Elise – Page 66

Ethel Merman | Alexander’s Ragtime Band

“Who could ever forget that bizarre moment in 1979 when Ethel Merman, the first lady of American musical theater, became the ‘first lady’ of disco with the release of her notorious camp-classic disco album on A&M Records?” asks Billboard. “One is tempted to ask why, but it was the ’70s and disco was a hot commodity, so why not? The concept was so absurd that it almost bordered on brilliant … Along with other titanic musical oddities like William Shatner Sings, Tammy Faye Bakker’s “Ballad of Jim and Tammy,” Goldie Hawn’s Goldie, and Jackie Gleason Presents Aphrodisia, The Ethel Merman Disco Album is one of those priceless anomalies in popular music that’s too surreal to ignore.”

Sheet music of the original composition by Irving Berlin sold over a million copies upon its release in 1911. Merman took the original and ran with it, jumping on the caboose of the disco train for this track (and the entire album). The Merman biography Brass Diva states that she loved the beat of disco, though she didn’t understand the words!

Starting with a short nod to authentic ragtime during the intro, the tune then transitions to a calcified disco groove for the duration. Starting in Bb, there’s a transition at 1:15 to B and again at 2:29 to C (with manic backing vocals and cutting-edge electronic drum fills to boot!)

Silk Sonic | Blast Off

On their album An Evening with Silk Sonic, released today: “Working together as Silk Sonic, Bruno Mars and Anderson .Paak revisit that bygone analog era (the 70s) in a hybrid of homage, parody, throwback and meticulous reverse engineering, tossing in some cheerfully knowing anachronisms,” (New York Times). “They flaunt skill, effort and scholarship, like teacher’s pets winning a science-fair prize; they also sound like they’re having a great time.”

Mars and .Paak inhabit different regions of the R&B/Soul/Pop/HipHop vortex, but the overlapping section of the resulting venn diagram is intriguing — and apparently synergystic. The NYTimes continues: “Silk Sonic comes across as a continuation for Mars and a playfully affectionate tangent for Paak. Mars is a multi-instrumentalist with a strong retro streak … Paak’s catalog has delved into more complicated matters. On his albums, named after places where he has lived, he switches between singing and rapping, and his lyrics take on contemporary conditions; he’s also a musician steeped in live-band soul and R&B, and a hard-hitting drummer … On An Evening With Silk Sonic, Paak’s specificity merges with Mars’s pop generalities, while both of them double down on craftsmanship and cleverness.” With Parliament Funkadelic’s bassist Bootsy Collins serving as something of an intermittent master of ceremonies, the album “revives the sound of 1970s groups like Earth, Wind & Fire, the Spinners, the Manhattans, the Chi-Lites and the Delfonics … a Fabergé egg of an album: a lavish, impeccable bauble, a purely ornamental not-quite-period piece. Mars and Paak don’t pretend to be making any grand statement, but there’s delight in every detail.”

After a short intro peppered with compound chords, the tune settles in somewhere in the E major/E Lydian neighborhood. That duality is spelled out multiple times in the chorus (the first time at 0:44):

F#/G# — A/B — Emaj7

The use of densely-packed chromatic bass motion combined with compound chords as connective tissue (1:44 and elsewhere) keeps us happily wondering where we might touch down next. At 3:16, an extended outro leaves earth’s atmosphere entirely as the groove falls away. We continue to ascend a ladder of brief modulations (3:54), further and further into an ecstatic stratosphere — but not without a knowing and neighborly wave from Bootsy.

Cécile Chaminade | Concertino in D Major for Flute and Piano, Op. 107

“The pianist and composer Cécile Chaminade (1857-1944) was admired by the British Queen Victoria, for whom she often performed at The House of Windsor.” (I Care If You Listen). In 1913, France awarded her the Légion d’Honneur. But after her death, Chaminade was virtually forgotten. “George Bizet, a household friend at the Chaminade residence in Vésinet, a stylish suburb of Paris, lovingly called her ‘My little Mozart’. He advised her parents to send young Cécile to the Paris Conservatoire to study piano and composition. Papa, director of an insurance company and amateur violinist, refused permission, however: ‘Bourgeois girls are predestined to become wives and mothers.’”

Nonetheless, Chaminade gradually built a career in France as a composer and a performer. Eventually, she wrote 400 works and “not only succeeded in getting all her four hundred works performed, but also got them published – not a matter of course for a female composer at the time.” Despite her father’s reductionist attitude towards her career, after his death in 1887, Chaminade “had to support herself and her mother with her compositions and recitals, and this may be the reason why she concentrated on chamber music hereafter. The often-heard assessment that her music ‘doesn’t transcend the level of salon music’ is an affront. Yes, her writing is easily accessible and shies away from the drastic dissonances Wagner or Schönberg offer, but it is very well made and shows a remarkable control of classical counterpoint.”

Chaminade’s Concertino in D Major for Flute and Piano, Op. 107 (1902) is so prominent in the flute literature that among flutists it’s generally referred to simply as “The Chaminade.” Originally written for flute and piano, it was later also arranged for flute and orchestra. The piece was dedicated to the prominent French flutist and educator Paul Taffanel.

Beginning and ending in D Major as advertised, it cycles through quite a few other tonalities along the way, as this score-based video illustrates.

Ben Folds Five | Alice Childress

The 1995 track “Alice Childress” by the “guitarless, and seemingly numerically-challenged, indie-pop trio Ben Folds Five,” (The Delete Bin) … “does without many indie-pop conventions of the time, yet is packed with ironic humour, punk energy, and in this tune in particular, a profound sense of pathos, too.” The band’s music, “centered around Ben Folds’ sardonic lyrics and jazz-influenced piano, is infused with a sense of irony that undercuts the way it might be perceived on the first go-round as straight-ahead pop music. As such, the trio wasn’t exactly the darling of North American radio at the time this record was released, even if they had a strong grass roots appeal on college radio.”

The song was co-written by Folds’ then-wife Anna Goodman. It “seemingly name-checks American author and playwright Alice Childress,” but is actually about a woman who was under Goodman’s care at a mental hospital where Goodman worked. “… the song was once centered around a specific experience, Folds took it to another plane, telling a tale of separation and alienation between two lovers who’ve come to grow in different directions, both geographically as well as emotionally. There is a certain irony here, given Folds’ relationship with Goodman, which ended a few years before this song appeared on the band’s debut record.”

Starting and ending in B major, the tune shifts to G major from 2:16 – 2:43, with plenty of compound chord sleight of hand throughout. Many thanks to our mod wrangler extraordinaire JB for this submission!

Aubrey Johnson | No More ‘I Love Yous’

Aubrey Johnson “is a New York-based vocalist, composer, and educator who specializes in jazz, Brazilian, and creative contemporary music with and without words. She holds a Master of Music degree in jazz performance from the New England Conservatory and teaches at Berklee College of Music in the Voice Department and in the Jazz Masters Program at Queens College in New York City.” As a college student, Aubrey won two DownBeat Collegiate Student Music Awards for Best Jazz Vocalist and Jazz Vocalist, Outstanding Performance and another during her master’s studies for Outstanding Performance in Jazz Voice.

Johnson has studied with Danilo Perez, Jerry Bergonzi, Dominique Eade, Allan Chase, George Garzone, and Frank Carlber; she contributed to Bobby McFerrin’s Grammy-nominated release VOCAbuLaries. She’s also shared the stage with Lyle Mays, Janis Siegel (Manhattan Transfer), Fred Hersch’s Pocket Orchestra, John Zorn’s Mycale Vocal Quartet, and many others, and as a leader with her own band.

The tune Johnson covered in 2020, “No More I Love Yous,” is best known for its performance by Annie Lennox (1995) — itself a cover of a tune by a band called The Lover Speaks and written by David Freeman and Joseph Hughes. “When the song was released it made a mild murmur in the charts,” Lennox recalls, “but I don’t think it ever really became a hit. There are quite a few songs floating around which should have touched the consciousness of the nation – they should have made their mark, and this is one of them. I thought, well, I might be sticking my neck out to do this, but I really wanted to give it another chance because it’s a magnificent song.” Her hunch paid off: Lennox’s version became a multi-continent smash hit and a Grammy winner.

Liberated from the measured feel of Lennox’s version, Johnson focuses on the lyrical melody lines instead. After a start in D major and a menagerie of short, darting instrumental lines accompanying the vocal on the verse, 1:42 brings a modulation up to F major. At 2:36, there’s a bridge featuring wordless vocals and then a piano solo, cycling through several keys. At 4:09, just before the last chorus section, we’ve pivoted back to D major.

Jon Secada | Do You Believe In Us

Cuban-born, Florida-raised recording artist Jon Secada (born Juan Francisco Secada Ramírez) recorded “Do You Believe in Us” for his debut eponymous English language album and for his debut Spanish-language album Otro Día Más Sin Verte (1992). The English version peaked at #13 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart and #3 on the Adult Contemporary chart; the Spanish version reached #1 on the US Billboard Hot Latin Tracks chart. In 1993, the tune won a BMI Award fr Most Performed Latin Song worldwide. The tune was composed by Secada, Miguel Morejon, and Joseph Stefano; Emilio Estefan Jr. was the producer.

Secada has both a bachelor’s and a master’s degree in music, strongly attributing “my career, the things that have happened have happened, (to) my music education background. I always wanted to be educated and be prepared.”

After a start in Eb major, 2:34 shifts us into E major during the instrumental bridge.

Level 42 | The Sleepwalkers

“When (Mark) King formed Level 42 … they were jazz-funk aficionados, deep into Miles Davis, John McLaughlin and Keith Jarrett,” (ClassicPopMag.com). “While this was sonic worlds away from the pop terrain that became their regular stomping ground in the 80s, (bassist) King had been a fan of music of all kinds at eight years old – and his first vinyl purchase was a Cream album … ‘I was only really trying to do what I’d been hearing coming across from America… I’d been listening to Stanley Clarke and Larry Graham … The idiom they were thumping the music in wasn’t as broad a spectrum as pop, so I’d somehow managed to leap the fence with that, and we were straight out into the pop mainstream. It happened to coincide with our first European tour, when we opened for The Police.'”

AllMusic sums up the band’s progression from its inception to its biggest hit-making days: “At the beginning of their career, Level 42 was squarely a jazz-funk fusion band … By the end of the ’80s, however, the band — whose music was instantly recognizable from Mark King’s thumb-slap bass technique and associate member Wally Badarou’s synthesizer flourishes — had crossed over to the point where they were often classified as sophisti-pop and dance-rock, equally likely to be placed in the context of Sade and the Style Council as was any group that made polished, upbeat, danceable pop/rock.”

1987’s “The Sleepwalkers” was a track from Running in the Family, which became a top ten album for the year in Canada, Germany, Switzerland, Australia, the Netherlands, Sweden, Norway, and New Zealand — with a #2 berth in the UK, as well, although the release only hit #23 in the US. Like so much of the band’s output, the tune is a multi-layered machine, built around a percolating bass line, an up-the-neck funk guitar, several strata of synth sheen, and clock-like drums. After starting in Ab major, the tune makes an unlikely tritone leap to D minor with a syncopated kick of backing vocals at 1:00 for the chorus. At 1:23, we revert to the original key; the pattern is maintained throughout.

David Sanborn | Snakes

Alto saxophonist David Sanborn’s 1992 album Upfront featured a jaw-dropping who’s-who list of some of the best players at that time: Marcus Miller (production, keyboards, lead guitar, bass guitar, bass clarinet), Steve Jordan (drums), Hiram Bullock (guitar), Naná Vasconcelos (percussion), Randy Brecker (trumpet), Ricky Peterson (organ), and many more.

Sanborn’s “R&B crossover” sound, as AllMusic calls it, is clearly in evidence here on the album’s opening track “Snakes.” After a start in G minor, a straight-ahead funk feel drives an extended section built around the tonic; from 1:10-1:27, the bass continues the a pedal point tonic while a procession of compound chords tug at our ears underneath Sanborn’s climbing sax line as it leans into every curve. The pattern continues until 3:24-3:41, where a shift to Eb minor, built around a more Latin-infused feel, makes a vivid appearance. The Eb minor section returns at 3:24-3:40 and again at 4:30, this time to stay.

Culture Club | Time (Clock of the Heart)

“Time (Clock of the Heart)” wasn’t released on the debut Culture Club album Kissing to be Clever; “it was a stand-alone single that proved another smash hit and was later added to the album in America.” (Diffuser.FM) “In the process, Culture Club pulled off a pretty amazing feat, becoming the first UK band since the Beatles to have three singles from a debut album make the Top 10 in America. Despite the grand success of the music, for many the look often overtook the sound as the media began a love affair with the band, and George in particular. ‘People felt there was something really happening,’ said Culture Club drummer Jon Moss. ‘I think that was the main thing. People would look and say, Blimey, what is this?‘”

In a GQ interview, George recalls he “was obsessed with music as a little kid, that was where I escaped to. I shared a room with my four brothers and most of the time I didn’t have the room to myself, so whenever I could I would have the record player on. I’d listen to everything from Irish show tunes to early Bowie, T. Rex and disco. Discovering Bowie was the ‘Whoa, that’s what I want to be’ moment. I was 11 and somehow my dad got me a ticket to see Ziggy Stardust.”

“It was kind of almost overnight for us,” he said in a 2015 interview. “You know, one minute we were an unknown band that literally couldn’t get signed, but once we got on TV, it was the public, more than anything, that decided they liked us and I think that’s always been the case.”

Starting in G minor, the 1982 single features a short instrumental bridge at 2:26 in Bb minor before settling into the next chorus at 2:43.

The Jags | Back of My Hand

“Record labels and radio in the U.K. were grudgingly forced to allow new-wave and punk sounds to edge onto the airwaves in the late-’70s, long before their U.S. big brothers would even consider such an experiment. The Jags were perfectly suited to seize that moment.” (Magnet Magazine)

“The Jags’ sound in 1979 was jangly and based around clean, ringing guitar, with slashing rhythms, quick musical changes and expertly precise three-minute arrangements. Their original songs were upbeat, full of hooks, elegant melodies and guttural rock energy: a perfect model of power-pop/new-wave fun. (The UK press) quickly tagged the band as ‘Elvis Costello imitators,'” a comparison which the band wasn’t able to transcend.

After a start in E major, “Back of My Hand” (1979) features a downward shift to G major during an instrumental break (2:03), then a return to E major at 2:14 for a bridge that pivots about as if it might modulate to F# major at 2:29 — but doesn’t. According to AllMusic, the tune had “a chart life of 10 weeks and peaked at #17 in the UK. In the US, the song peaked at #84 on the Billboard Hot 100.”