The Isley Brothers recorded “That Lady” twice. Songwriters Ronald, O’Kelly, and Rudolph Isley, the original family trio, released the first version in 1964.
Besides the sweet vocals, the prominent features of the song are the insistent cowbell (!), and the supporting horn riff towards the end.
But it was the Isleys’ 1973 version that made the song famous (Billboard #6 that year). By then, younger brother Ernie Isley had joined the group, and it’s his fuzzed-out guitar that’s the hook in that version. For that release, the lyrics were embellished, and the superior recording quality reflects the improved technology of the day. Neither of the Isleys’ versions featured a key change, however!
Donald Fagen (of Steely Dan), Michael McDonald (of the Doobie Brothers), and Boz Scaggs toured as The Dukes of September from 2010 to 2012, playing hits from their own bands and some of their own favorites, like the song here. Guitarist Jon Herington, who had recorded and toured with Steely Dan, manages to capture the flavor of Ernie Isley’s solo in this performance at Lincoln Center in 2012.
In the Dukes’ version, there’s a half-step modulation at 2:36 — although this shift seems bigger due to an interruption of the groove, some unexpected kicks, and flourishes from the horn section.
“In this song, Wilson sings about a woman who finds a worn-down snake on the streets. She takes him in and cares for him, but instead of showing gratitude, he bites her. She is understandably upset, but he reminds her that she knew he was a snake when she took him in,” (Songfacts).
“Wilson was a popular soul singer who had his biggest hit in 1973 with ‘Show And Tell,’ produced by Johnny Rivers, who signed Wilson to his Soul City record label (and) is known for his 1966 hit ‘Secret Agent Man.’ In 2008, ‘The Snake’ was used in British TV commercials for Lambrini Perry,” a pear cider!
The horn-drenched r+b track, released on Wilson’s 1968 album Searching for the Dolphins, shifts up a half step at 1:37 and again at 2:21.
“With its thumping power chords and shredding solo, ‘All Day And All Of The Night’ – recorded in September 1964 – is often cited as the jump-off point for punk and hard rock,” (LouderSound) “But early Kinks were a band forged by American rock’n’blues. Their third single, “You Really Got Me,” which borrowed heavily from The Kingsmen’s Louie Louie, made No.1 in the UK in 1964. The distorted guitar riff by Ray’s brother Dave was a revelation. But it was the follow-up that really created the metal/punk blueprint. ‘The one that started it was All Day And All Of The Night,’ Ray Davies explains.
The secret to The Kinks’ early guitar sound was Dave Davies’s brainwave of slashing the speaker cones of his amp with a razor. ‘As it vibrated, it produced a distorted and jagged roar,’ he commented later … Record label Pye, however, weren’t too enamoured with The Kinks’ latest sound, and initially rejected the song for being ‘too working class.’ … Whatever its social standing, ‘All Day And All Of The Night’ was a ferocious blast of rock’n’roll. It gave The Kinks their second major hit and cemented them in the US as one of the key bands of the British Invasion. “
Contributor JB adds: “Listening to The Kinks with fresh ears, nearly 60 years after they first hit the charts, it’s amazing how far ahead of their time they were. If they had come along in the ’80s, they would absolutely have been in the vanguard of the grunge movement. But because they came up during the British Invasion and their sound wasn’t as melodic as the Beatles (or even the Stones, on albums like Flowers), they were relegated to the second tier.”
After starting in an uptuned G minor, there’s a shift to D minor for the first chorus at 0:28, reverting to the original key at 0:42 for the next verse and the pattern continues from there.
The Ashes were a southern California pop group that formed in the mid-1960s. The group had two principal songwriters, guitarist John Merrill and bassist Alan Brackett (album liner notes). The star of the group was singer Barbara Robison, who had a clear and powerful voice, featured on “Is There Anything I Can Do?” The group’s drummer, Spencer Dryden, would later join the Jefferson Airplane.
The Ashes released only two singles before breaking up. But the core of the group, Merrill, Bracket, and Robison, would go on to form The Peanut Butter Conspiracy (which is either the worst or the best band name ever); they recorded two albums for Columbia and a final album for the independent Challenge label.
Barbara Robison continued her singing career after PBC broke up. Sadly, she didn’t recover from a collapse she suffered during a performance in 1988.
“Is There Anything I Can Do” (1966) was written by singer Jackie DeShannon and Nick DeCaro. The version in this video is from an unreleased demo acetate. The final released version features additional instrumentation by those studio stalwarts, The Wrecking Crew.
The tune is in a noticeably up-tuned E major. At 1:35, there’s a half-step shift up to F that sounds like the start of a sustained modulation, but actually serves as a very prominent sub-V (a relatively rare feature in pop). The song soon drops back to the starting key. The same jarring rise/fall pattern is repeated later.
“By the 1960s, decades after Tin Pan Alley had moved from its original location on Manhattan’s West 28th Street and become a catchphrase for the popular music industry as a whole, writers such as the stellar team of Carole King and Gerry Goffin were mining the same escapist concepts, but updating them with a hint of postwar anxiety… (American Songwriter). ‘Up on the Roof,’ a hit for the Drifters in 1962, remains one of the most enduring songs of the latter-day Tin Pan Alley period (when writers labored at the Brill Building and other sites along Broadway), if only for its lushness of melody and lyrical sophistication. ‘At night the stars put on a show for free’ … In a manner similar to that of the first Tin Pan Alley writers, Goffin and King honor the tradition of quick recognition through tunefulness: hit songs, during the Brill Building era, needed to be heard just once to be remembered.
But ‘Up on the Roof’ also evinces a quiet sense of sadness, an urban dissatisfaction that moves beyond anything conceived by the rose-spectacled Tin Pan Alley writers of the early 20th century. Inspired, perhaps, by the realism of works such as Rebel Without a Cause and West Side Story, King and Goffin view modern Gotham as a place of chaos and potential strife: ‘people are just too much for me to face…I get away from the hustling crowd.’ For these city dwellers, escape is not just a goal but a necessity. The difference—from the perspective of songwriting technique—is that listeners are allowed to visualize the beauty of the flight ‘to the top of the stairs’ along with the reasons for making it … Hard, unsparing reality could be saved for Bob Dylan and the new generation of singer/songwriters who arrived in his wake.”
James Taylor’s 1979 album Flag featured his cover of the tune, which performed well as a top 40 single. Reflecting on his first years of work with King starting in 1970, Taylor remembered: ” … Carole and I found we spoke the same language” (The Guardian). “Not just that we were both musicians, but as if we shared a common ear, a parallel musical/emotional path. And we brought this out in one another, I believe.” It’s all the more powerful to hear Taylor and King collaborate on this live duo version of the tune (2010). The duet finds them shifting between her best key and his — while adding a surprising new dimension with the connective tissue. King begins in C major, followed by a shift to the F major (the same key as Taylor’s studio cover) at 1:15, then back to King’s C major at 2:22, then finally settling into F major at 2:45 for the balance of the tune.
“One of the more underappreciated vocal groups of their era, the Fantastic Four … was powered by impassioned lead singer ‘Sweet James’ Epps,” (ClassicMotown.com). “They came to Motown as established R&B hitmakers in 1968. Although their career somewhat stalled for two years at Hitsville, they released strong singles, recorded an unreleased album, and a passel of additional tracks still prized by Motown collectors and Northern Soul aficionados.
Recording for (the) Ric-Tic label, the quartet consistently connected with fans through a string of singles with devotional lyrics – some echoing themes of classical literature – perfectly suited for “Sweet” James’s near-breathless and deeply soulful delivery, which bears some resemblance to that of David Ruffin. They placed six songs on the R&B charts (three of which also hit the pop charts) between early 1967 and mid-1968 … (including) ‘As Long As I Live (I Live For You)’ (which became) a regular presence on soul music-formatted radio stations.” The band’s songs “were regularly played on Detroit/Windsor’s 50,000 watt powerhouse station, CKLW (The Big 8). They continued to record for Motown, releasing several singles under its Soul subsidiary label, until 1970, when they went into semi-retirement,” (SoulfulDetroit).
After pivoting between G# minor and the relative major key of B major, 2:15 brings a late modulation up to C# major before the fade out of this short single.
We usually wrap up our week with an up-tempo rock or dance tune, but this week we’ll continue to look back at the singular career of legendary songwriter Burt Bacharach, whose work has been a frequent feature on MotD. Bacharach’s work not only featured a broad harmonic vocabulary — including plenty of modulations. It generally stepped lightly through complex harmonic and meter transitions which only fully came to light after several listening sessions, rarely “telegraphing” themselves in advance. Bacharach generally avoided cliché half-step or whole-step key changes; rather, he favored transitions between closely-related keys, which don’t hit the listener like a brick upside the head, but a bit more like the sun gradually peeking through the clouds. He hid all the seams and made the final result sound effortless.
Bacharach studied composition with composer Darius Milhaud, one of the members of the informal but influential guild of progressive French composers, “Les Six.” Key changes and meter changes were not special effects for Bacharach, but rather organic tools for expression. Composer/pianist Ethan Iverson reports that Milhaud “told Bacharach that he shouldn’t worry about dodecaphony and keep composing those nice melodies.”
Iverson continues: “In his 60s songs, Bacharach undoes conventional pop from deep underneath the surface. ‘Hooks’ are almost always a bit asymmetrical, but Burt’s are truly lopsided. In the background of his radio-friendly hits, there is an echo of bebop logic, an echo of Schoenbergian logic.” Lyricist Hal David, Iverson suggests, “searched a surreal and overcast meadow for unexpected rhyme and reason.” Iverson continues by saying that jazz musician Dave Frishberg, when learning to write memorable themes, studied “the ‘4 Bs’: The Beach Boys, the Beatles, Brazilian, and Bacharach. (‘Brazilian’ means Jobim, Gilberto, Mendes, etc.)”
“The Look of Love,” originally released by Dusty Springfield in 1967, was covered by jazz vocalist/pianist Diana Krall for a 2012 performance at the White House as part of the In Performance at the White House | Burt Bacharach + Hal David: The Library of Congress Gershwin Prize for Popular Song PBS broadcast in May 2012. While Bacharach was present for the performance, Krall’s emotional mention of David hints at the ill health of the lyricist, who lived only a few more months. Krall’s version of the #22 US pop hit, which features plenty of “Burt-isms” in her piano work, is in Bb major overall, but shifts to Bb minor from 3:59 – 4:10. The modulation is situated in the heart of an outro that seems lit only by hushed twilight (3:59 onward), during which Krall communes with her bassist as the two negotiate the subtle ritardando that brings the tune in for a landing. The final Bb major tonic chord rings out at 4:10, complicated by the quintessentially Bachrachian #11 tension Krall repeats several times.
“You’ll Think of Someone” is sung by the two main characters in Act 1 of the 1968 Broadway musical Promises, Promises, based on the classic 1960 film The Apartment. Featuring a score by Burt Bacharach and Hal David, the show is notable for introducing the pop idiom to Broadway, and was among the first shows to use amplified instruments in the pit.
Performed here by Kristin Chenowith and Sean Hayes, who starred in a 2010 Broadway revival, the song moves fluidly between time signatures and alternates between E major and Db major throughout. Bacharach, a 6-time Grammy winner known for his unconventional chord progressions, died yesterday at age 94. In 2012, Bacharach and David were awarded the Library of Congress Gershwin prize for Popular Song, the first time the award had been presented to a duo.
“Be True to Yourself” is an early Burt Bacharach / Hal David composition that was a minor hit for singer Bobby Vee in 1963. Bacharach played on and conducted the orchestra for the recording. The trademark Bacharach touches are there: horn introduction, syncopated melody line, and harmonic complexity. Does the emphasis on beats 2, 3, and 4 at 0:35 foreshadow “Do You Know the Way to San Jose”?
This record reached a respectable #34 on the Billboard charts; Bobby Vee had bigger hits in the 1960s, notably “Devil or Angel” (#6 in 1960), “Take Good Care of My Baby” (#1 in 1961), and “The Night Has a Thousand Eyes” (#3 in 1962).
There’s a half-step modulation up at 1:06 during the instrumental bridge.
Written by Bob Dylan in 1962, “Blowing In The Wind” was ranked at #14 in Rolling Stone’s 500 Greatest Songs of All Time published in 2004. The song evolved into a protest song during the Civil Rights movement. Sam Cooke’s biographer, Peter Guralnick, claims that Cooke loved the song but wished it had been written by a person of color, and quickly incorporated it into his repertoire. This rare footage of a live performance shows how deeply he connected with the song’s message. Modulation at 0:46.
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