Liza Minelli | Liza with a Z

“It already seems like yesterday’s news but for the sake of perspective, we are now at the point in human civilization where we can plug different artist names and keywords into a computer and Artificial Intelligence technology will render a new piece of music sounding like whatever you can think of. Drake and The Weeknd collab? Biggie rapping Nas songs? A new Beatles song? It’s all happening now,” (Decider.com). “And people dig it. Some say this is where we’ve been headed all along, ever since the advent of multi tracking and Auto-Tune and that Tupac hologram. It’s a far cry from the days of old when entertainers could sing and act and dance all at the same time in front of a live audience, holding them in the palm of their hand. People like Liza Minnelli.”

Songwriters John Kander and Fred Ebb (better known as Kander and Ebb) wrote scores of songs together, but perhaps among the best known were those from the classic musicals Cabaret and Chicago. Liza Minelli became one of the performers most associated with both shows. So perhaps it’s not surprising that Kander and Ebb later wrote a tune custom-designed just for Liza and her famously big personality, “Liza with a Z” as part of a 1972 show of the same name.

Just as the lyrical stream of this over-explainer of a tune morphs into a tsunami, the key of “Liza with a Z” also ratchets up a half step (2:42).

Mickey Woods | They Rode Through the Valley

The 1961 release “They Rode Through the Valley,” performed by Mickey Woods, was “The first Motown writing credit for (Motown founder) Berry Gordy’s brother Robert, aka ‘Bob Kayli,’ this is – rather unbelievably – a second weak ‘historical comedy’ record about the Battle of the Little Bighorn, apparently a vein Gordy didn’t feel was tapped out yet following Popcorn Wylie’s baffling ‘Custer’s Last Man.’ Oh, except this isn’t just a comedy record – it’s a comedy country record. Sweet Jesus … Seriously, if you don’t want to jab knitting needles in your ears when we get to the (charitably-named) ‘chorus’ and he jauntily announces ‘Sittin’ Bull and his Injuns / At the little bitty bitty Bighorn!‘, you’re made of sturdier stuff than this listener,” (MotownJunkies.co.uk).

“Anyway, it’s a story about how Custer got all his men killed by telling them to wait until they saw the whites of the Native warriors’ eyes, only to be foiled because ‘all them big bad Injuns / have big red bloodshot eyes!‘ That’s it. That’s the punchline. A borderline racist joke at the end of a comedy song about a mass slaughter during a vicious war of racial extermination. Fantastic.

(It’s bleakly entertaining in one way, and just one: bitter irony. The company which the whole world would come to identify as synonymous with the smashing down of racial barriers, the shining, all-conquering jewel of racial integration in Sixties America, putting out a casually racist joke record. It’s now starting to dawn on me why, if Mickey Woods really was Motown’s first white solo vocalist, it’s not a landmark that’s been publicised more; it’s almost as if Motown worked hard to erase this jejune blip from their history) … This is utter, utter, utter crap, and best forgotten by all involved. Let’s move on.”

The key changes for this “least Motown-sounding” of all possible Motown tunes hit at 0:52 and 1:40. Don’t say we didn’t warn you.

Steely Dan | Any World (That I’m Welcome To)

“(Katie Lied) captures Steely Dan in the thick of it all, still hungry and energized by their early burst of creativity but not taking anything for granted,” (Pitchfork). “Before Katy Lied, Steely Dan were a rock band, but this is the record where they became something else … Katy Lied lives at the midpoint of Steely Dan’s first act. Behind them were three records that were incrementally more sophisticated and less rock-centered. After this one were three increasingly finicky and obsessive albums that would find them reaching for a kind of perfection, albums that found them chronicling the decadence around them from the inside. Where they once wrote about the delightfully sleazy underbelly of life in America from a remove, they started to write more about what they saw around them. Katy Lied is the fulcrum in this progression—it’s messier, less sure of itself, besotted neither with youthful confidence nor veteran polish.

… The characters flailing clumsily throughout Katy Lied (1975) are paralyzed by desires they aren’t introspective enough to understand, so all they can do is keep stumbling forward. ‘I got this thing inside me,’ Fagen sings in a bridge on the late album highlight ‘Any World (That I’m Welcome To)’, ‘I only know I must obey/This feeling I can’t explain away.’ … This band was always about asking questions instead of giving answers … They wanted desperately to render their tragically amusing scenes just so, and the sonic purity they’d been chasing would soon be theirs. But here they give failure a kind of twisted majesty.”

The track alternates between Bb mixolydian on the verses and C mixolydian on the choruses (first heard from 0:39 – 0:54). The tune takes us through a short bridge (1:52 – 2:10), but holds off on modulating until an additional verse and chorus are added in. At 3:07, a chorus/tag jumps up to D mixolydian, with the utterly distinctive focus of frequent collaborating vocalist Michael McDonald (pre-Doobie Brothers and his own solo career) ringing out alongside of Donald Fagen’s lead vocal.

Dionne Warwick | I’ll Never Love This Way Again

After singing a long string of legendary hits hits written by composer Burt Bacharach and lyricist Hall David through the 1960s and early 1970s, “Dionne Warwick’s career was revived when she teamed with Barry Manilow” for 1979’s Dionne. “Manilow’s production of such heavily orchestrated numbers as ‘I Know I’ll Never Love This Way Again’ put Warwick back in the spotlight, as she once again sounded confident and compelling,” (AllMusic). “It was the first platinum album of her career, and also her first album in ten years to crack the Top 20 on the pop album chart. Warwick scored another hit with ‘Deja Vu,’ and was back on track.”

Bacharach’s tunes routinely featured broad harmonic structures, surprising meter side-steps, atypical modulations so subtle they sometimes flew under the radar while still lending a renewed energy to a tune, and textures that often bordered on symphonic. Barry Manilow’s hits, broadly known by the late 70s, had a big strings-heavy sound of their own, but 4/4 always remained 4/4 and a song’s high point (frequently accompanied by a classic upward direct modulation) often chewed the scenery many measures before hitting their mark at center stage.

Richard Kerr and Will Jennings were the co-writers of “INLTWA,” but the track’s finished sound bears the unmissable imprint of Manilow, who played piano in addition to handling production. At 2:31, a quintessentially Manilow half-step key change hits, announced in advance by a huge crescendo, swelling strings, and a massive floor tom feature. Warwick lets the writing, the supporting musicians, and the production carry the day, giving the impression that she’s never belting at anywhere near 100%. She was rewarded with a top-10 hit in the US and Canada, and a top-50 hit in Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa.

Say No to This (from “Hamilton”)

“I don’t mean to suggest that you’re unpatriotic if you aren’t moved by Hamilton … but in order to dislike it you’d pretty much have to dislike the American experiment,” (Vulture.com). “The conflict between independence and interdependence is not just the show’s subject but also its method: It brings the complexity of forming a union from disparate constituencies right to your ears.

It may confuse your ears, too: Few are the theatergoers who will be familiar with all of Miranda’s touchstones. I caught the verbal references to Rodgers and Hammerstein, Gilbert and Sullivan, Sondheim, West Side Story, and 1776, but other people had to point out to me the frequent hat-tips to hip-hop: Biggie Smalls, the Fugees, ‘Blame It (On the Alcohol).’ And I’m sure that historians in the audience (the show was “inspired by” Ron Chernow’s 800-page Hamilton biography) will catch references that the rest of us fail to notice. (“The world turned upside down,” a repeated phrase in a number about the Battle of Yorktown, is the name of the ballad supposedly played by Redcoat musicians upon Cornwallis’s surrender there, in 1781.) But for all its complexity — its multi-strand plotting and exploding rhyme-grenades — Hamilton is neither a challenge nor a chore. It’s just great.”

Synopses of the 2015 smash hit’s show’s plot are plentiful; suffice it to say that “Say No to This” shows the mix of rap and sung lyrics for which Hamilton is so well known. After a start in A major and a shift to the relative F# minor at 2:33, there’s a quick hop to Bb major at 3:00 before the tune settles into B major from 3:03 to the end.

Laura Mvula | Ready or Not

“Birmingham (UK)-born Laura Mvula is a soul singer-songwriter who graduated from the Birmingham Conservatoire with a degree in composition,” (National Portrait Gallery). “In 2013, she signed a multi-album record deal with Sony, and her debut album Sing To The Moon was released in 2013, reaching number nine in the UK albums chart. Guardian critic Paul Lester coined her music as ‘gospeldelia’. She won awards for Best Female Act and Best R&B or Soul Artist at the 2013 MOBO Awards. She received the 2017 Ivor Novello Award for her second album, The Dreaming Room (2016). She lists her influences as Nina Simone, Lauryn Hill and Jill Scott. In 2017, the Royal Shakespeare Company invited her to compose the music for their new production of Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra.”

“It’s a bold move to cover The Delfonics’ ‘Ready or Not Here I Come (Can’t Hide from Love)’ — especially when considering The Fugees did so years ago with huge success — but British singer Laura Mvula has created a version that does it justice,” (Cool Hunting). “Mvula’s iteration modernizes the song, while remaining faithful to the original: it’s vibrant and danceable, while keeping a bit of the creepy, stalker darkness. With layer upon layer of background vocals, Mvula’s honeyed voice and delightful accent, this version takes on several different lives before its over.

Mvula’s 2016 version lacks the earthy hiphop factor of The Fugees’ 1996 smash hit cover, but keeps us on the edge of our seat from the opening seconds via some odd meters. A larger difference yet is the shifting tonality of Mvula’s version (absent from the Fugees’ version, but present in the Delfonics’ gentle, diminutive 1968 original, which features a run time of only two minutes). Mvula’s cover starts in B minor, shifts improbably to F minor at 0:30, then visits D minor at 0:52. At 1:12, we’ve returned to the opening key of B minor; the pattern continues from there, running at top intensity until the groove drops out for the unresolved ending.

Ringo Starr | Bye Bye Blackbird

“For Starr, who was working again with producer George Martin shortly after the arrival of the Beatles’ Abbey Road,” old standard tunes were “as comfortable a place as any to begin his own journey away from (the Beatles’) fame,” (UltimateClassicRock). “Sentimental Journey was released in late March 1970 – just weeks before the Beatles’ finale, Let It Be – and featured photographs of Starr’s family superimposed into the windows of an old building near his place of birth in Liverpool.

‘I wondered, What shall I do with my life now that it’s over?’ Starr mused in the album’s original liner notes. ‘I was brought up with all those songs, you know, my family used to sing those songs, my mother and my dad, my aunties and uncles. They were my first musical influences on me.’ … Starr remained firmly entrenched in a prewar vibe that had little to do with his mainstream success as the vocalist on Fab Four favorites like ‘Boys,’ ‘Yellow Submarine’ or ‘With a Little Help From My Friends.’ Nevertheless, such was the the level of interest in anything Beatles-related at the time that Sentimental Journey is said to have sold some half a million copies during its first week of release in the U.S., becoming a surprise Top 25 hit. Starr fared even better in the U.K., where Sentimental Journey shot to No. 7. ‘The great thing was that it got my solo career moving – not very fast, but just moving,’ Starr later told Mojo. ‘It was like the first shovel of coal in the furnace that makes the train inch forward.'” … Soon after, 1971’s “It Don’t Come Easy” became “a kind of theme song for Starr, shooting to the Top 5 all over the world.”

Originally released in 1926 with music by Ray Henderson and lyrics by Mort Dixon, “Bye Bye Blackbird” is a true chestnut of a standard! Starr’s version starts small and folksy with just a banjo to accompany the vocal, joined by a bass and honky-tonk piano before the first verse ends. Verse two grows quickly, with big band touches and subtle strings. Before the final turnaround starts, a half-step key change hits at 1:45 as the track continues to expand, embellished with a big band sound in full bloom. Quite unexpectedly, the arrangement was by Maurice Gibb of the Bee Gees.

As always, many thanks to regular our keen-eared contributor Rob P. for submitting this tune!

The Mindbenders | A Groovy Kind of Love

By the time “A Groovy Kind of Love” became a Billboard #2 hit for Manchester UK’s Mindbenders in 1966, original lead singer Wayne Fontana had moved on to a solo career. The vocal for the song was provided by Eric Stewart, later a member of 10cc.

Carol Bayer Sager and Toni Wine wrote the song, which was originally recorded by the duo Diane and Annita. Their record used the title “A Groovey Kind of Love”, suggesting that popular culture had not yet settled on an orthography for the word. It was a very short historical period during which one could use the word “groovy” without a hint of irony, sarcasm, or condescension. Nonetheless, Phil Collins managed to rack up a #1 with his languorous recording of the song in 1988. Let’s suppose that everyone had forgotten about the word by that time, or its overtones had simply faded.

In the Mindbenders’ version, there’s a half-step modulation at 1:14, just before an instrumental verse.

José Feliciano | “Chico and the Man” Theme

“Very few names come to mind when talking about legendary musicians … one of those names includes José Feliciano, a multi-faceted Puerto Rican music artist who has succeeded in challenging the industry despite his disability. (He was) one of the first Latino artists to crossover in English and Spanish—and to succeed with both audiences,” (The Daily Chela). “He is perhaps best known for “composing the song for the television show Chico and the Man as well as his iconic holiday song ‘Feliz Navidad.’ … As a Latino, Feliciano was advised to change his name so he could broaden his audience, but he refused to do so … He doesn’t consider himself a hero or someone to put on a pedestal. To him, he’s just someone who loves music.” The artist is the subject of the 2020 documentary José Feliciano: Behind this Guitar (2020).

“While it wasn’t one of those blink and you’ll miss it moments in television history, Chico and the Man was nonetheless a short-lived small screen phenomenon that exploded in 1974,” (Yahoo.com) “… television as a medium was going through a transition to edgier comedies dealing with more realistic — and oftentimes somewhat controversial — material … The premise of the show is a kind of generational version of The Odd Couple, with Jack Albertson as Ed Brown, the elderly and cantankerous owner of a garage in an East Los Angeles barrio, who encounters a young Mexican American named Chico Rodriguez (Freddie Prinze) who arrives looking for a job and ends up living in a van on the property.”

Starting in A major, the track has an AABA form. The B section shifts up to the closely related key of D major (0:44) before the last A section returns to the original key (0:55). The form repeats from there. The production and light instrumentation (guitar and hand percussion) keep Feliciano’s vocal right out front in the mix. The song peaked at only #96 but nonetheless became well known due to the show’s popularity.

Johannes Brahms | Piano Quartet #3 in C Minor, Op. 60

“The Brahms Third Piano Quartet offers plenty of interpretive temptations. A young Brahms began the piece during Robert Schumann’s last illness, when Brahms was torn between despair for his friend and love for his friend’s wife,” (LAPhil.com). “He then tabled the project for nearly two decades before picking it up again and making thorough revisions (including lowering the key a half step), resulting in the current work. An older Brahms confessed to his publisher in characteristically sarcastic terms, ‘On the cover you must have a picture, namely a head with a pistol to it. Now you can form some conception of the music! I’ll send you my photograph for the purpose. Since you seem to like color printing, you can use blue coat, yellow breeches, and top-boots.'”

“It was a tongue in cheek reference to Goethe’s 1774 epistolary novel, The Sorrows of Young Werther, in which the Romantic hero commits suicide after falling in love with a married woman whose husband he admires,” (The Listeners’ Club). “Piano Quartet No. 3 in C minor was the last to be published of Brahms’ contributions to the genre. Yet, its first version, which preceded the other two quartets, was completed in 1856 at a time when the 23-year-old composer had become devoted to Clara Schumann. While Robert Schumann spent his final years languishing in an asylum amid deteriorating mental health, Brahms assisted Clara in taking care of the Schumann household. Obvious parallels can be drawn between Brahms’ deep affection for Clara and the emotional tumult of the fictional Werther.”

Beginning in C minor and touching briefly on several other keys, the piece clearly shifts to the relative Eb major at 2:13, starting with a piano solo section which is joined by the string trio at 2:27. Many other shifts in tonality follow.