Guys recently. He’s allowed me to share it with you.

Regarding the origin of the word Lent, the name for the Christian fast is a shortening of lenten.

In Chaucer’s day, it was a word for the springtime that had also been extended to refer to the Christian observance coinciding with the season.
Lenten itself began as good Anglo-Saxon lengten, a compound word, the first element derived from Indo-European *dlongʰós=long, and the second, ten, from Indo-European *deyn = day.

Exegesis re terms for Lent in other languages

English is quite unusual in adopting the term Lent. Other Germanic tongues simply use Fast or some variation thereof (German – Fastenzeit, Norweigian – fastetid or langfaste).

Latin, translating the original Greek 40th, established quādrāgēsima, which at 5 syllables was destined to be eroded in Italian to 4 syllables, Quaresima. In Spanish and Portuguese to 3, Cuaresma. Finally and, not insignificantly, farthest away, in French, as Carême to 2.

Slavic tongues all have some variant of ‘great fast’ e.g. Polish – Wielki Post [Slavic p = f].

Dutch situated between the Romance lands to the south and the Germanic to the east has both veertigdagentijd (= 40 days time) translating the Latin and vastentijd (fast-time), preserving the native Germanic term.

Similarly, Serbo-Croatian (the same language, aka Serb when written in Cyrillic and Croatan when appearing in Latin), a border language if ever there was one, has both Latin sourced korizma (cf quaresima) and Slavic, Veliki post.

Hawaiian has Kalema, which at first looks exceptional, but given l = r, must be a loan from Sp. or Por or Fr.

Finally, there is Maltese. Once you know that it is descended from Arabic (although written in Latin alphabet), you can perhaps guess that their word, Randan, comes from Ramadan. In Modern Arabic, though, to come full circle, Lent is known as “aṣ-ṣawm al-kabīr” ( اَلصَّوْمالْكَبِير‎ ), which they tell me means “great fast.”

The takeaway

Apropos of Xian and pagan celebrations, it occurred to me that the practice of aligning the new with the extant, while a cooptation, bespeaks admirable toleration from the victor not always seen after an intense confrontation. It is especially rare, sadly, when the conflict involves successful revolt of an erstwhile oppressed element of the dominant hegemon.

February rambling: Perseverance

Chick Corea

perseveranceShe counted ballots in a pandemic, and he killed two people. Guess who gets treated like a hero?

One county, worlds apart: Bridging the political divide.

Weekly Sift: Why You Can’t Understand Conservative Rhetoric

Indivisible: A Practical Guide for Fixing our Democracy.

Trust Is The Coin Of The Realm.” by the late former secretary of state George Schultz.

Detailed interactive map of the 2020 Election.

How 100 years of Democratic rule have shaped the city of Albany.

How I survived a Chinese ‘re-education’ camp for Uighurs.

Texas

Rick Perry and the Hard Libertarian Formulation.

How the Bush family turned off the lights.

El Paso Heeded the Warnings and Avoided a Winter Catastrophe.

Ted Cruz is feckless.

Perseverance needed

Fascist insurgency persists with the merging of QAnon, militia movements, white extremists. They spread new conspiracy Trump will be president again on March 4, so Trump’s D.C. hotel nearly triples its rates.

History Will Find Trump Guilty.

How the Proud Boys Pitch Themselves to People of Color.

Health  and wellness

COVID-19 Is Ravaging Local Newspapers, Making it Easier for Misinformation to Spread.

John Green: I Predicted the Pandemic (over and over and over again).

The Pandemic Has Erased Entire Categories of Friendship

Second COVID-19 Shot Is a Rude Reawakening for Immune Cells. Side effects are just a sign that protection is kicking in as it should.

I’m getting good at this grief thing.

Tony Bennett’s Battle With Alzheimer’s

Embrace the nap

Assemblage

How to be a  genius

Bill Mahar gives the Baldy Award to policy wonk Henry Waxman.

17 years ago, Jason West, mayor of New Paltz, NY set the groundwork for the 2011 marriage equality law by presiding over same-sex marriages in his community.

“When in Doubt, Do Something.” Harry Chapin in Recent Media.

Jaquandor reviews the 1994 film What Happened Was… 

After GM poked fun of Norway in Super Bowl ad, Norway painfully hits back.

The Curse of the Buried Treasure

The Hollywood Con Queen Who Scammed Aspiring Stars Out of Hundreds of Thousands.

Missed: He flew to Paris to surprise his girlfriend. She flew to Edinburgh to surprise him

Larry Flynt paid me $1,000 to keep my clothes ON.

She traded her way from a bobby pin to a tiny house in 6 months.

JEOPARDY!

Alex Trebek’s family donates his wardrobe to charity.

Brayden Smith 

The guest host schedule.

Now I Know

Frederick Douglass  Is Not Amused. The Hunger Stones.  When Ziggy  Should Have Zagged. The Little Bit of Sun That Cost a Half-Million Dollars.  In the President’s Dog House.  The Search For Life on Earth.

Black History Month

Black Futures Month

Jacob Lawrence painted Black America for Black people — not the white gaze.

Jim Crow Filibuster

The history of overalls

Caste book supplement.

Lift Every Voice and Sing, A Celebration of African American Music – Sounds of St Olaf.

MUSIC

With God on Our Side – The Neville Brothers.

Who’s Yellen Now? – Dessa.

Marjorie Taylor Greene – Randy Rainbow.

I Won’t Dance -Willie Nelson ft. Diana Krall.

Tribute to Pops and Ella – Leonard Patton with Rebecca Jade.

Sixteen Tons – Geoff Castellucci.

Psychedelic Jazz Guitar – Boogaloo Joe Jones, 1967 album.

Sweet Blindness – The Fifth Dimension and Frank Sinatra.

A video analyzing in extreme detail Lady Gaga’s rendition of the national anthem at the inauguration. (ht/ch)

Coverville

1344: Cover Stories for Alicia Keys, Neil Diamond, and Phil Collins.

1345: Justin Timberlake Cover Story and Delvon Lamarr Interview. 

1346: Cover Stories for Gene Pitney and Feist. 

1347: Stone Roses Cover Story and the 50th Anniversary of Tapestry

Chick Corea

Obit and photo tribute and Remembrance and video link.

Play On: A Celebration of Music to Make Change

eclectic

Play On

As is often the case, I recorded a TV program only to watch it about a month later. Play On: A Celebration of the Power of Music to Make Change aired in mid-December 2020.

“Play On is a concert benefit for The NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund Inc. (LDF) and WhyHunger, two charities fighting for the country’s most pressing issues: Racial justice, equity, and food insecurity.”

It was hosted by Kevin Bacon and Eve. There were other non-performers involved, including Bruce Springsteen, John Legend, Ringo Starr, and former New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg, most of these brief.

Recording these types of programming is actually the best way to watch them. One can fast-forward through the parts where the announcer intones, “Coming Up:” this one and that one. It happens during awards shows, which is why I record, say, the Academy Awards then start watching the DVR an hour later.

“SixDegrees.Org created the Play On Fund to amplify the work of both LDF and WhyHunger. You can learn more about their work at playonlive.org.” The artists played at shuttered venues across the country: the Troubador in Los Angeles, The Bluebird Cafe in Nashville, and the Apollo in New York City.

The performers

American Reckoning – Bon Jovi. This is a song from the band’s 2020 album. It is actually the first Bon Jovi album I ever purchased. My wife requested it, and I gave it to her on Valentine’s Day.

Hold On – Yola with The Highwomen. I have a Highwomen album, but I was unfamiliar with Yola. Some promo I heard referred to her as the “gender-bending Yola,” as though that were the most important of her attributes.

Feed the Babies – Gary Clark Jr. I should buy his music.

Illegal Search – LL Cool J featuring DJ Z-Trip. He said he can’t believe he wrote the song 30 years ago, yet it’s still relevant.

Beware of Darkness -Sheryl Crow. Yes, the George Harrison song.

Justice/Get Up Stand Up  – Ziggy Marley and Andra Day.

Benefic – Machine Gun Kelly. Not my cuppa, but he has a lot of energy.

Better Than We Found It – Maren Morris. She said the song was inspired by becoming a new mother in March 2020.

People Get Ready – Sara Bareilles, Emily King, Jon Batiste, and Steve Jordan. Trading licks.

The whole thing.

Ramblin' with Roger
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