“Formed in the late 50s … in Steubenville-Toronto, Ohio, USA, (The Four Guys) group moved to Nashville, Tennessee, and appeared on the Grand Ole Opry in April 1967,” (AllMusic). “Their reception was such that they became regulars on the show and built lasting popularity from this engagement.” The group worked with Hank Williams, Jr., Jimmy Dean, and Charley Pride.
The quartet were “just as much at home on the stage of the Grand Ole Opry as they are on the Las Vegas circuit” (Slipcue) … The Four Guys released several albums and a number of singles from the early 1970s through the early 1980s.
“Too Late to Turn Back Now” (1974) featured the quartet’s famous vocal blend; the tune shifts up a half-step at 1:31.
“English progressive rock giants Jethro Tull are a unique phenomenon in popular music history,” (AllMusic). “Led by enigmatic frontman Ian Anderson — a singer, songwriter, guitarist, and rock’s premier flutist … their mix of heavy rock, flute-led folk melodies, blues licks, surreal, impossibly dense lyrics, and overall profundity defies easy analysis, yet in their 1970s heyday, they garnered a massive level of commercial success, notching a string of gold and platinum records and securing their place within the classic rock canon with releases like Aqualung (1971), Thick as a Brick (1972), and A Passion Play (1973). Even as critics cooled on them, Tull remained popular through later phases with their folk-rock records of the late ’70s, the electronic experimentation of the early ’80s, and eventually a Grammy Award-winning return to hard rock with 1987’s Crest of a Knave.
Benefit (1970) was the album on which the Jethro Tull sound solidified around folk music, abandoning blues entirely. Beginning with the opening number, “With You There to Help Me,” (Ian) Anderson adopts his now-familiar, slightly mournful folksinger/sage persona, with a rather sardonic outlook on life and the world…”
The mid-tempo track “Teacher” is built in A major overall, but the chorus features a D major/minor mix and then an instrumental section in B minor (first heard at 0:48 and 1:02). The pattern continues with verse 2.
“Produced by Todd Rundgren, Remote Control (1979) is a concept album that could be seen as the next installment in Utopia, so similar are the two,” (Progrography). “Rundgren is credited with co-writing two songs (‘Love’s a Mystery’ and ‘TV Is King’), but his fingerprints are all over Remote Control, from the high-register choruses to the compressed and sped-up arrangements. Of course, sounding like Utopia isn’t a bad thing; in fact, this is probably my favorite Tubes album after their first. The album generated a legitimate hit (okay, in the UK) with ‘Prime Time,’ and should have had a second with ‘Love’s a Mystery (I Don’t Understand).’ If the reports are true that the band entered the studio with a concept but without any songs, then this record is a testament to the band’s creativity, because there isn’t a bad song in the batch.
Along with (Rundgren and Utopia albums) Adventures In Utopia, Healing, and Swing To The Right, Remote Control represents a sort of Rundgren renaissance for art pop fans between 1979 and 1982. The Tubes never made another album like it, and they never made a better one after it. If you haven’t heard this or the three Utopia/Rundgren records I just mentioned, turn off the TV tonight and turn on to some great music instead.”
Starting in B major with plenty of compound chords ringing out over the tonic pedal point, the chorus (0:40 – 0:55) shifts into D mixolydian; the most prominent building block at that point is a D/C chord until the next verse returns to B major. The pattern continues until the second portion of the bridge (2:14 – 2:45) in G# dorian before the chorus returns at 3:00 and fades to the end.
“Cut the Cake (1975) was a difficult album to make for the Average White Band. They were still mourning the loss of drummer Robbie McIntosh, who had died of a heroin overdose the previous year,” (Popdose). “It got to the point that producer Arif Mardin considered pulling the plug on the whole thing. Fortunately everyone soldiered on, and the result was an album that topped the R&B chart, and made it to #4 on the pop chart. AWB has made many more albums over the years, but they never again attained that lofty height.”
“Steve Ferrone, a black drummer from London, England, was hired as a replacement — ironically, he became the first black member of a Scottish soul/funk band that had a very African-American sound and a largely African-American following,” (AllMusic). “Despite the fact that AWB’s members still had McIntosh’s death on their minds when they were writing and recording Cut the Cake, this isn’t a depressing or consistently melancholy album; far from it … If anything, they honor McIntosh’s memory by showing their resilience and delivering one of their finest, most engaging albums.”
After both starting in E minor, the track’s first and second verses glide through quite a patch of key-of-the-moment color before arriving at the chorus, where the tonality shifts to E major (1:45). At 2:07, the verse continues after a jump to G major. 2:28 brings an interlude in E minor which then pivots into another chorus at 2:51, starting this time in F major but ending in Ab major at 3:12 as the tune fades.
“There’s little preparation needed to approach a Tom T. Hall song,” (TheMusicalDivide.com). “His work is the embodiment of country music, perhaps not in sound – his weapons of choice included warm acoustics, dobro, and, every now and then, strings; not moaning steel guitar or fiddle – but certainly in the unpretentious, straightforward spirit it was meant to stand for as music of the real, everyday forgotten people. Hall’s songs have a casual feel of a late-afternoon chat at a local diner, or an all-night conversation between two old friends catching up on old times and having a riot recounting those old stories.
… Old dogs are there for you even when you stumble and make mistakes; children are too young to understand the concept of hate and are how we map the world’s future; and watermelon wine … well, that one isn’t explained directly with a line. But I’d like to think there’s a beauty in two road-weary adults taking the time to appreciate life’s simpler pleasures and remember the good in the world, or remember that it’s not all lost or faded, at least.”
The leisurely country track, released in 1975, begins in F major; in the middle of the tune at 2:04, it shifts up a half step. But just for good measure, Hall adds another half-step key change late in the game (3:30).
“In the 1970s, The Meters were one of the leading rhythm & blues/funk acts doing the rounds in America at a time when there was an explosion of funk, soul, and R&B going on, and acts such as Stevie Wonder, Cutis Mayfield, and Parliament/Funkadelic were in their prime,” (NowhereBros.com). “Originally from New Orleans, The Meters not only performed and recorded their own energetic and highly charged style of R&B/funk, but also played as backing musicians for acts such as Dr. John and Allen Toussaint, and were amazingly talented musicians in their own right. The band’s style was heavily influenced by their hometown New Orleans and was characterized by the extensive use of piano and organ, horns, and a strong emphasis placed on syncopated rhythms which gave their sound an underlying funk feel. This hybrid of funk and R&B has often been described as New Orleans R&B, and as a style was best represented on their 1974 release Rejuvenation …
Rejuvenation is a high-class mix of funk and R&B, serving as a showcase for the individual band members and their talents as players … These guys lock in together so well as a band on this album … the quality of the playing on this album means that the Neville Brothers’ soulful vocals are often overshadowed by the instrumental backing and don’t feature as prominently as they probably should … these guys were such in-demand backing musicians within the R&B genre, and in many ways, you could describe them as being the 1970s version of The Roots … “
The tune is based on the tonic chord of D minor overall except for the brief “people say” chorus, which goes up to the IV chord. But the track shifts up a whole step to E minor from 3:11 – 3:38 during its bridge. Many thanks to regular contributor Rob P. for sending in this classic funk track!
“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).
“(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.
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.
“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!
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