Elise – Page 57

Cory Henry | When You Can’t Stop Changing Keys (transcribed by Timothy Gondola)

“One of the finest Hammond B-3 organ players of his generation, Cory Henry was a child prodigy, playing both piano and organ by the time he was two years old, making his debut at the legendary Apollo Theater when he was only six,” (AllMusic). “He has worked in the studio and toured with countless artists, including Yolanda Adams, Stanley Brown, Israel Houghton, P. Diddy, Kirk Franklin, Kenny Garrett (the 19-year-old Henry became a fixture in Garrett’s touring band for three years), Donnie McClurkin, Boyz II Men, Michael McDonald, Bruce Springsteen, the Roots, and many others. He has also worked as a bandleader and producer as well as an in-demand sideman.

Falling closer to the Art Tatum and Oscar Peterson side of the Hammond organ jazz genre than Jimmy Smith, with maybe a little Billy Preston tossed in, Henry at his best combines the best of both gospel and jazz in his playing … Since 2012, Henry has been a member of the acclaimed experimental jazz and funk ensemble Snarky Puppy, with whom he won a 2014 Grammy Award for Best R&B Performance and a 2015 Grammy for Best Contemporary Instrumental Album. In 2016, Henry released the gospel-infused solo effort The Revival.”

Although best known for his B-3 organ work, this video finds Henry employing a wonderful way to practice piano, varying his phrasing and transitioning through multiple keys as he goes; for the listener, it sounds a lot more like entertainment! The transcription which accompanies the performance was done by Timothy Gondola, who explains his process on his Patreon page: “I am a 27-year old classically-trained pianist, and for the past few years I have been using transcriptions to teach myself jazz. Jazz transcriptions are what enabled me to quickly delve into the foreign jazz world. Through my transcriptions, I am on a mission to help countless pianists and other musicians worldwide who are longing to play the music they enjoy. Transcriptions also create a portal into the mind of the improviser behind the music. They are a holistic learning tool for music players and music listeners alike.”

Donna Summer | I Don’t Wanna Get Hurt

“Donna Summer’s title as the ‘Queen of Disco’ wasn’t mere hype,” (AllMusic). “Like many of her contemporaries, she was a talented vocalist trained as a powerful gospel belter, but she set herself apart with her songwriting ability, magnetic stage presence, and shrewd choice of studio collaborators, all of which resulted in sustained success. During the ’70s alone, she topped the Billboard club chart 11 times … After (the disco) subgenre was declared dead, Summer was very much part of the evolution of dance music. Through the feminist anthem ‘She Works Hard for the Money’ (1983), she became an MTV star, and she continued to top the club chart with disco-rooted house singles through 2010, 35 years after her breakthrough. Summer died from cancer in 2012 and was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame the next year.”

“I Don’t Wanna Get Hurt” was a track from the 1989 album Another Place and Time; Summer hired the UK production team of Stock, Aitken & Waterman for the project. The album produced her last major pop hit with the 1989 Top Ten single “This Time I Know It’s for Real.”

After an intro in C minor, the verse kicks in at 0:17 in A minor. The chorus 0:49 reverts to C minor. The pattern continues from there.

Tony Toni Toné | Holy Smokes and Gee Whiz

“As the title of their crown jewel Sons of Soul (1993) boldly declared, Tony! Toni! Toné! were true descendants of soul and funk music’s golden age from the very start,” (Albumism). “Hailing from the undeniably tough and vibrant streets of Oakland, California, the family trio absorbed the social, cultural, and political climate that defined the Bay Area during its most incendiary era. Above all, the Bay Area was one of the powerhouse cornerstones of funk and soul, where several influential luminaries like Sly & the Family Stone, Larry Graham & Graham Central Station, Tower of Power, and Con Funk Shun laid down their gusty, muscular, and righteous grooves all over the music landscape.

They were a band that were truly rooted in the tradition of yesteryear funk and soul bands, devoting themselves to retaining the beauty of live instrumentation, while utilizing hip-hop technology of the time … By the mid-1990s, the Tonies’ signature touch was felt all over the R&B world … Instead of merely wearing their influences on their sleeve, as they’d done on previous offerings, the trio embodied them organically and proudly on House of Music, making it the most classically overt and sophisticated dip in the revisionist waters of Black pop they pioneered for over a decade.” House of Music didn’t quite equal the success of TTT’s previous album, Sons of Soul, reaching #32 on the Billboard album chart and #10 on the Top R&B Albums chart. The release, the band’s fourth, ended up as its last. “Following a nearly ten-year standing as one of R&B’s most creative vanguards, the Tonies officially called it quits a year after the release … it proved to be the summation of everything the Oakland soul brothers ever sought to accomplish musically … They went out on top and didn’t look back.”

Sounding every bit like a lush early-70s soul ballad with the exception of its updated sound engineering, “Holy Smokes and Gee Whiz” seems to owe even its title to the tradition which brought us The Stylistics’ classic “Betcha By Golly Wow” (1970). After a start in Bb minor, the bridge (3:00) builds to an overflowing fountain of layered vocals that would do Earth, Wind + Fire proud, heralding a whole-step key change to C minor (3:33). A faded ending would likely have made it all complete — but 4:29 brings another whole-step modulation to D minor for an instrumental outro, re-stating the hook but forgoing harmonic resolution.

Rickie Lee Jones | Last Chance Texaco

“With her expressive soprano voice employing sudden alterations of volume and force, and her lyrical focus on Los Angeles street life, Rickie Lee Jones comes on like the love child of Laura Nyro and Tom Waits on her self-titled debut album (1979),” (AllMusic).

The personnel on the album leaned heavily towards players from the jazz genre, creating a sound that “follows the contours of Jones’ impressionistic stories about scuffling people on the streets and in the bars. There is an undertow of melancholy that becomes more overt toward the end, as the narrator’s friends and lovers clear out … But then, the romance of the street is easily replaced by its loneliness. Rickie Lee Jones is an astounding debut album that simultaneously sounds like a synthesis of many familiar styles and like nothing that anybody’s ever done before.”

“Last Chance Texaco” starts out with an apparent focus on auto maintenance — and its elevated importance as one’s location grows increasingly remote. But it later becomes clear that the focus is much broader, even though the automotive euphemisms endure throughout. Intermittent swelling and fading hints of a lonesome highway are evoked instrumentally during the verses, joined by Jones’ own multi-layered wordless backup vocal around 3:30. The easy 6/8 feel of the F# major chorus transitions to a poignant, restive chorus in E minor (first heard from 1:01 – 1:39). Make sure to check out the gorgeous lyrics, as Jones’ delivery varies hugely in both volume and clarity.

It’s her last chance
Her timing’s all wrong
Her last chance
She can’t idle this long
Her last chance
Turn her over and go
Pullin’ out of the last chance Texaco
The last chance

Jacob Collier (feat. Lizzy McAlpine + John Mayer) | Never Gonna Be Alone

“For ‘Never Gonna Be Alone,’ his first single since the award-winning Djesse Vol. 3, Jacob Collier enlisted the help of Lizzy McAlpine and John Mayer to create a celestial soundscape that spans the depths of isolation, loss and memory,” (NPR).

“There’s much to experience over the course of this one multifaceted and emotional song. ‘It speaks to my experience of the world as a hugely beautiful and fragile place,’ Collier writes in a press statement, adding that the song ‘has helped me process some of the grief I think we’re all feeling for our pasts and futures, in a myriad of different ways.'”

From the video description on Collier’s YouTube channel: “After eighteen months of FaceTime and virtual collaboration, we got to play this song in real life! Performed live at Lizzy’s show at the Troubadour on October 7th 2022.” After a few verses and choruses in C major, 2:21 brings a masterful but understated guitar solo from Mayer. At 3:02, the end of the solo intersects with a few chords outside the key, but the overarching key is unchanged. McAlpine’s crystalline soprano leads a soft-spoken mid-phrase modulation up a half-step to Db major at 3:19.

Dakota Moon | Looking For a Place to Land

“Dakota Moon is an unusual urban R&B group, one that’s equally influenced by Boyz II Men and ’70s soft rock, such as Eric Clapton and James Taylor … The quartet met at a recording session in Los Angeles for producers Andrew Logan and Mike More. The musicians had such a chemistry that they decided to form a band,” (AllMusic). ” … Before they made their debut album, they toured as Tina Turner’s opening act in 1997. By the end of the year, they had recorded their debut … the resulting record, entitled Dakota Moon, was released in April 1998.”

A Place to Land (2002), the band’s second release, features a “somewhat uncanny synthesis of early-2000s urban pop and ’70s soft rock. The album-opening title track (sounds) like half Backstreet Boys and half Eagles.”

“Looking For a Place to Land” certainly does inhabit territory somewhere between pop, rock, and r&b — with even a few brief country touches thrown into the mix. The verses feature several singers taking turns on lead; the choruses are a mix of vocalists combining for richly stacked vocal harmonies. A short drum break hits the re-set button before a half-step modulation kicks in at 2:49.

Julian Lennon | Breathe

“Julian Lennon achieved stardom with ‘Valotte’ and ‘Too Late for Goodbyes,’ a pair of Billboard Top Ten hits from the mid-’80s,” (AllMusic). “At that point, the tragic death of Julian’s father John was still fresh in public consciousness and, from a certain angle, the son resembled the parent: the piano ballad recalled such John classics as ‘Imagine.’ As Julian Lennon’s career progressed, such Beatles comparisons didn’t disappear, but they did fade as Lennon built a career as a classicist pop/rocker.”

“Jude is Julian Lennon’s seventh studio album, and his first album of new material in over ten years,” (Spill Magazine). His last album, the brilliant Everything Changes, noted a change in Lennon’s music, which became more complicated, and grappling with a great many internal and external issues lyrically. Jude is the same. This is a much more mature, content, and reflective Julian Lennon.”

For all of the adjectives “Breathe” might conjure up, “Beatle-esque” likely wouldn’t make most listeners’ top 10; Lennon seems to have broken away from his father’s songwriting palette in favor of some sonic territory of his own.

The 2022 track features verses built on a relentless barrage of short melodic phrases. The phrases are only three or four words each, employing only a few repeating melodic shapes. Starting in C# minor, the spare accompaniment often uses colorless suspended chords, allowing Lennon’s prominently-mixed lead vocal to fill in the blanks. At 0:43, the pre-chorus alternates between C major and C minor. After pacing back and forth in a small space for what seems like an eternity, the track is transformed at the chorus (reverting to C# minor at 1:12) by the introduction of a insistent percussion track, longer phrases with more space between them, and finally — “breathe.”

Dave Koz | Show Me the Way

“By virtue of his many achievements, Dave Koz has long been considered the prime contender for the saxophone throne of contemporary jazz,” (AllMusic). “Active since 1990 when he arrived on the scene from seemingly nowhere to issue his self-titled leader debut, he climbed onto the Billboard contemporary jazz charts and stayed there for several weeks. The platinum-selling Koz was nominated for nine Grammys, hit the top spot on the contemporary jazz charts five times, placed 14 singles in the Top Ten, and earned a total of 20 cuts on the jazz songs charts. He is also a seasoned radio and television host … His sound is full of fire and intensity, often recalling that of his musical forebear David Sanborn, and which often crosses over to the adult contemporary R&B side of the genre line.”

Along the way, Koz has collaborated with guitar phenom Cory Wong, jazz fusion standard bearer Jeff Lorber, pop songwriter/performer Richard Marx, legendary bassist Marcus Miller, pop/R&B vocalist Jeffrey Osborne, vocalist/keyboardist songwriter extraordinaire Michael McDonald, and many others.

Featuring pianist Greg Phillinganes, bassist Nathan East, and percussionist Lenny Castro, 1993’s “Show Me the Way” is a slow burn of a track. Building gradually from a soft-spoken ballad to a fully-fledged gospel-centered summit, it features a shift from C major to D major at 3:51. Many thanks to Christopher Fox for submitting this tune!

Jonatha Brooke | Steady Pull

“Jonatha Brooke first earned kudos during the mid-’90s as a member of the folk/rock duo The Story.” (Billboard) “Her reputation as a tunesmith of poetic proportions heightened when she went solo, issuing two deservedly revered discs on Refuge/MCA. The projects, largely folk/pop in tone, amassed an active cult following.”

“… Steady Pull (is) a recording that reveals a markedly different side to the often introspective artist. ‘I didn’t want to wallow in the drama and darkness any more. That would’ve been too easy, too comfortable. I wanted to get sexy. I wanted to romp.” … Steady Pull (2001) … is a blissful sonic marriage … the title track, an anthemic stomper … ”

After the track’s start in G minor, we’re led through an uprooting of the tonality via a dizzying B major note from the backing vocals (first at 1:12 – 1:15). After two verses and choruses, the bridge (2:12) brings a downward modulation to F# minor; the track’s strong percussion falls away except for a persistent hi-hat, but the intensity manages to keep winding up anyway. Temporarily abandoning its funk-tinged riffs, the electric guitar’s distant echoing siren lofts us back into G minor for the next verse at 2:36. Ambitiously surveying the landscape of a burgeoning new romance, the tune’s lyrics — tame on a per-word basis — seem anything but when taken in combination:

Now there’s evidence I’ve been here but no one knows how long
My change is in your pocket and the whisper of my song
My clothes are in your closet and my books surround your bed
Wonder what you expected, baby, and what you got instead … What you got …

… Where there is ruin there is hope for treasure
And out of the ashes come comfort and pleasure
This is the love that no one could measure
I have you, I hold you … We are birds of a feather

Loretta Lynn | Coal Miner’s Daughter

“When President Obama gave Loretta Lynn the Medal of Freedom in 2013 – the nation’s highest honour recognising significant achievements in politics, world peace, science and culture – he noted that she began writing her own songs with a $17 dollar guitar,” (Holler.Country). “‘With it,’ he said, ‘this coal miner’s daughter gave voice to a generation, singing what no one wanted to talk about and saying what no one wanted to think about.’ … (Lynn’s) career has always been about her humble life story, something that’s perfectly expressed in 1971’s Coal Miner’s Daughter, a record which might just represent the peak of her singular songwriting and creativity. When Loretta signed her first recording contract in 1960, she already had a handful of kids and an immoral husband who’d married her when she was just a teen … On ‘Coal Miner’s Daughter,’ every tiny, stark, heartfelt memory of Lynn’s life until that point came flooding to the fore. It’s an understated masterpiece of concision, drama and imagery – every verse a short story that’s rarely been equaled, even in a genre where storytelling and authenticity are the most prized assets.

Every song on Coal Miner’s Daughter would go on to hit home with Lynn’s fans, many of whom were women much like her, living near-identical lives. Throughout her career, she refused to be fenced in, kicking down country music complacency and putting up a flag for feminism (even if she was ambivalent about the label) with her honky-tonk directness … Infidelity, lechery, drunkenness – and even divorce – were grist to her mill … as fellow country legend Minnie Pearl simply put: ‘Loretta sang what women were thinking.'”

Lynn passed away this week at the age of 90. Of the 86 singles she released, “Coal Miner’s Daughter” might be her most memorable. It topped the Billboard country songs survey and becoming her first entry on the Billboard Hot 100 (AllMusic). Textbook half-step key changes hit at 1:04 and 2:00.