Tag: music

Music Throwback Saturday: On Broadway

A young Phil Spector played the distinctive lead guitar solo on The Drifters’ recording.

ClaudeMckayI’ve been involved with an office JEOPARDY! game. A recent clue: “A hundred shouting signs shed down their bright fantastic glow” in Claude McKay’s “On” this NYC street. No idea, but because of a question I’d missed earlier, I take a guess, and it’s correct.

Here’s On Broadway by Claude McKay, a rather melancholy piece:
Upon the merry crowd and lines
Of moving carriages below.
Oh wonderful is Broadway — only
My heart, my heart is lonely.

Claude McKay was born in Jamaica on September 15, 1889, and became an early key figure in the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s.

I wonder if the poem inspired a song a few decades later:

New York City-based composers Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil wrote On Broadway “originally recorded by the Cookies (although the Crystals’ version beat them to release)”…

“Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller liked the song but felt that it was not quite right [for the Drifters] and the four held an overnight brainstorming session which culminated in the better-known version of the song, now with a rock-oriented groove and with a more bluesy feel… A young Phil Spector played the distinctive lead guitar solo on The Drifters’ recording.”

LISTEN to On Broadway

The Cookies

The Crystals

The Drifters, #9 pop, #7 soul in 1963

Dave Clark Five

The Chipettes

Bobby Darin

Percy Faith Orchestra

Neil Young

George Benson, #7 pop, #2 soul

“George Benson’s version… from his 1978 album Weekend in L.A…. won a Grammy Award for Best R&B Vocal Performance. The song appeared in the films Big Business and American Beauty, and… was used in the 1979 film All That Jazz in a sequence that featured dancers on stage auditioning for a musical similar to Chicago. George Benson also performed “On Broadway” with Clifford and the Rhythm Rats for the 1994 Muppet album Kermit Unpigged.”

March rambling #1: wipe out cancer in a decade

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Louisville doctor says the breakthrough treatment could wipe out cancer in a decade. Even better, one of the subjects in the story is my friend Eddie, the Renaissance Geek!

Keefknight Cartoon: Colon. One of my brothers-in-law died from colorectal cancer in 2002, at the age of 41.

Why I Left the Right: How Studying Religion Made Me a Liberal.

The White House Welcomes Holler If You Hear Me: Black and Gay in the Church. See this powerful documentary in full (60 minutes).

The Disappearing Soldier.

Kintsugi: The Art of Embracing Damage.

K Troop: The story of the eradication of the original Ku Klux Klan.

Agrippa Hull, Thaddeus Kosciusko, and how Thomas Jefferson didn’t hold up his end of the agreement.

Nancy Reagan rejected Rock Hudson’s plea for help with AIDS treatment sent just months before his death.

Seattle Seahawks Kam Chancellor Wanted to Buy a Gym and Gym Employees Called the Cops on Him.

Formerly freewheeling Aubrey McClendon, now deceased.

Disney is screwing American families.

I was a telemarketer for four months back in 1977. If you hate telemarketers, you’ll love this robot designed to waste their time.

Dan Van Riper: Some crappy-looking old junk from my buildings.

Actor George Kennedy, RIP, who I remember from Cool Hand Luke, Earthquake, the Naked Gun movies, and a whole lot of episodic TV.

Making rubber bands and bagels. There’s a point in the processes where the two batters looks very much the same. Seriously.

shaft
TIME Magazine names male author Evelyn Waugh on female most-read list. (HT to Shooting Parrots.)

Why It Hurts So Much to Step On a LEGO. “Resistance, shiny hardness, and mega-strength.”

Study: Chocolate Makes You Smarter. Of course.

The long and tangled history of Alfred E. Neuman, of MAD magazine.

Russ Heath’s Comic About Being Ripped Off By Roy Lichtenstein.

Music

Billboard: George Martin, and Beatles – She’s Leaving Home, Strings Only (1967) and Dustbury’s favorite George Martin production, other than Beatles material.

The five best soul albums of all-time, according to St Paul & The Broken Bones

When I was in college, I played that first Emerson, Lake and Palmer album a lot. I could do a fair representation of the Moog ending of Lucky Man, sans instrument. Also, listen to Karn Evil 9 2nd Impression. Now Keith Emerson, ELP Keyboardist, Dead at 71.

With “A Group Called Smith”, Gayle McCormick was best remembered for her release in AUGUST of 1969 of Baby It’s You. She lost her battle with cancer and passed away in ST. LOUIS, on MARCH 1st, 2016 at age 67.

Joe Cuba – Bang Bang. #63 in 1966.

I think Rossini’s overture to William Tell is underrated because it’s so familiar.

Pie, and the love thereof

Apple pie in the sky as dreamer.

apple pieI am on the record, stating my great preference for pie over cake. Pie, as a form, is more flexible than cake, as it can be savory (chicken pot pie, e.g.) or sweet.

Picking this totally random day, here are some of my favorite songs about pie.

American Pie- Don McLean. Also the name of a series of movies about libidinous teenagers.

Apples Peaches Pumpkin Pie – Jay & The Techniques. I remember that game. This 1966 song I’m fairly sure one of my sisters owned, perhaps on the album. “Marry you so you don’t roam.” What a controlling guy.

Custard Pie -Led Zeppelin. I was shocked, SHOCKED to find out that this song from Physical Graffiti might be about…something else. Would Zeppelin actually use food items as metaphors for sex?

Flaming Pie – Paul McCartney. The album’s title track about how John Lennon named the Beatles.

Honey Pie – the Beatles. This doesn’t talk about food at all, but is rather a term of endearment. What IS it with Macca and pie?

I Can’t Help Myself (Sugar Pie, Honey Bunch) – Four Tops. More affectionate use of the term.

Sweet Potato Pie – Ray Charles. From the Genius Loves Company album (2004), this track features James Taylor, who had written and performed the song for his Never Die Young album (1988).

High Hopes – Frank Sinatra. Specifically: “He’s got high, apple-pie-in-the-sky hopes.” Apple pie in the sky as dreamer.

Lots of pie songs out there in a simple Google search. Here’s one list .

Music Throwback Saturday: I’ll Be Good To You

I was in a doctor’s office back in October 2015 which played surprisingly good, and eclectic, music.

Quincy_Jones_-_Back_On_The_Block-frontBack in 1989, I picked up this album produced by Quincy Jones, called Back on the Block. “The album features legendary musicians and singers from across three generations, including Ella Fitzgerald, Miles Davis, Joe Zawinul, Ice-T, Big Daddy Kane, Sarah Vaughan, Dizzy Gillespie, George Benson, Luther Vandross, Dionne Warwick, Barry White, Take 6, Bobby McFerrin, Al Jarreau, Al B. Sure!, James Ingram, and El DeBarge.”

The album went to #9 on the Billboard album charts and was so eclectic that it hit #1 on both the Top Contemporary Jazz Albums and Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums charts.

The first single of the collection was I’ll Be Good To You, featuring Ray Charles and Chaka Khan. It was a hit, #18 on the US pop charts, and #1 for two weeks on the rhythm and blues charts in 1990.

I was in a doctor’s office back in October 2015 which played surprisingly good, and eclectic music. I hear I’ll be Good To You, but it’s surely not the Quincy version. It turns out that it was by The Brothers Johnson, who I’ve mentioned on this blog before.

How did I miss this version, written by the Brothers Johnson (George and Louis) and Sonora Sam, and produced by Quincy? It got up to #3 for three weeks in 1976, as well as #1 on the r&b charts.

I’ll Be Good To You:
Quincy Jones, Ray Charles & Chaka Khan

The Brothers Johnson
The Brothers Johnson
The Brothers Johnson on Midnight Special

Quincy Jones turns 83 on March 14.

George Martin

George Martin got Paul to agree to put a string quartet on the song Yesterday.

george-martinBeatles producer George Martin, who died this week at the age of 90, had been on my mind recently. The family went to not one, but two programs of Deconstructing the Beatles at the end of February.

One show was about the making of the album Rubber Soul, and the other concerning just three songs: Strawberry Fields Forever, Penny Lane, and A Day in the Life. Re: the latter, Scott Freiman described, among other things, how Martin and engineer Geoff Emerick meshed two disparate versions of John Lennon’s song Strawberry Fields together, by “speeding up the first version and slowing down the second.”

It was one of 10 Great Beatles Moments We Owe to George Martin, though there were undoubtedly more. “Martin served as expert and conspirator, taskmaster and mad scientist, friend and father figure throughout the band’s studio life. He shaped their songs in ways that are seldom appreciated but impossible to forget.”

When I was watching CBS News This Morning, some “expert” from Rolling Stone told that Strawberry Fields story but identified the song in question as Penny Lane. Maybe it was an 8 a.m. brain freeze; Penny Lane and Strawberry Fields WERE on the same single. But then CBS played a snippet of Penny Lane, which suggested that they were told in advance by the said expert to cue the song actually written by Paul.

The expert also said it was their songwriting prowess that appealed to Martin, when in fact it was their personalities that first convinced him that they would be successful, long before they showed any evidence of musical brilliance.

Earlier that morning, I heard National Public Radio identify George Martin as the Beatles manager – arrgh.

Paul McCartney described how George Martin got Paul to agree to put a string quartet on the song Yesterday. Later, in his solo career, Paul brought in his proposed songs for the Tug of War album, and Martin’s reaction was something like “that’s nice…where are the real songs?”, which took McCartney aback, but prompted him to write better material.

George Martin: the man who changed pop forever (with a little help from his friends)

Top 10 George Martin Non-Beatles Records

Brian Wilson and George Martin in studio at Brian’s home in LA playing with God Only Knows.

Coverville 1116.

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