“In the 1970s in Minneapolis, bass player Jimmy ‘Flim’ Johnson hooked up with a couple of other studio musicians named Billy Barber (piano) and Bill Berg (drums), and created a jazz group they whimsically called Flim & The BBs. (Billy Barber, Bill Berg – BBs – OK, you got it),” (VinylDiscovery). “Woodwind/reed player Dick Oatts was an integral part of the group as well, but his name wasn’t part of the group’s name because (I’m guessing) Flim & the BB’s and Oatts just didn’t have the right ring to it.
Their music is best described as fusion or contemporary jazz, which would normally make me run for the hills. But these guys are different: They are inventive, technically superb, and seem to always inject a touch of whimsy into their playing. As one reviewer put it, ‘They’re playing is the perfect combination of tight and loose.’ The whimsy shows up in the band’s name of course, but also in their album titles and artwork.”
Featuring a supple fretless bass melody at its start, “New Snow” (from 1992’s This is a Recording), with guest vocalist Michael Ruff, starts in Ab major. At 2:27, a downward modulation to F major is in effect for an instrumental bridge until 2:57, where the tune reverts up to Ab.
“Stevie Wonder is a soul music giant, a beloved American icon, and an indisputable genius of popular music,” (AllMusic). “The musician’s heightened awareness of sound — a consequence of his blindness — has helped him create vibrant music teeming with joyous positivity, even when he’s written about heartbreak and addressed issues of race, spirituality, and society in general. Wonder’s recordings are a richly eclectic and singular brew of soul, funk, rock & roll, Broadway/Tin Pan Alley-style pop, jazz, reggae, and African elements. Combined with his elastic voice, peerless melodic facility, gift for complex arrangements, and taste for lovely ballads, his broad appeal over the decades has been unmatched.”
The 1967 album I Was Made to Love Her “was rushed out to capitalize on the success of the title song, which was Wonder’s biggest pop hit since ‘Fingertips, Pt. 2,’ and would not be bettered until ‘Superstition’ in 1972 … There are several contributions from the Wonder team at Motown, covers of other Motown hits, and stabs at sounding like Ray Charles, James Brown, and Otis Redding. At 17, Wonder was becoming both a remarkable mimic, and an original talent on his own.”
Between the prominent piano fills, the layers of female backup singers, and Stevie’s interpretation on lead vocal, it certainly seems that this was the Ray Charles section of the album! At 1:24, at just about the tune’s half-point, a half-step key change hits, followed by another at 1:53.
“In the ‘20s and ‘30s Kansas City was a hotbed of jazz, and pianist/bandleader Bennie Moten was at the heart of it,” (JazzStandards.com). “The recordings with his Kansas City Orchestra from 1923 to 1935 document the evolution of his style as he moved from ragtime to jazz in the mid-to late ‘20s, establishing what came to be known as the ‘Kansas City style.’ He began raiding another established K.C. band, Walter Page’s Blue Devils. By the end of the decade Count Basie, Jimmy Rushing, Hot Lips Page, Eddie Durham and Ben Webster had left the Blue Devils to join Moten. When Moten died suddenly in 1935, Basie took over leadership and the group eventually developed into the Count Basie Orchestra.
In A New History of Jazz, Alyn Shipton describes the development of Moten’s style. ‘Whereas his first discs show a rhythmic stiffness and a debt to ragtime, despite a reliance on the harmonic structure of the blues, he went on to define the loose, blues-influenced style, with a four-bar pulse, which became the predominant local jazz genre, and underpinned the work of later Kansas City bands like those of Count Basie and Jay McShann.’”
Many covers of 1932’s “Moten Swing” exist, but the standard is strongly associated with Basie. After a opening section in Ab major where the piano hearkens back to the light touch that was Basie’s unmistakeable trademark, 1:38 brings an explosive, syncopated modulation to C major. At 1:53, we’ve returned to Ab major for the final A section.
One of the most prominent singer/songwriters of the 1970s, UK native Cat Stevens (now known as Yusuf) had many hits in the first half of that decade, releasing more than one album a year during a brief period. Just as his popularity started to wane a bit, Stevens released Numbers” … subtitled A Pythagorean Theory Tale … based on a fictional planet in a far-off galaxy named Polygor,” (from the liner notes).
“Numbers (1975) sits in a peculiar position in Cat’s back catalogue – the last real attempt at making something ‘new’ and different’ in his ‘first’ career, the last album started from scratch before his conversion to Islam and, most interestingly of all, the only real half-concept/story album in his back catalogue,” (AlansAlbumArchives). “Even when concept albums were all the range at Cat’s peak (1970-73) Cat never made an album like this one, based on one rounded theme (his songs almost always share the same theme but are separate discussions of each topic and sub-topic – he never again takes us on a half-hour journey somewhere like this again).”
After an intro in F# major, the verse tumbles into D major (0:16). At 2:25, an instrumental outro turns around a few times before landing us in B major.
“… I was happy to hear the band cash in on their talent,” (Propography.com). (The band’s 1981 album) “The Completion Backward Principle benefits from good packaging (the band re-envisioned as a business, which wasn’t much of a stretch at this point) and great production from David Foster, who also co-wrote many of the songs. It isn’t a concept album … just a collection of songs that seem to take their inspiration from a bad day of TV programming (are you getting the sense they were watching too much television?): serial killers, giant women, amnesia.
Is The Completion Backward Principle a sellout? The answer probably depends on who you ask. Capitol didn’t bring in David Foster to make another convoluted concept album, yet The Tubes weren’t ready to become Toto 2.0 just yet. That said, lampooning the business side of the music business doesn’t change the fact that The Completion Backward Principle is (good) product.”
The album’s closing track, “Let’s Make Some Noise,” represents the glossiest New Wave/pop edge of the veteran band’s broad sonic range. The synth-heavy arrangement also makes good use of the band’s strong vocal firepower, with nearly all the personnel pitching in on backing vocals behind frontman Fee Waybill’s lead. After an intro and verse in D major, the verse shifts to C# minor (0:43). The pattern holds for verse 2 and chorus 2. At 2:04, the chorus shifts up a whole step to D# minor.
for Eric
This second video shows the band in the full simulated corporate regalia which was the centerpiece of the album’s concept. Album promotion via simulated industrial film(?) Why not?
After a start as a jazz musician, saxophonist Paul Winter founded the Paul Winter Consort, “one of the earliest exponents of world music, combining elements from various African, Asian, and South American cultures with jazz,” (AllMusic). “… Winter became increasingly involved with environmental issues. He participated in activities with the Greenpeace organization, and worked towards a successful integration of music and nature … Since 1980, Winter has headed a non-profit group dedicated to increasing public awareness of music’s relationship to spiritual and environmental health. He continues to perform in support of his organization, frequently in settings conducive to the production of (and interaction with) ambient sound, such as the Grand Canyon, or New York’s Cathedral of St. John the Divine … With help from some of the finest Irish musicians extant, Paul Winter presents Celtic Solstice (1999), his sonic love letter to the Celtic musical tradition …”
“Davy Spillane, one of Ireland’s premier players of uilleann pipes (also called Irish pipes) and low whistles, bringing a modern sensibility to musical instruments that have their roots in traditions that are hundreds of years old,” (Encyclopedia.com). “After playing with the groundbreaking Irish folk-rock band Moving Hearts, Spillane went on to a successful career as a soloist and accompanist with pop stars such as Elvis Costello, Kate Bush, and Van Morrison. He has also composed and played music for film and stage productions, including the hit musical Riverdance. An accomplished pipemaker as well as a musician, Spillane constructed all of the instruments he plays, and makes them to order for musicians around the world.” In 2000, Spillane helped Winter win a Grammy Award for Best New Age Album for Celtic Solstice.
Starting in E minor and led by Spillane’s haunting uilleann pipe melody, the piece reaches a common-tone modulation to A major at 2:25 with a switch to Winter’s soprano saxophone. We then move through various keys of the moment before returning to the initial melody, key, and keening uilleann pipe lead at 4:14. A final drone in D major ends the piece at 6:23. The rich pipe organ of New York City’s Cathedral of St. John the Divine stunningly underpins the stark melodic timbres and spacious phrasing.
“Chopin composed 21 nocturnes, 18 of which were published during his lifetime,” (The Guardian). “They span almost his entire creative career – the earliest were written in the late 1820s, when the composer was still in his teens, the last in 1846, three years before his death. That period also coincided with massive advances in the technology of the piano itself; the instruments that Beethoven and Schubert wrote for – the kind that Chopin would have known in his youth – were very different in their tonal capabilities and power from those that he was able to play and compose on in the last decade of his life.
In some significant respects, Chopin’s development as a composer, and the steady refinement of his musical language, are inseparable from the increasing expressive power that the steady advancement in piano technology offered him through his career. Together with the mazurkas, the other miniature form that he made his own, the nocturnes provide a musical chronology of that development.”
“Chopin’s Nocturne in G (1839) is written like a barcarolle, a song of the Venetian gondoliers. In the left hand you’ll hear the gentle rocking motion of the boat,” (VermontPublic.org). “The music shifts and the key changes just like the scenery passing by. The boat comes to a rest and we hear a melody, like the gondolier singing a simple, repetitive song.”
After the piece begins in G major, at the 0:18 mark we’ve clearly launched into new harmonic territory, with many additional shifts throughout. However, the piece manages to come to its final resting point by returning to the key of G major.
“It’s been (31) years since we watched nightclub lounge singer Deloris Van Cartier turn into Sister Mary Clarence to avoid getting killed in Sister Act,” (ABC News). “Whoopi Goldberg’s character was put in protective custody, inside a rundown San Francisco convent, to avoid her gangster boyfriend’s goons after she witnessed a killing. There, she became the director of the church’s choir, taking the nuns from meek singers to a chorus so beautiful they sang for the Pope.
Sister Act burst into theaters at a time when movie soundtracks were stand-alone bodies of work. And this 1992 film was no different. It set the tone for other movie soundtracks that we’d also memorize later that year, including The Bodyguard,Aladdin, and Boomerang.“
“Joyful, Joyful,” from the 1993 sequel Sister Act 2, based on “Ode to Joy” from Beethoven’s 9th symphony, moves through several sections. The first section, featuring Lauryn Hill, states the rubato melody in Db major; at 1:29, the St. Francis Choir picks up the tempo into full-on contemporary gospel (E major, later rising to F major at 3:05).
Let’s first establish that we’re not referring to THAT Paul Young (the vocalist with the multiple 80s pop hits — also from the UK).
Now that we’ve got that out of the way, we’ve landed in trad/folk world. “Paul (Young) has been a busy member of the Northern folk scene for a number of years now,” (Aluinn Ceiligh Band’s website). “Formerly a member of the well-known group Black Beard’s Tea-Party, he joined Aluinn shortly after their formation in 2011 and has been playing with them ever since. He also runs his own York-based band The New Fox Band. As adept on melodeon as he is on fiddle, Paul also has a busy teaching practice.” Young’s own website flips the script, emphasizing his melodeon work over the fiddle. Overall, Young’s web presence is very slim indeed, aside from his extensive Youtube videos.
Regular contributor JB adds: “In addition to stellar technique, Young is a pretty gifted songwriter. All 30 tunes in the video are his original compositions, and while there are a few clunkers, most of the tunes manage to pull off a really difficult straddle: They sound sufficiently ‘trad-adjacent’ that they could be seamlessly mixed into a set with tunes that were written 200 years ago, but are also more harmonically adventurous than 95% of trad tunes.”
After starting in A minor, Young’s “Sordid” shifts to A major at 41:26, then back to minor at 41:42, alternating onward from there. (Our apologies for the oddly huge numbers on the timeslates, but this tune is merely a small part of a much larger compilation video featuring Young’s work).
Blood, Sweat and Tears, a jazz/rock 10-piece band from New York City, has curiously avoided a MotD debut to date — but that ends now! FromRolling Stone‘s 1969 review of Blood, Sweat & Tears’ eponymous second album by John Landau: “… a perfect example of the rock record that ‘tries harder.’ While at some points on the record the basic style of the group resembles rock and roll, more often the listener is being bombarded with non-rock arranging devices, non-rock solos, and non-rock material, all of which tells him that ‘something else’ is going. The obvious response is that we are hearing something new: rock being mixed with jazz, rock being mixed with soul, etc. Ultimately, someone at Columbia will come up with a name for it: ‘jazz-folk-soul-baroque-C&W-latin-show-tune-rock.’ And for once the hyphenated labeling would be appropriate because BS+T play hyphenated music: first they play folk, then they play jazz, then they play latin, etc. Styles exist in tangent on their record, but never merge into one.”
Landau continues his cutting criticisms of the band’s ambitious sound throughout the review. A criticism that can’t be made about the band, however, is that they were following any kind of well-established trend whatsoever. Instead, they seemed to be putting out feelers to see where the edges of stylistic possibility were — an exercise which can easily get awkward, and fast. But the very idea of the musical genre hyphenate was very much in the air during the late 1960s and early 1970s; in addition to jazz musicians adding rock elements to their sound, why shouldn’t a rock group work with some jazz elements? Perhaps further bolstering the band’s experimental nature: during its existence, no fewer than 160 musicians were part of the lineup!
“You’ve Made Me So Very Happy,”written by Brenda Holloway, Patrice Holloway, Frank Wilson and Motown head Berry Gordy, was initially released in 1967 by Brenda Holloway. Re-released by BS+T, “it became one of BS+T’s biggest hits, reaching number 2 on the Billboard Hot 100 in the United States in April 1969,” (Billboard). “The song was kept from the number 1 spot by ‘Aquarius/Let the Sunshine In’ by The 5th Dimension.” The tune was later covered by Cher, Liza Minnelli, Lou Rawls, Sammy Davis Jr., Shirley Bassey, Gloria Estefan, and many others. After starting in Db major, a brief interlude (1:48-2:08) is in Gb major, followed by a multi-key instrumental journey of a bridge (2:08-2:48) and a return to the chorus (this time in D major). At 3:22, an outro with a much gentler groove and tempo ends the tune in G major.
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