JB – Page 14

Stevie Wonder | Please, Please, Please

“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.

Paul Young | Sordid

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 + Tears | You’ve Made Me So Very Happy

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! From Rolling 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.

Vanilla Fudge | You Keep Me Hangin’ On

“Released during the famous ‘summer of love’ in 1967, Vanilla Fudge’s (self-titled) debut offering was undoubtedly one of the more seminal psychedelic albums coming from America during the late sixties,” (ProgArchive). “The heavy, jam-oriented atmosphere … and the group’s original twist on well-known compositions grabbed the attention of fans and critics alike. Consisting solely of cover tunes and a few short interludes thrown in for good measure, Vanilla Fudge did not captivate listeners with original works of their own, but instead showed what they could do within the limits of famous pop songs from years past.

Musically, we’re dealing with psychedelic rock that isn’t too far away from what most bands in the genre were doing in 1966 and 1967. Although sidelong jams and increased experimentation hadn’t yet become the norm, heavy use of the Hammond organ and Beatles-influenced vocal melodies are plentiful here; Vanilla Fudge were also at the forefront of early hard rock, and some of the organ sections here clearly paved the way for heavy acts like Deep Purple and Uriah Heep.”

This live performance of “You Keep Me Hangin’ On” (1968) may have broken all known records for grandstanding by an entire group: every member of the band is thrashing about as if he’s the lead player. But once you get past the overwrought visuals, this cover of The Supremes’ 1966 single is a quite a new re-interpretation of the original. The tune is largely in E minor, but shifts to the closely related key of C major during the short bridge (1:28 – 1:50) before reverting to the original key.

The original:

Kool + the Gang | Ladies Night

“Over nearly six decades, Kool & the Gang have released 25 albums and toured worldwide, playing Live Aid in 1985 and Glastonbury in 2011,” (New York Times). “Their 12 Top 10 singles are funk, disco, and pop classics, underpinning movies including Pulp Fiction and Legally Blonde: ‘Jungle Boogie,’ ‘Ladies Night,’ ‘Hollywood Swinging,’ the undeniable 1980 party anthem ‘Celebration.’ They are foundational for hip-hop and have been sampled over 1,800 times, according to the website WhoSampled, including memorable turns on Eric B. & Rakim’s ‘Don’t Sweat the Technique’ and Nas’s ‘N.Y. State of Mind.’ (Questlove played a three-hour-plus set of songs featuring the group’s samples during a 2020 livestream.)”

Released on a 1979 album of the same name, “Ladies Night” includes “a small detail at the end (of the track which) turned out to be crucial — Meekaaeel Muhammad, a member of the group’s songwriting team, fleshed out the chorus with a countermelodic ‘Come on, let’s go celebrate.’ It pointed to the band’s next hit: ‘Celebration.'” The earlier hit reached the top 10 in Finland, Switzerland, and the UK, top 20 in a dozen more countries, and rose as high as #8 in the US.

Built in C# minor overall, the track shifts to a more explicitly disco-centric A minor section at 1:28, then a C minor section featuring the previously referenced counter melody at 1:44, then returning to the original key for the next verse at 2:05. Later, there are restatements of the A minor (3:48) and C minor sections (4:05), with the final C minor section morphing into an extended outro lasting more than two minutes. Both the A minor and C minor sections are constructed entirely of a repeating i-ii-v progression.

Nicholas Ma | How Do You (Not) Write a Fugue?

“Nicholas Ma (b. 2001) is a pianist-composer living in Oakville, Ontario, Canada,” (Charleston International Music Competition). “He is in his third year as an undergraduate at McGill University’s Schulich School of Music and is pursuing a double major in Piano Performance and Composition … Starting piano at the age of 4, Nicholas has also obtained the ATCL Performance Diploma with the highest accolade, Distinction, from Trinity College London. More recently, Nicholas was the recipient of a Gold award from the 2021 Grand Maestro International Music Competition.”

When he’s not writing assignments for Counterpoint classes, Ma is working on his piano studies (see his interpretation of Sonetto 104 Del Petrarca, by Franz Liszt, below). Ma’s fugue, “How Do You (Not) Write a Fugue” (2023) traverses various keys of the moment, but one particularly clear modulation is actually announced in the lyrics. We won’t spoil the surprise with a timestamp! From Ma’s notes in the Youtube video description:

“In my first semester of tonal counterpoint class, our final assignment was to write a 4-voice fugue… so I said YOLO and wrote this meme fugue as the final assignment – with the lyrics being my revision notes from class haha. Huge shoutout to Prof. Nicole Biamonte for accepting this fugue as a valid assignment and not instantly dunking on my grades, especially with the “intentional parallel fifths” section. I later gathered four singers (with me playing the piano part) and played through this … It was incredible – the singers learnt and sung this fugue at this level with only two hours of rehearsal! I also have to shoutout my two inspirations for this fugue: the first being my favorite fugue to this day, Glenn Gould’s parodistic ‘So You Want to Write a Fugue?’ and Freddy Wickham’s self-explanatory ‘Ontological Fugue.’

I decided to go in the direction of these two pieces, but take a step further by adding theatrics, intentional “counterpoint error” sections, and slipping in familiar quotations (Art of Fugue, Double Violin Concerto, Christmas tunes). The piece can be summarized in three sections – The exposition (which introduces basic fugal techniques), the middle/”development” (where errors/fugal parodies are gradually introduced in a tongue-in-cheek manner), and the “recapitulation” (where the singers break the 4th wall, address the listener, and question the philosophy of compositional aesthetics and rules… yep it gets pretty off-the-rails haha).

Overall, I wanted a piece that could be appreciated by all levels – those that do not have much familiarity with fugal writing will gain something from it, and those that are experts in fugues will enjoy the humorous parodistic subversion of counterpoint expectations. (And of course the main reason, I needed to write a fugue for a tonal counterpoint class assignment).”

The Isley Brothers | The Highways of My Life

“Rudolph Isley, who held dual roles in the influential vocal group the Isley Brothers as a mellifluous harmony singer and co-writer of many of their greatest hits, died on Wednesday at his home in Chicago,” (New York Times). “He was 84. Mr. Isley spent much of his three decades with the Isley Brothers harmonizing with his brother O’Kelly in support of Ronald Isley’s lead vocals … He and his brothers wrote a number of pivotal hits, beginning with ‘Shout,’ the group’s 1959 breakthrough, which applied the dynamic of gospel music’s call-and-response to a pop context. They also wrote the enduring political anthem ‘Fight the Power,’ a Top Five Billboard hit, as well as the Top 10 pop hits ‘It’s Your Thing’ and ‘That Lady.'”

“The Highways of My Life” is the closing track of the Isley Brothers’ 1974 3+3 album, “the gateway to the Isley Brothers’ golden, shimmering 70s period,” (BBC). “This was the point where, after radicalizing since forming their T-Neck label, the original trio of Rudolph, Ronald and O’Kelly Isley augmented their sound with their younger brothers Ernie Isley, Marvin and Rudolph’s brother-in-law, Chris Jasper. They then enjoyed their third life (after their early doo-wop and subsequent Motown career) becoming an all-conquering rock-soul ensemble that produced a remarkable run of hits … Here was a band that could appeal in equal measure to rock fans and soul aficionados. The record mixed originals and covers, light and shade … (an) album which showcases them at the peak of their powers … brilliance writ large.”

After an intro that runs through 0:55 and touches on several keys (most prominently E major) and a first two verses in Ab minor, the chorus of “The Highways of My Life” (in Ab major) finally arrives at 2:09. Multiple interlocking vocal parts carry the chorus, further setting its sound apart from the simpler texture of the verse. At 2:37, we’re back into Ab minor for the next (and final) verse; 3:20 brings another chorus, which eventually does double-duty as a fading outro.

PeakFiddler | Tam Lin (Glasgow Reel)

Regular contributor JB writes: “While the production values of this video are nothing to write home about, the musicianship is top notch. There are places where you would swear that the performer dubbed in a second violin track, but it’s a single track, with very skillful (and unobtrusive) use of double-stops and aural illusions (your ear hears a given element of a chord as continuing even when it’s not).

The same performer also recorded the guitar and banjo parts, but since he apparently views them as mere backdrops for the fiddle, he didn’t bother to use the ‘Hollywood Squares’ style of video. If you can listen to this tune without your heart rising and your pulse quickening, you’re probably deceased…”

PeakFiddler has no website, but does maintain some of the usual social media channels, all furnished with the same videos of live performance. But there’s no accompanying bio information to be found anywhere — other than that he’s “a musician living in the Northwest of England.” After a start in D minor, the tune transitions to A minor at 1:50.

Joe Jackson | Jamie G.

“In 1990, Joe Jackson had just signed a spiffy new deal with Virgin Records after spending 10 years and 11 albums under A&M,” (Popdose). “Many bands use the first album with a new label as an opportunity to make a fresh start and try new things (or, perhaps, sell out) … Jackson, however, had no interest in changing, diminishing returns be damned.”

After his 1982 album Night and Day, featuring the hit “Steppin’ Out,” was certified Gold in the UK, the US, and New Zealand and Platinum in Australia, Canada, and the Netherlands, it would likely have been difficult to achieve anything other than “diminishing returns.” But Jackson has seemed most interested in following his own muse rather than sustaining stardom, wrapping insightful and often cutting lyrics in musical styles ranging from edgy pop to jazz-inflected cabaret ballads, from textbook New Wave to uptempo salsa. “In his 1999 memoir A Cure for Gravity: A Musical Pilgrimage, Joe Jackson writes approvingly of George Gershwin as a musician who kept one foot in the popular realm and one in the classical realm of music,” (AllMusic). “Like Gershwin, Jackson possesses a restless musical imagination that has found him straddling musical genres unapologetically, disinclined to pick one style and stick to it.”

Although Jackson, a UK native, has often toured with smaller bands — at times even paring the instrumentation down to his trademark piano/bass/drums trio — this larger band format shows the effortless precision that Jackson is known for. The spirited “Jamie G.” features a late unprepared half-step modulation at 2:03.

The Ventures | Theme from “Hawaii 5-0”

Regular contributor JB writes: “This track really ticks all the boxes: A one-hit wonder surf rock band in psychedelic costumes, playing a track with a ladder of ascending mods. All in all, an important historical/cultural artifact. They really should have included this one in the Voyager space probe — it tells alien intelligences all they need to know about life on earth in the ’70s … ” The Ventures’ website proclaims the band “the best selling instrumental rock band in music history.”

The band’s nominal regular rock instrumentation had plenty of orchestral help, including the opening bars’ signature syncopated tympani hits, brass poking out of just about every corner, and a piccolo flourish on the piccardy third D major ending. Starting in C minor, we climb up by half steps, starting at 0:36.

The theme as heard at both the opening and closing of Hawaii 5-0 is somehow even more bombastic. IMDB summarizes the show’s premise: “The investigations of Hawaii Five-0, an elite branch of the Hawaii State Police answerable only to the governor and headed by stalwart Steve McGarrett.” Scoring four Emmy wins out of 23 nominations, the show ran 12 seasons (1968 – 1980). The theme also won TV Land Awards for “TV Theme Song You Want for Your Ringtone” in both 2007 and 2008, and was nominated in 2003 for “Drama Theme Song You Can’t Get Out of Your Head.”