music Archives - Page 182 of 265 - Ramblin' with Roger

Music Throwback Saturday: Could It Be Magic

By 1975, Manilow was sufficiently hot that his magical collaboration with Chopin was released as a single

I love the music of Frederic Chopin. Seriously, there’s a piece by him I want to be played at my funeral. This must explain the affection for my favorite song by Barry Manilow (born Barry Alan Pincus; June 17, 1943).

The Wikipedia narrative, which matches Joel Whitburn’s Top Pop Singles information:

Before Manilow’s well-known association with Bette Midler began at the Continental Baths in New York City in 1971, he recorded four tracks as Featherbed, leading a group of session musicians produced and arranged by Tony Orlando.

Three of the tracks, [including]… an early version of his own composition “Could It Be Magic”, all flopped on the charts, a fact for which Manilow himself is fond of saying he is eternally grateful… That was because the arrangement of “Could It Be Magic” was an uptempo pop tune. Manilow had arranged the tune as a classical piece that slowly built.

From the greatest hits Ultimate Manilow album liner notes:

The earliest song here that Manilow actually wrote was Could It Be Magic, which originally appeared on his 1973 debut album… “I thought I had come up with the coolest batch of chords in my composing experience,” he remembers. “And then I realized that before I had that glass of wine, I had been playing my Chopin preludes. And I wrote the song around the Chopin ‘Prelude in C Minor.” By 1975, Manilow was sufficiently hot that his magical collaboration with Chopin was released as a single and rose right into the Top Ten.

Listen to the Chopin Prelude in C Minor, then Could It Be Magic by Barry Manilow, which sounds, to my ear, like an earlier iteration than the hit version.

Or go to WhoSampled.com, linking to both the Chopin Prelude and Could It Be Magic, which went to #6 in 1975.

But to a real shock to the system, listen to Could It Be Magic from Featherbed featuring Barry Manilow from c 1971 HERE or HERE.

Rehearsing with Leslie

As far as we know, there are not any recordings of Dad, Leslie and me singing.

My sister Leslie and I don’t talk that often on the phone, but when we do, it usually goes on for a while.

Recently when we were chatting, she noted that she has figured out the difficulty with singing in the various musical groups she has led or has sung with, over the years and currently.

It’s that, when we were growing up, singing with our father, it felt as though we never rehearsed. That was actually untrue: in singing in the car, at the dinner table, in the living room, and at the campgrounds, we WERE rehearsing all the time. It just didn’t FEEL as though it was rehearsing, because we never had to set time aside to do so.

One of the sad truths is that, as far as we know, there are not any recordings of Dad, Leslie, and me singing, or even of Dad solo when we were still living in Binghamton, NY in the 1960s.

She thinks that we, plus perhaps her daughter Rebecca Jade, ought to get together and work on some musical thing. The family being bicoastal – they live in the San Diego, CA area – I’m not sure how that would work. I did note that, if I get out there, and we were going to try to record something, we would – alas! – have to actually rehearse.

Happy birthday to the middle child.

Music Throwback Saturday: Hit Me With Your Rhythm Stick

Even without reading the lyrics, one can “see” the word endings

This post is entirely the fault of Arthur@AmeriNZ. He wrote a piece called A reason to be cheerful, about the bipartisan effort in the New Zealand Parliament to work for LGBTI rights. He knew FULL WELL that the title would make me think of the song Reasons To Be Cheerful, Part 3 by Ian Dury and The Blockheads [LISTEN].

That put in my mind another Ian Dury and the Blockheads song, Hit Me With Your Rhythm Stick. It was a big hit in much of the world: #1 in the UK, #2 in Australia, #3 in Ireland and New Zealand, and top 20 in Austria, Belgium, the Netherlands, Norway, and Sweden.

Apparently, it didn’t chart in the United States, but I heard it, and “Cheerful,” often on my favorite radio station in the late 1970s and early 1980s, WQBK-FM, Q104.

My good college friend Lynn HATED the song, I suspect, because the song title or lyrics were suggestive. But rock and roll has always been about sex, and I always preferred the euphemistic (“Roll with Me, Henry”) to the direct.

Moreover, I loved the song on several other levels. It’s danceable as all get out, thanks in no small part to a bass line played by Norman Watt-Roy.

The rhyme of the lyrics fascinated me. There is a device in poetry that commends a rhyme that isn’t spelled similarly; don’t recall what it’s called, but even without reading the lyrics, one can “see” the word endings, and I loved the pairing of: “rhythm stick” with “ich liebe dich” or “fantastique” or “Ist es nicht”; “Borneo” with “of Bordeaux”; “From Bombay to Santa Fe.”

From Song Facts:

It is well known that the Ian Dury song… was inspired by his disability; Dury was born in Harrow in May 1942… and contracted polio when he was seven years old. Although…Dury was not confined to a wheelchair, his body was still deformed by the disease, and he used a walking stick for the rest of his life. According to biographer Richard Balls, the line “It’s nice to be a lunatic” was probably inspired by a caustic remark from a lecturer in his days at Walthamstow Art College.

Dury gave the completed lyrics to his songwriting partner Chas (Chaz) Jankel in the autumn of 1978; the song has…an innovative saxophone solo by Davey Payne – who actually played two saxophones at once!

Released on the Stiff label November 23, 1978 and backed by “There Ain’t Half Been Some Clever Bastards”, it went on to sell a million copies…

Dury died of metastatic colorectal cancer on 27 March 2000, aged 57.

Listen to Hit Me With Your Rhythm Stick HERE or HERE.

July rambling #1: a dog for mayor of Schenectady, and the benefits of music

“There are two ways to be fooled. One is to believe what isn’t true; the other is to refuse to believe what is true.” – Soren Kierkegaard (1813-1855)

On ISIS’ Terms: Courting a Young American.

Nicholas Winton, Rescuer of 669 Children From Holocaust, Dies at 106. Here’s the 60 Minutes piece from 2014.

Why Don’t the Poor Rise Up? Is it because of a loss of the spirit of e pluribus unum?

John Oliver’s Last Week Tonight on transgender rights.

Same-Sex Marriage DOES Threaten “Traditional” Marriage. It’s “a threat to those who do not believe in EQUALITY between the sexes in general.”

So much anger about love. Related: There are 6 Scriptures about homosexuality in the Bible. Here’s what they really say. He could have gotten into St. Paul’s interesting pro-celibacy position in 1 Corinthians 7.

100 Percent Is Overrated. People labeled “smart” at a young age don’t deal well with being wrong. Life grows stagnant.

John Green explains — in under eight minutes — the mess that is the economy of Greece.

Leonard Starr, R.I.P.

Stephen R. Bissette: comics pioneer & evangelist, from Radio New Zealand.

Dondi creator Irwin Hasen’s final interview.

I Can’t Believe This Is an Archie Comic.

A most disturbing story about Jackie Fox of the Runaways: One famous band. One huge secret. Many lives destroyed.

Garrison Keillor sees transition out of ‘A Prairie Home Companion’.

Ken Levine’s ode to radio, and your own “radio station.”

Brian Eno Lists the Benefits of Singing: A Long Life, Increased Intelligence, and a Sound Civilization.

Polyphonic overtone singing – Anna-Maria Hefele.

Keith Richards: Life. Full Documentary Movie – 1 hour.

Music video: “HAVE A NICE DAY” – WORLD ORDER.

Songs that Stephen Sondheim wishes he’d written. (This is part 3, but the first two are linked within.)

Paul McCartney Opens Up About Lennon, Yoko, and More. “Our greatest living rock star on why Lennon’s a martyr, who gets the credit, and touring in his seventies.”

Nice story about guitarist Lawrence Juber.

Now I Know: A Tale of One Cities.

Leonard Maltin remembers Omar Sharif. I noted that I knew him better from reading his bridge column, initially with Charles Goren, trying (and failing) to ascertain the art of the artificial bid.

BBC Radio 2003 half-hour documentary of the romantic (and business) relationship of Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz available for the month of July. Here’s Mark Evanier’s brief encounter with them.

Korean age.

Meet The Obscure Exclamation Comma: Because Excitement Can Happen In The Middle Of A Sentence. Sorry, I ain’t buying.

A Dog Named Diamond Is Running for Mayor of Schenectady, New York. And her owner, Kathy, sits about ten feet from my desk at work. In fact, I have Roger Fur Mayor bumper sticker on my office cubicle wall, from when that cat ran in 2011.

Maria from Sesame Street retires. That would be Sonia Manzano.

Muppets: Congressional Muppets and what is marriage and number six and a thank you.

This Crazy Fan Theory About ‘Jeopardy!’ Actually Makes Total Sense. Or not.

GOOGLE ALERT (me)

The Friends of the Albany Public Library presented the library with a check at the Washington Avenue branch. “The $3,500 will go towards the costs of the summer reading program. Albany’s Tulip Queen was also on hand for the presentation.”

Preparing the circus’ center ring. The state of the Republican debate.

Jaquandor links to stuff.

Music Throwback Saturday: But It’s Alright

Is it possible that they were born the exact same day – April 8, 1941 – or did biographers (likely) conflate the two?

In the latter 1970s, I bought the Warner Brothers Loss Leader album Cook Book, devoted to soul/rhythm & blues/black music. The liner notes acknowledged that WB had not traditionally been associated with the genre.

“The label’s lineup in the late ’50s and early ’60s disclosed an R&B contingent that would have included only Sammy Davis Jr. and Bill Cosby.”

I recall reading this bit: “Despite a few noble experiments… and the isolated soul hit (J.J. Jackson’s ‘But It’s Alright’…)” As it turns out, that was one of the relatively very few singles I owned; I still may, and I should check. The label should have included it in the collection.

In fact, when the song was originally released in 1966, it came out on a tiny label called Calla, as the B-side of the single called “Boogaloo Baby”, before it “became one of the best-known dance music tunes of the decade,” reaching #22 on the Billboard pop charts, and #4 on the soul charts.

“The single was recorded in the United Kingdom, featuring some of Britain’s top jazz musicians of the day, including Terry Smith on guitar, Dick Morrissey on tenor sax, and John Marshall on drums.” It was re-released in 1969 on Warner, getting to #45 on the pop charts.

Jerome Louis Jackson, known as J.J. Jackson, is apparently still a working musician. He should not be confused with the late MTV VJ of the same name from back in the early days when the network played music videos most of the day, every day.

Is it possible that they were born the exact same day – April 8, 1941 – or did biographers (likely) conflate the two? I’ve also seen the singer’s birthday as November 8, 1942.

Anyway, here’s But It’s Alright HERE or HERE.