The Treasures were a female R&B vocal trio who appeared on The Midnight Special, a popular late-night television show focusing almost entirely on music, in 1974.
We have scoured the web and couldn’t find one piece of information on the group, other than the fact that their nearly empty IMDb page matches the date of the Midnight Special performance on the video. Not one! There may have been a studio album which featured “Right Combination,” but if so, we could find no information on it. A truly unusual problem!
Hopefully we’ll be forgiven, though, because it’s a memorable tune — performed by a trio that sounds like the Supremes and Aretha Franklin had a baby! Starting in C minor, the horn-driven arrangement shifts to Eb minor at 0:34 for the chorus. At 0:57, the verse returns in C minor.
“Daughter of one of the most important female singers of the bossa nova (Sylvia Telles), Claudia Telles recorded for the first time in 1976 (the ballad “Fim de Tarde” by Robson Jorge/Maura Motta), which scored a hit,” (AllMusic). “After recording other singles, she recorded her first LP, Claudia Telles, in 1977. Along with her bossa nova interpretations (covering her mother’s hits), she also dedicated a CD to the samba masters Cartola and Nelson Cavaquinho.
She passed away due to complications from endocarditis at age 62 in 2020. “‘Each of the fans who made her career, her life the way it was: she had immense affection for each one of you’, said Bruno Telles, the singer’s son, to the newspaper O Dia.” (uol.com).
Built primarily in A major, 1978’s “Eu Preciso Te Esquecer” (I Need to Forget You) features a late downward key change to Ab major (3:32 – 3:47) before reverting to the original key. Many thanks to our Brazilian reader and contributor Julianna A. for this submission!
Made famous by country singer George Strait, “Amarillo by Morning” was written by Terry Stafford and Paul Fraser in 1973. The song, sung from the perspective of a rodeo cowboy, has appeared in lists of the best country songs ever written, and reached #4 on the Hot Country songs Billboard chart.
The tune begins in D and modulates up to E for the last chorus at 1:38.
“Known as Zoom in the UK, the Commodores’ eponymous fifth LP (1977) was … 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,” (BBC). “The album was a huge hit in the US, setting the Commodores up for their chart-topping scene stealing as the 70s became the 80s. 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.”
Another track from the album, the midtempo “Funny Feelings,” features an intro in F# minor. At 0:15, however, the first verse settles in with B minor. At 1:01, the chorus shifts to E major. From 1:22 – 1:36, an instrumental interlude mirrors the intro; the cycle continues from there, keeping a laser focus on the funk groove throughout.
“Tapestry” is the title track from singer-songwriter Carole King’s second studio album, released in 1971 and one of the best-selling albums of all time. In 2020, the record ranked 25th on Rolling Stone’s list of the “500 Greatest Albums of All Time.”
The track, for which King wrote the music and lyrics, begins in F and modulates up a half step at 2:15.
“There is absolutely nothing in this world like what happens when disco music is operating at peak capacity,” (Stereogum). “Disco was a wave that swept all across pop music for years. It was tremendous, all-encompassing, and, when done wrong, flattening. The whole genre was more or less built around a drum pattern — a stead thump-thump-thump kick — that kept people in clubs moving and made it easy for DJs to blend one song into the next … There were people who became stars because of disco, and there were fading stars who used disco to extend or even elevate their fame. But disco, like early rock ‘n’ roll, was also a genre of fast, elusive, one-time success.
Every once in a while, when everything lined up just right, a long-toiling artist could hit just the right sound at just the right moment and make something immortal. That’s what happened when Thelma Houston made ‘Don’t Leave Me This Way’ … Most of Thelma Houston’s career works as a story of what happens when the starmaking machine fails. Houston — no relation to Whitney or her extended clan — was an absolute monster of a singer, one who was capable of taking her gospel training and using it to make earthly concerns sound urgent and wracked and overwhelmingly joyous. She spent years with Motown, a label that should’ve known exactly what to do with a singer of her surpassing power. But for Thelma Houston, everything clicked exactly once. Thankfully, that one time was something special.”
Starting in Bb mixolydian for the wordless (and initially grooveless) intro and verse, the tune shifts to C mixolydian for the chorus at 1:19. Billboard included the track on its list of 70 Best LGBTQ Anthems of All Time: “This Motown Hot 100 No. 1 hit in April 1977 was appropriated by the gay community as an anthem for friends lost to the AIDS epidemic. As part of a commissioned ‘public space statement,’ artist Nayland Blake juxtaposed the title of the song against an image of a bouquet of flowers with their tangled roots showing.”
“Continuing the foray into rock begun on 1971’s Givin’ It Back, The Isley Brothers’ 10th studio album Brother, Brother, Brother serves as yet another advancement in the Cincinnati-founded R&B/soul outfit’s signature sound, which carried it to superstardom on the following year’s 3+3,” (UnderTheRadar). “Though understated and restrained in comparison to their more bombastic masterworks, Brother, Brother, Brother is an important Isley Brothers release, its crisp Midwestern soul backbone providing ample support for the group’s more ambitious rock and funk aspirations.
While less realized than much of The Isley Brothers’ future output, Brother, Brother, Brother serves as a gateway to their ’70s golden age. The following year, the band would release its monumental hit ‘That Lady’ … In retrospect, Brother, Brother, Brother feels like a blueprint of explosive greatness to come, the Isleys joining together to function as an unstoppable whole. After five decades, the album sounds unusually fresh, The Isley Brothers having remained pioneers of their genre.”
“Love Put Me On the Corner,” a ballad track from Brother, Brother, Brother, starts with a piano intro in F# minor, accompanied only by gentle mallet cymbal, that sounds like it could have been part of a Joni Mitchell interlude. At 0:22, there’s a shift to F lydian, then another (0:42) to G major with the addition of a gentle groove and a widely dynamic Hammond organ for the verse. The chorus, arriving at 2:46, pivots through 2:46-3:15 with several pairs of compound chords. The pattern continues from there.
“Before we begin, let’s just take a moment to pay respect to John Fogerty’s voice. It sounds like sunshine through a rusted pipe,” (American Songwriter). “Okay, now that we have that behind us, let’s check out one of Fogerty’s most memorable tunes, ‘Lookin’ Out My Back Door,’ which he wrote with his influential California-born rock band, Creedence Clearwater Revival, and released on the group’s 1970 LP, Cosmo’s Factory … The gravelly rock single hit #2 on the Billboard charts.” It’s #1 “in the hearts of many fans of the 1998 cult classic The Big Lebowski, a movie that mixes the mundane with the psychedelic, much like the Creedence song at hand.
Since its release, many have speculated that the lyrics are about drugs … But, if you ask Fogerty, it’s not … In interviews and in Bad Moon Rising: The Unauthorized History of Creedence Clearwater, Fogerty is quoted as saying the song was actually written for his then three-year-old son, Josh. He’s also said that the reference to the parade passing by the door was inspired by the Dr. Seuss story, And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street … More than anything, though, it’s just an epic example of Fogerty’s inimitable scratchy-snarly voice that will live forever long past the view out any of our back doors.”
After a start in B major and a mid-song suspension of the tune’s very catchy groove for a few measures, there’s a downward chromatic bass line journey, counterintuitively ending in a higher key — C# major — at 1:46.
“Captain Fantastic and the Brown Dirt Cowboy, released in 1975, was the culmination of six years’ feverish exertion (PopMatters) … (it) was the first album to ever premiere at number one on the Billboard album charts … (Elton’s) early ’70s run is almost unmatched in the history of pop music. In terms of quality and quantity, his only real peers are the likes of the Beatles, the Stones, and Bowie … The duo of John and (lyricist) Bernie Taupin produced some of the greatest songs and most memorable albums of the rock era, and yet today their prolific career is routinely dismissed, if not forgotten.
The duo’s creative marriage was defined by their marked dissimilarities. While both came from lower middle-class origins, John (born Reginald Dwight), was raised in urban London while Taupin hailed from the rural districts of Lincolnshire, in the far north of the country. Their musical interests were similarly contrasted: John had been raised on a catholic diet of mainstream pop and early rock ‘n’ roll, with a special affection for American soul music, while Taupin was a fan of American folk and country … one of the most influential synergies in the history of pop music … Elton John, the globetrotting Captain Fantastic, and Bernie Taupin, the down-home countrified Brown-Dirt Cowboy, rose out of absolute obscurity to become the most successful songwriting duo since Lennon and McCartney (if you young’uns don’t believe me, just take a gander at the historical record).”
The album is listed at #158 on Rolling Stone‘s “500 Greatest Albums of All Time.” John mentioned in an interview: “I’ve always thought (it) was probably my finest album because it wasn’t commercial in any way,” (EltonJohnItaly.com). “We did have songs such as ‘Someone Saved My Life Tonight,’ which is one of the best songs that Bernie and I have ever written together, but whether a song like that could be a single these days, since it’s [more than] six minutes long, is questionable. Captain Fantastic was written from start to finish in running order, as a kind of story about coming to terms with failure—or trying desperately not to be one. We lived that story.”
After starting in C major, “Tower of Babel” falls into a flight of Elton’s trademark inversion-driven fancy at 0:28 before landing once again on the terra firma of Eb major at 0:50. Don’t get too comfortable, though, because 1:40 brings a multi-key instrumental bridge; eventually we’re led back to C major. The shifting pattern continues from there.
“’Jungleland’ is the album-closing track of Bruce Springsteen’s career-making third LP Born to Run,” (American Songwriter). “The album features three of Springsteen’s most iconic songs: the title track, ‘Thunder Road,’ and ‘Jungleland,’ an operatic nine-and-a-half-minute ode to hope and innocence’s attempt to survive the city’s mean streets.
This was an important transition for Springsteen, who had initially built his appeal around the live show. The dramatic, rafter-raising approach was part of the design, to create something memorable but also to attract an audience united by the feelings the music evoked. ‘I had to have songs that could capture audiences who had no idea who I was,’ he wrote in his 2016 autobiography, also called Born to Run. ‘As an opening act then, I didn’t have much time to make an impact. I wrote several long, wild pieces that were basically the soul children of the lengthy prog-rock music I’d written with [early band] Steel Mill. They were arranged to leave the band and the audience exhausted and gasping for breath. Just when you thought the song was over, you’d be surprised by another section, taking the music higher. It was what I’d taken from the finales of the great soul revues. I tried to match their ferocious fervor.'”
(The American Songwriter article is expansive and informative: please read it all if you have a few minutes!)
Starting in C major with a soft-spoken piano accompaniment, the palette grows stronger gradually until Springsteen sings the title word (1:54) and the groove suddenly kicks in. At 3:54, the feel shifts completely as the key moves to Eb major under a Clarence Clemons tenor sax feature. At 7:45, the tune returns to its initial key via an unexpected mid-phrase leap. Casual fans who first tuned in during the 80s “Born in the USA” era might be surprised by the rawness and vulnerability of early-career Springsteen — particularly as seen during his live performances.
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