1970s

Mama Cass | Different (from “PufNStuff”)

“Cass Elliot didn’t just sing on a kids’ show,” (Kendall LeJeune). “She turned a children’s puppet fantasy into pure camp gospel. The way she sings ‘Different’ as a spell, equal parts lullaby and incantation. That’s presence. That’s control … she transforms a TV cameo into a cultural artifact. Witch hat, velvet cape, full vocal power. She knew the audience would remember. And we do.”

“‘Different’ is the sixth song in the soundtrack of the movie Pufnstuf (1970) and is the first of two songs which are sung the antagonists of the movie,” (Fandom.com). “During the Witch’s Council, after the Boss Witch’s assistant starts the record player, Witch Hazel sings about how she discovered from a very young age that she was different from other people and how she used her difference to her advantage before meeting the other witches. During the course of the song, Hazel is joined by the other witches in refrains of certain words in the verses and for three quarters of the song’s chorus. After the song is finished, while the other witches applaud Hazel, Witchiepoo acts unamused, since Hazel is also up for Witch of the Year.”

The track begins in F major, shifting to G major for a second verse at 0:23. The chorus, starting at 0:38, leads up to a melodically surprising ending. 0:58 brings a G major interlude which connects us to another verse which reverts back to F major (1:01). The pattern continues from there.

Below is a video with high audio quality, but also check out the second posted video of the actual footage from Pufnstuf. For a synopsis and review of the film, check out the 366 Weird Movies site — it was too dense with detailed descriptions to choose an excerpt!

Many thanks to Maureen BZ for calling our attention to this one-of-a-kind track.

And no, your eyes aren’t playing tricks on you: this footage does include a Nazi rat character who happens to hang out with witches:

Tavito | Tua Ramalhete

“One of the members of Som Imaginário, a band organized to back Milton Nascimento in the ’70s and which also accompanied Gal Costa and other artists, Tavito had his song ‘Hey Man’ (with Zé Rodrix) successfully recorded by the group on its first LP. In 1973 he became a music producer,” (AllMusic). “In 1979 he recorded his first solo album, Tavito, followed by two others recorded before 1982. His biggest hit was ‘Casa no Campo’ (with Zé Rodrix), recorded by Elis Regina in 1971, and ‘Rua Ramalhete’ (with Ney Azambuja)” in 1979.

In the central Brazilian city of Belo Horizonte is a street called Rua Ramalhete (Bouquet Street). The area is well known for its romantic setting, where couples often stroll in the evenings. Tavito lived nearby; a plaque recognizing his work has been placed on a wall overlooking the street.

Online information about Tavito is sparse, but the same can’t be said for his arrangements! After “Tua Ramalhete” starts in E minor, 0:37 brings a pre-chorus leading to a chorus at 0:56 in C# major and a harmonically meandering interlude. At 1:36, E minor returns for another verse. The pattern continues from there. Many thanks to our frequent contributor, Julianna A. from Brazil, for submitting this beautiful tune!

Commodores | Won’t You Come Dance With Me

“Known as Zoom in the UK, the Commodores’ eponymous fifth LP … very much a transitional work, highlighting the greasy southern funk that the group so ably practiced before pianist and saxophonist Lionel Richie firmly took centre stage.” The album included the hits “Brick House” and “Easy” and “was a huge hit in the US, setting the Commodores fair for their chart-topping scene stealing as the 70s became the 80s,” (BBC). “In the UK, the reaction was a little more muted. However, ‘Easy’ paved the way for ‘Three Times a Lady’ and ‘Still,’ and Lionel Richie’s unshakeable place as a favourite artist of millions.”

“The fifth album by the first self-contained band signed by Motown at the start of the 1970s,” (Motown.com). “Commodores became the first of the Commodores’ three consecutive Top 3 albums on the pop charts during 1977-78 … (it) spent a year among the Billboard best-sellers, including eight weeks at Number One on the R&B rankings. The Commodores graduated into Motown’s biggest group during the second half of the ’70s, not least due to their creative collaboration with record producer James Anthony Carmichael, and the astute leadership of their manager, Benny Ashburn. ‘One reason we’ve been successful is that we treat it like a business,’ Ashburn once told Billboard. ‘After a show, people will come up and ask, Where’s the party? It’s all right to have fun, but every day when people go to work, do they party? The guys have to get rest to do it tomorrow in the next town. If you treat it as a business, it will treat you well.'”

“Won’t You Come Dance With Me,” adorned with plenty of shifts in texture and groove, pivots among several closely-related keys. After a short intro and a chorus-first section in E major, A major at 0:25 and F# minor at 0:58 are also visited before the pattern repeats at 1:19 with an intro-mirroring interlude and another chorus.

Eagles | Already Gone

“Eagles were an ascendant country-rock band by 1974, with a handful of hits to their name,” (Ultimate Classic Rock). “With their third album, On the Border, they began courting the rock listeners they so desperately wanted to win over — beginning with the LP’s lead single, ‘Already Gone.'” The tune was “built around a rousing guitar riff from their newest member, Don Felder, and his and Glen Frey’s dueling solos.

… Released on April 19, 1974, ‘Already Gone’ peaked at #32 on the Billboard Hot 100 — no small feat, but one that paled in comparison to On the Border’s third single, the chart-topping ballad ‘Best of My Love'”

The track is built primary in G major, but after two verses, two choruses, the guitar feature, then another verse and chorus, 3:18 brings a late key change up a fourth to C major for the chorus-based outro.

The Jaggerz | The Rapper

“From the ‘Club Naturale’ in Beaver Falls, Pennsylvania, to Dick Clark’s American Bandstand, the homegrown band The Jaggerz paved their way to success … Among the band’s accolades, the Jaggerz received a gold record for having the number one song in the country,” (TribLive). “With sales exceeding 5 million copies, ‘The Rapper’ found itself being blasted all over the country.” The Jaggerz have performed with artists including The Beach Boys, The Temptations, The Supremes, The Dells, Tommy James, and B.J. Thomas and released four albums.

After a nominal start in A major, the entire verse of “The Rapper” (1970) is constructed from major chords (A, B, D, and E), so it’s essentially a parade of keys of the moment. From 0:35-0:51, there’s a shift to F# major for the chorus before a return to the next verse’s cavalcade of keys.

Charlie Rich | A Very Special Love Song

“Charlie Rich did not start his career in country music,” (Saving Country Music). “After leaving the Air Force in 1956, he purchased a 500-acre farm in West Memphis, Arkansas, and would drive over the Mississippi River bridge at night to play piano in jazz and R&B outfits in Memphis clubs. Eventually he ended up at Sun Studios in Memphis as a studio musician. Sam Phillips didn’t see him as a performer though, chiding that Rich was too jazzy. At one point, Sam Phillips handed Charlie Rich a stack of Jerry Lee Lewis records and told him, ‘Come back when you get that bad.’

For years Charlie Rich struggled as a performer since he wasn’t dirty enough for rockabilly or country, and not distinctive enough to make it in the world of pop. But when the Countrypolitan sound became all the rage in country music, it gave Charlie Rich an opening. Where some more hard country artists struggled to perfect the more genteel Countrypolitan approach, Charlie Rich’s balladeer style and smoothness fit the era perfectly.”

Though it didn’t reach the popular heights of his biggest single, “Behind Closed Doors,” 1974’s “A Very Special Love Song” is among Rich’s best-known tracks. After starting in C major, the tune features a bridge in Bb, running between 1:16 – 1:44. After the bridge, the original key returns.

Hall + Oates | Love You Like a Brother

Psychologists say that contempt is the #1 indicator of a future divorce. For anyone wondering why Hall and Oates (the best-selling pop duo of all time) broke up a few years ago, here’s an excerpt from an Popdose interview (September 2009):

“Me (interviewer): You two have been making music together for nearly 40 years. What do you consider to be the secret to your success?

Oates: Well, Daryl and I have a healthy balance of give and—

Hall: (interrupting) Take one-fourth of John and three-fourths of me and you’ve got the winning formula. We’re the Beatles of the post-Woodstock generation, no question. It was the same with them in their day: three-fourths Lennon and McCartney, one-fourth George, and one-fourth Ringo.” …

The interview continued along these lines, with Oates walking out at one point. You do the math.

In any case, “Love You Like a Brother” from 1977’s No Goodbyes, was clearly released during better times. The intro (0:00 – 0:16), in D minor, repeats as an interlude (1:20 – 1:32). But the majority of the tune is in G major.

Pablo Cruise | Love Will Find a Way

“For the longest time I assumed Pablo Cruise took their name from an obscure Mexican revolutionary leader. This is not the case,” (The Vinyl District). “Others assumed there was a guy named Pablo Cruise in the band. This is also not the case. When asked ‘Who’s Pablo Cruise?’ the quartet said simply, ‘He’s the guy in the middle.’ I like a band with a sense of humor and I like Pablo Cruise (in a very small measure) and I am not ashamed.

Robert Christgau of Village Voice fame wrote of Pablo Cruise’s 1975 breakthrough album Lifeline, ‘You can take the Doobie Brothers out of the country, but you can’t turn them into Three Dog Night.’ I haven’t the slightest idea what this means, but I’m pretty sure it’s an insult … But if Pablo Cruise get no respect, that’s not to say they don’t deserve a smallish modicum of the commodity … The Pablo Cruise sound was a melting pot of faux soul, power pop, standard issue Yacht Rock, funk, fusion, Latin music, and New Wave even.” The critics might have panned the tune, but the public loved it: the track reached #6 on the pop charts in 1978.

The intro and verses are built in G mixolydian; the verse melody, given its repeated prominent flatted-seventh degree of the scale, is practically a poster child for the mixolydian mode! The sunnier choruses (first heard from 0:47 – 1:07) are in D major.

Jackson 5 | Mama’s Pearl

“Let’s go back to the end of the 60s. Motown needed to modernize their sound. The company had been showing its first hairline fractures as public mores shifted to albums rather than the singles on which it had built its reputation,” (BBC). “But then, the Jackson 5 came along and became the label’s big thing for the new decade. Well drilled in performance for several years previously, they burst on to the world stage with eagerness and vitality – and genuine youth.”

“‘Mama’s Pearl’ was the fifth single released by the Jackson 5 and the first release by the boys for 1971. 1970 proved to be the year of success for the Jackson 5.” (J5 Collector). “With four back-to-back number one hits, three top pop albums, numerous TV appearances, and a successful tour, what more could the boys ask for?” Here’s the most profoundly 70s pop trivia you’ll see today: “Mama’s Pearl” was kept from the #1 slot on the pop charts by the Osmonds’ “One Bad Apple”!

The intro is initially in F major, with a second section in Ab major, complete with an eighth-note walking bass pattern so compelling that it could drive the whole tune by itself. At 1:19, there’s a shift back to the original key as the verse starts. The alternating pattern continues from there.

Renaissance | Touching Once (Is So Hard to Keep)

Renaissance is a prog rock band which frequently has amibtions which were symphonic in scope. Founded in the late 1960s, it’s been intermittently active through the present day; in fact, it’s currently on tour as of this writing! Its sound has centered primarily around the voice of Annie Haslam.

“Their album Prologue, released in 1972, (featured) extended instrumental passages and soaring vocals by Haslam,” (AllMusic). “Their breakthrough came with their next record, Ashes Are Burning, issued in 1973 … their next record, Turn of the Cards … had a much more ornate songwriting style and was awash in lyrics that alternated between the topical and the mystical. The group’s ambitions were growing faster than its audience, which was concentrated on America’s East Coast, especially in New York and Philadelphia — Scheherazade (1975) was built around a 20-minute extended suite for rock group and orchestra that dazzled the fans but made no new converts … The band’s next two albums, Novella and A Song for All Seasons, failed to find new listeners; as the 1970s closed out, the group was running headlong into the punk and new wave booms that made them seem increasingly anachronistic and doomed to cult status.” Several breakups and revivals followed over the next decades.

“Touching Once (Is So Hard to Keep),” a track from Novella (1977), starts with a short intro in E minor before settling into a verse in B minor (0:09). Plenty of quickly passing keys of the moment, further adorned and obscured with plentiful chromaticism, lead us to the next notable shift in tonality at the chorus (1:10), which starts in F major. 1:35 brings us back to the next verse in B minor. Pace yourself: the 9.5 minute track unfolds from there with an extended midsection loaded with twists and turns, then unfolds some more before ending with a half-time restatement of some of the opening sections.