Bob Kuban and the In-Men were an “eight-piece rock ‘n’ roll band from St. Louis, Missouri … (They) were a classic one-hit-wonder Top 40 group, with ‘The Cheater,’ which reached number 12 in the US pop charts in 1966, (AllMusic). Also in 1966, the group scraped the bottom of the charts with two follow-ups, ‘The Teaser’ (number 70) and a cover of the Beatles’ ‘Drive My Car’ (number 93). ‘The Cheater’ had something of a blue-eyed soul flavor with the vibrant horn arrangements and Scott’s almost black vocal approach.
The In-Men were formed in 1964 and made their first record in 1965 … Kuban continued to perform in St. Louis for weddings and other social affairs with his band, the Bob Kuban Brass.”
After starting in F# major, there’s an half-step upward shift after the bridge (1:23 – 1:38). As the track nears its end (2:17), there’s another half-step modulation for the final verse.
In 2006, “Rufus Wainwright did something extraordinary – even bizarre: he performed a cover version of an entire concert,” (The Guardian). “Judy Garland’s 1961 performance at Carnegie Hall is a legendary night in showbiz, marking a comeback after a period of ill-health and addiction in order to claim her crown as the world’s greatest entertainer.
Wainwright, who had his own crystal-meth-afflicted dark night of the soul in the late 90s, decided to sing the whole thing from beginning to end, including the parts where Garland forgets the words (in You Go to My Head), on the very boards the resurgent diva trod. Part homage, part exorcism, part formidable technical exercise, it was also an experiment: what would happen when the voice of the present sings the songs and evokes the spirits of the past?”
One of the most energetic tunes of the show, “Zing Went the Strings of My Heart,” shows off the big band accompaniment beautifully. Wainwright turns in a rock solid vocal performance; freed from his usual self-accompaniment duties on piano or guitar, his energy is channeled into belting his vocals in a manner worthy of Garland’s memory. To say he’s not much of a hoofer would be a huge understatement, but Wainwright is in on the joke as he tosses off a goofy dance break during the tune’s midsection. The tune shifts up a half step at 2:26.
Garland’s original 1961 Carnegie Hall performance:
“Walter ‘Bunny’ Sigler—a songwriter, singer, and producer … helped pioneer soul music’s ‘Philly Sound’ along with Kenny Gamble and Leon Huff in the early 1970s,” (Pitchfork) … “Sigler was best known for songs such as ‘Let the Good Times Roll and Feel So Good’ and ‘Girl Don’t Make Me Wait.’ He began his recording career in 1959 and went on to work with numerous acts, including Patti LaBelle, The O’Jays, and Lou Rawls. He often performed with the funk/disco group Instant Funk.
Later in life, Sigler collaborated with the Roots on their Game Theory track ‘Long Time.’ His songs were sampled by Jay-Z, OutKast, Nelly, Kelly Rowland, and many more. ‘He wrote classics that stood the test of time,’ Questlove wrote in a remembrance … ‘He was the DEFINITION of cool, man.'”
“Sunny Sunday” (1967) starts in G minor, then shifts to Ab minor for the second verse at 0:45. A brief bridge touches on Ab major before transitioning to the next verse, this time in A minor. The tedium of the workweek and and the relative shortage of leisure time with loved ones never sounded so good!
“With the two smashes ‘Along Comes Mary’ and ‘Cherish,’ The Association became one of the hottest new bands of 1966, the singles charting at #7 and #1 respectively,” (RichieUnterberger.com). “It was no surprise that their debut album, featuring both of those songs, was also a big success, rising to #5 and remaining their highest-charting LP ever, with the exception of their Greatest Hits compilation.
… With its dynamic interplay between (the) lead and the rest of the band’s vocal harmonies, as well as an intriguing lyric that jammed about as many syllables as were possible to fit into individual lines of a pop song in 1966, the song took a few months to catch on nationally.” The single reached the top 10 in both the USA and Canada.
The intro and (very short!) verse are in A minor. The first section of the chorus, heard for the first time at 0:31, shifts to A mixolydian. By 0:52, the end of the chorus has reverted to A minor. Another verse starts at 1:05 and the pattern continues.
(The Box Tops had) “never been in a studio before ‘The Letter,’ but they knocked it out,” (Stereogum). “Producer Dan Penn added in a plane-taking-off noise that he’d pulled from a sound-effects record that he’d checked out of the library. Given all that, ‘The Letter’ should be a sloppy and amateurish record, which wouldn’t necessarily prevent it from being great. But ‘The Letter’ is not that. It’s a two-minute epic.”
Despite being not even 20 years old at the time, frontman Alex Chilton “sounds weary and ravaged. He’s stuck somewhere far away from his baby, and he’s got to go see her right away. We don’t know where he is, why he’s separated from her, or what she wrote in her letter … But Chilton’s voice absolutely pops off of the record, and it’s all the band needs to tell the story. ‘The Letter’ is a tight, hard, compact piece of white-kid soul. (It’s the last #1 song ever to come in under the two-minute mark.) But it sounds big and cinematic anyway, with Chilton’s voice fighting its way through nervous organs and melodramatic strings and horn stabs … There’s nothing lo-fi about the record; even if it was recorded on a low budget, it’s got the sweep of a James Bond theme.”
The track sticks to A minor for most of its length, but jumps up to C# major at 1:33 for its tiny instrumental outro. The horns have made their exit, leaving the strings to lead the fast fade-out.
Though now almost exclusively associated with the musical Cabaret, Kander and Ebb’s iconic ballad “Maybe This Time” was not originally written for the show. The songwriting duo composed the song for cabaret singer Kaye Ballard in 1964, and later included it in the 1972 film adaptation of Cabaret. The tune was added to the stage musical for the 1998 revival and has been included in subsequent major productions.
A new revival of Cabaret began previews on Broadway last week after transferring from London’s West End. The track is performed here by Jessie Buckley, and modulates from Ab to A at 2:21.
Lenny Cocco, the founder and lead vocalist of the New York City-based doo-wop vocal group The Chimes, “was deeply influenced by his parents and motivated by his father, Leonard,” (TheChimesMusic). “A professionally accomplished accordionist, (Leonard) advised Lenny to focus on Tommy Dorsey’s 1937 number one hit, ‘Once In Awhile.’ Lenny arranged the standard to work itself well with his vocal quintet. Standards were their passion!
In 1960, they visited the Brill Building in Manhattan, New York, to record a demo. The engineer during the session introduced them to Andy Leonetti, of TAG Records. Within minutes their lives were changed.” In 1961, the tune reached #11 on the US pop charts and #15 in Canada. “As a result, their major bookings, in the beginning, were in intimate theaters, such as The Howard in Washington, D.C., the Regal in Chicago and the Apollo in Harlem, New York. The intimate theater setting bonded people together like never before … The group made two appearances on ‘American Bandstand’ with Dick Clark” and had several other minor hits during the early 1960s.
The 12/8 tune could easily serve as an example of the doo wop genre as a whole. After beginning in Eb major, there’s a shift to G major for the bridge (1:08 – 1:35) before the track returns to the original key.
The Sweet Inspirations are a vocal group, formed in the late 1950s, best-known as backup singers for other artists, appearing on recordings for Van Morrison, Aretha Franklin, Dusty Springfield, Jimi Hendrix, the James Gang, and Yusef Lateef. They toured with Elvis Presley towards the end of his career.
The original members included Doris Troy, who had a hit with “Just One Look” and recorded an album for the Beatles’ Apple label; future superstar Dionne Warwick; and Warwick’s sister Dee Dee. The later lineup on the cut here features lead vocalist Cissy Houston, mother of 1980s superstar Whitney Houston and the aunt of the Warwick sisters. The other members of this classic lineup were Sylvia Shemwell, Estelle Brown, and Myrna Smith. A version of the group continues to tour to this day (Encyclopedia of Popular Music).
Besides their backup work, the group recorded their own singles and albums. [Ed. note: I first became aware of the group from their 1968 single named for the group, “Sweet Inspiration”.] The track here appeared on their third Atlantic album, What The World Needs Now Is Love, and was released as a single. The album, produced by Tom Dowd and arranged by Arif Mardin, bears the unmistakable sonic signature of the Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section (you could ID Roger Hawkins’ snare in a police lineup.)
“Unchained Melody,” with music by Alex North and lyrics by Hy Zaret, was written for the 1955 movie Unchained. The Righteous Brothers’ 1965 single on Phil Spector’s Phillie Records is probably the most famous recording of the song. That version features a languorous 12/8 rhythm, extracting maximum emotion from Bobby Hatfield’s tenor. The Sweets’ version (1968) is in straight 4/4 and is a bit more up-tempo, but Cissy Houston’s soaring lead is no less emotive.
There’s a half-step modulation at 1:48 as the verse repeats.
Included on Rolling Stone’s list of the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time, “Son of a Preacher Man” has been recorded by Elvis Presley, Joss Stone, and Foo Fighters, among others.
English singer Dusty Springfield’s cover, included on her 1968 album Dusty in Memphis, is by far the most well-known. The song tells the story of a young girl who runs away with and falls in love with the preacher’s son. The industry magazine Cash Box wrote in 1968 that “the track is “brim-full of the special southern-combo sound and a vocal strongly influenced by Aretha [Franklin].”
The song begins in E and modulates up to A for the last chorus at 1:44
“Early-’60s rock & roll albums are a funny animal — no one, not critics or fans, ever really knew what to make of them, mostly because they were usually so superfluous to how we knew and understood the artists involved,” (Qobuz). “Except for Elvis Presley, who still commanded a lot of attention even as he began what ultimately proved to be the downward arc (in terms of quality) of his movie career, no one ever heard the album tracks except the most serious, dedicated fans, who were a tiny, almost microscopic portion of the audience. It wasn’t until the Beach Boys began surprising people with album cuts that were almost good enough to be singles that audiences started to given them a wider listen, though it took the Beatles — who stirred insatiable demand from fans and whose albums met the same standard as their singles — to drive the sale numbers up to significant levels.
Until then, you had fine LPs like She Cried (1962), Jay & the Americans’ debut LP, fine efforts that most fans never heard or even knew about. A Leiber & Stoller production, it reflected their other work of the period, including the group’s covers of then-current Drifters/Ben E. King hits, and also reflected the influence of Phil Spector …”
The title track was the group’s first major hit. Built around a I major / bVII major vamp, the track’s slightly off-kilter instrumental verse (1:45 – 2:02), with strings front and center, leads us to a late whole-step modulation. The single reached #5 on the US pop charts and was the first of four US Top 10 hits for the group.
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