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Music Throwback Saturday: Why Can’t We Live Together

Back in the day, I might buy a whole album just for one song. I know I did this for the title track of the 1972 album Why Can’t We Live Together by Timmy Thomas.

The song went to #3 on the US pop charts, #1 on the US soul charts, and #1 on the UK charts. The rest of the album was fine, but there was just something magical about this tune.

The introduction of the 2014 Evangel Pacific Radio interview reads:

“In 1972, Timmy Thomas was watching the evening news hosted by Walter Cronkite. Mr. Cronkite was reporting on the Vietnam war and the thousands of American and Viet Cong soldiers that had died in battle. Timmy thought ‘Why Can’t We Live Together’. This thought became a song that was embraced by millions.”

But it’s not just the message, it’s the instrumentation.

The song is notable for its sparse, stripped-down production, which featured only a Hammond organ, percussion from an early rhythm machine and Thomas’s passionate, soulful vocal. Thomas first sang it as an improvised number on his own nightclub… Timmy recorded a demo…

TK Records staff producer Steve Alaimo listened to the demo of the song and was going to re-cut it with a full band, but then decided the song was already finished the way it was.

The song has been covered by many artists, including… Sade (1984)…, Joan Osborne, Steve Winwood (2003) and Maria Muldaur (2009).

Here’s a bit of music history I did not know:

Mike Anthony, an American DJ/producer based in Belgium at the time, recorded his discofied version of the song in early 1982 but while it had reached the Belgian and Dutch charts, he was sued by the owners of the original Timmy Thomas recording for using elements from the original recording.

A judge ordered a re-recording of the song with all the original parts removed. This ruling marked one of the first court cases in which the use of original samples in new recordings played a role, as a precursor to the many court cases in the 1990s and 2000s.

Still, it has been sampled frequently.

Some info about Timmy Thomas (b. 13 November 1944) from Soulwalking.

Timmy Thomas had a massively UNsuccessful attempt with a Kickstarter campaign, “We Can Live Together” Help Us Save Our Children! in 2014.

Listen to the song Why Can’t We Live Together HERE or HERE.

W is for Whipped Cream and Other Delights

For this post, you can blame Chuck Miller, who wrote about Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass in late May 2015. It reminded me of my history collecting TJB.

I owned at least 7 of the first eight albums by the band, starting with Lonely Bull, which was the very first album released on A&M Records, LP-101. This is not surprising since Alpert was the A in A&M. I suspect I got them through the Capitol Record Club.

Unfortunately, almost all my albums, alphabetically A, B, much of S and all of T-Z were stolen from my grandmother’s house in the Great LP Theft of 1972.

Subsequently, I bought, again, the album Whipped Cream & Other Delights from a used record store. As it turned out, the LP inside was actually the TJB album Going Places. Oddly, I did not mind.

The album cover was legendary. It featured model Dolores Erickson, who was three months pregnant when they photographed her. She was actually covered mostly in shaving cream because whipped cream melts under the hot photography lights.

Listen to Whipped Cream & Other Delights, an album that spent 185 weeks on the US Billboard album charts starting in 1965, including eight weeks at #1.

Right before I started blogging back in 2005, my friend/blogging guru Fred Hembeck wrote a blog post on March 31. It celebrated both Herb Alpert, who had turned 70 that day, so he’s now 80; and that album cover, which is now 50 years old, with the model now 78.

A few days later, Fred shared a fascinating find of mine: Album covers spoofing album covers. Back then, the album was pictured #14, with #15-18 as goofs on the theme. A decade later, the page is still going. Now, the original cover of Whipped Cream & Other Delights is at #79, as of this writing, with the parodies, such as the one here, following.

ABC Wednesday – Round 16

June rambling #1: procrastination, and tessellation

The Beach Boys’ Brian Wilson: America’s Mozart?

When You Kill Ten Million Africans and You Aren’t Called ‘Hitler’ – King Leopold II of Belgium, who “owned” the Congo.

The Dannemora Dilemma. “‘Little Siberia’ turned out to be the prison’s nickname.”

The Weekly Sift addresses the Duggars’ brand of fundamentalist Christianity and other stuff. Plus What’s So Scary About Caitlyn Jenner?

The 2016 U.S. Presidential Race: A Cheat Sheet and The Crystal Ball‘s 2016 Electoral College ratings. I have NO idea who the Republican candidate for President will be.

If it’s not Jeb Bush, and I have my serious doubts that it will be, then one of those people from the “he/she can’t win” category could possibly emerge.

ADD on blaming the victims of today’s disastrous economy for trying to survive it.

What Poverty Does to the Young Brain.

Disunion, The Final Q&A: The New York Times’s series on the Civil War.

Franklin Graham Calls for Christian Boycott — Here Are Some Ideas for Targets.

Rachel Dolezal and minstrelsy.

David Kalish: The Fine Art of Procrastination.

THE MARVEL-INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX and a follow-up.

Drawing the Undrawable: An Explanation from Neil and Amanda Gaiman, re: The New Statesman and Art Spiegelman.

Microsoft’s Windows 10 will be available on July 29. This SHOULD mean you can update from Windows 7, and I can get rid of the dreadful Windows 8.

How to create strong passwords.

Why Pluto Is a Planet, and Eris Is, Too.

Now I Know: The Lights That Almost Led to World War III and America’s Most Wanted Coincidence and Why are there so few $2 bills?

Gouverneur is a small town of about 6,000 located in St. Lawrence County, NY. But how do you PRONOUNCE it? In English and in French.

Berowne: George Gordon. Better known as Lord Byron.

Never-before-seen film of the legendary aviator Amelia Earhart — from her last photo shoot ever, shortly before she disappeared over the Pacific Ocean in 1937.

The origin of that Orange Church of God sign I see on Facebook all the time. Speaking of which: 6 Facebook Statuses That Need To Stop Right Now.

Mark Evanier’s childhood Christmas chicanery.

The app that identifies plants from a picture. Seriously, I could use this.

What is a tessellation? Math, and design.

A marbles tsunami.

True: Why are the Tony Awards so afraid of the Tony Awards?

Sex Pistols credit card.

The Beach Boys’ Brian Wilson: America’s Mozart?

James Taylor’s creativity flows anew.

The Mary Lou Williams Suite, the jazz pianist and arranger. Includes the Land of Oo-Bla-Dee.

SamuraiFrog ranks Weird Al: 60-51. He also brought to mind that the birthday of Todd Rundgren is coming up, which reminded me of a 1985 album I own on vinyl that I haven’t heard in a good while. LISTEN to A Cappella, or at least the last song, a cover of the Spinners’ Mighty Love.

Bert Jansch’s Blackwaterside, first recorded in 1966. Which sounds an awful lot like Jimmy Page’s instrumental Black Mountain Side, from Led Zeppelin’s 1969 debut.

DJ Otzi – Burger Dance, “based on the premise that the single aspect of American culture most readily recognizable in the rest of the world is fast food.”

This list is rubbish, but hey, it has links to Beatles songs. The most skippable Beatles cuts, from “All You Need Is Love” to “Yellow Submarine”.

Muppets: Puppetman and Kermit the Frog and Grover on The Ed Sullivan Show and Grover is Special and the 1962 pilot Tales of the Tinkerdee and some other stuff.

Legendary Special-Effects Artist Rick Baker on How CGI Killed His Industry.

Actor Christopher Lee, Dracula and Nazi hunter, dies at 93. From The Guardian and BFI and the Hollywood Reporter and Bruce Hallenbeck in Diabolique and Mr. Frog and Gordon at Blog This, Pal.

Ornette Coleman, Jazz Innovator, Dies at 85.

Dustbury notes the passing of Monica Lewis, a voice, at least, you’ve heard, if you are of a certain age.

GOOGLE ALERTS (not me)

Roger and Carmen Green of Baraboo, Wisconsin celebrated their 60th wedding anniversary.

UK: An illustrated guided walk tracing the route of the Nickey Line is being led by railway enthusiast Roger Green on Saturday, June 27.

Music Throwback Saturday: Lay Down (Candles in the Rain)

Lay Down was a song that I would hear on an album and then play again right away.

Melanie Safka, who performed under her first name, appeared at the Woodstock festival in 1969. Although she doesn’t appear in the 1970 movie, she does have songs on the second album from the three-day concert.

Her first single was What Have They’ve Done to My Song, Ma, which became a much bigger hit for the New Seekers later in 1970 (#14 US Billboard).

Her first big smash, though, inspired by her Woodstock experience, was Lay Down (Candles in the Rain) for which she enlisted her Buddah Records label mates, the Edwin Hawkins Singers.

From American Songwriter: “Melanie had to beg the group to join her on the song since they were reluctant to perform any song that didn’t make specific mention of the Lord. ‘But he’s in there,’ she told them in the studio, and she must have been convincing. ‘By the time I finished singing,’ Safka says, ‘they were joining me in the chorus.'”

It went to #6 on the Billboard charts. #3 in Australia, #5 in Canada, #1 in the Netherlands, and #4 in France.

On the US version of the Candles in the Rain LP, which I own, there’s a spoken-word track that segues into the singing portion.

LISTEN to:
single version (3:50)
spoken word intro (5:45)
live version (6:15)

She would have several Top 40 hits in the United States, notably Brand New Key, which was #1 for three weeks in the fall of 1971. But it is Lay Down that I would hear on an album and then have to play again right away.

Music Throwback Saturday: Oh Happy Day

George Harrison said “Oh Happy Day” was a primary inspiration in the writing of his 1970 hit single “My Sweet Lord.”

The 8 April 1966 cover of TIME magazine asked the question, “Is God Dead?” John Lennon made a controversial statement about Beatles’ popularity in relationship to Jesus that same year.

So it was interesting to me that, in a period of songs of protest about war and the human condition, “Oh Happy Day” by the Edwin Hawkins Singers, a gospel group out of northern California, became an international hit in 1969, reaching No. 4 in the US, No. 2 in both the UK singles chart and Irish Singles Chart, and No. 1 on the German Singles Charts. The Grammy-winning song has since become a gospel music standard. The lead singer was Dorothy Combs Morrison.

I did not know this:

It began as a hymn written in the mid-18th century (“O happy day, that fixed my choice”) by English clergyman Philip Doddridge (based on Acts 8:35) set to an earlier melody (1704) by J. A. Freylinghausen. By the mid-19th century it had been given a new melody by Edward F. Rimbault, who also added a chorus, and was commonly used for baptismal or confirmation ceremonies in the UK and USA. The 20th century saw its adaptation from 3/4 to 4/4 time and this new arrangement by Hawkins, which contains only the repeated Rimbault refrain, with all of the original verses being omitted.

I did know that George Harrison had “stated the song was a primary inspiration in the writing of his 1970 international hit single My Sweet Lord.” [LISTEN] In fact, some musicologists believe the Harrison tune is more inspired structurally by the Hawkins tune than by the Chiffons’ song, “He’s So Fine” [LISTEN], over which Harrison had legal issues.

Dustbury’s write-up of the song.

LISTEN to Oh Happy Day – The Edwin Hawkins Singers
Oh Happy Day from Sister Act 2
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A music great died this week, Jean Ritchie. Read about her HERE.