“Can’t Live Without You” by Connie Laverne was originally released as white label DJ copy on the New York record label GSF shortly before the label folded in 1974,” reports Sam Beaubien of NPR affiliate WDET’s program CultureShift. “This record is rarely seen and is highly coveted … (it became) popular through modern DJs playing this song in their sets, specifically in the UK. Since then, the track has been remastered and released for the Club Classics album celebrating 50 years of UK’s Northern Soul scene.
Information on the vocalist Connie Laverne is extremely hard to find. GrooveCollector states that the single was produced by George Kerr. Phyllis Hyman later recorded (but didn’t release) a version of the tune. From The Guardian’s overview of the genre, which is said to have been the UK’s answer to Motown: “One of the many beauties of Northern Soul is its sheer unknowability. It’s a scene that has always thrived on the rare, the obscure, and the undiscovered. Since it first emerged in the dance halls of northern England in the late 60s, it has existed in direct opposition to the very concept of greatest hits … There is no carved-in-stone canon – everyone’s journey through it is unique. Northern Soul is a culture based on chance finds, crate-digging and word-of-mouth recommendations.”
1:12 brings a half-step upward modulation; at 1:43, we seem to be headed for another, but we fall back into the original key instead! Many thanks to our prolific contributor JB!
Vocalist Gladys Knight, according to IMDB, won the Ted Mack & the Original Amateur Hour talent show (1948) at age of seven. She later built a lasting career with her longtime backup singers/dancers, “The Pips,” comprised of her brother and two of her cousins. Perhaps best known for the tracks “Midnight Train to Georgia (1973) and 1985’s “That’s What Friends Are For,” Knight was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1996. She’s won seven Grammy Awards out of her total of 22 nominations.
All of the Pips have now retired. But The Guardian reviewed one of Knight’s 2019 concerts, remarking on her extraordinary energy and enduring appeal: “Uplifting anthems came laden with poignant nostalgia on a night where the vivacious veteran showed no sign of stopping … an astonishing 58 years after ‘Every Beat of My Heart’ hit the US charts … she is still clearly having fun, telling her euphoric audience: ‘We’ve been hanging out for, errrr … many, many years’ to ripples of laughter. Moments later, she quips, ‘I feel it coming on. Be careful not to hurt yourself.’”
“Best Thing That Ever Happened to Me,” written by Jim Weatherly, was released during the very heart of Knight’s prominence (1974); it became a huge hit in the US (#3, Pop; #10, Adult Contemporary; #1, R&B) and also went into the top ten in the UK and Canada. Knight sails a high tonic note from the new key over the transition into the modulation at 1:43 — along with her warm and slightly raspy tone, a true trademark.
AfroPunkpraises Stevie Wonder’s “Summer Soft” from his legendary 1976 album Songs In the Key of Life: ‘“You’ve been fooled by April, and he’s gone. Winter is gone,’ sings Stevie Wonder atop spiraling instruments. If you could create a song that encompasses the calm excitement of watching nature at the park — or on Netflix — that song would be Stevie Wonder’s ‘Summer Soft.’ It’s a cathartic epic about life and loss, using the changing seasons as a metaphorical backdrop, with Wonder’s voice sounding more pained with every passing verse, but … the production blooms.”
The track was one of so many singularly strong tunes on this celebrated album. From Pitchfork‘s review: “Songs in the Key of Life was the culmination of a historic period of creativity for Stevie Wonder. Its ambition and scope were unprecedented, and he never approached its caliber or impact again. Stevie Wonder’s legacy ranks among the most powerful in pop music, though his story remains elusive. His songwriting and his voice echo through virtually all R&B-related sounds that have followed him … yet there is no major biography, no documentary, nothing that presents the full sweep of the most dominant and defining artist of the 1970s. And make no mistake—it was an era of superstar acts and chart-busting albums, but no one was as universally loved, respected, and honored as he was.”
After the tune starts in F# major, the first chorus (1:02) shifts to B minor, but then drifts back to the initial key for the next verse. At 2:17, a half-step modulation hits not at the start of a new section, but rather on the last note of the pre-chorus, transitioning to B minor — a pattern that’s repeated. Thereafter, the lid blows off as the tune winds up more and more, though it’s difficult to pinpoint a specific apogee of the energy. At 3:32, the tonality of the final chorus stabilizes, leading us to an instrumental outro; there’s a fade in volume (in high 1970s fashion), but no lag in energy.
“Groovin'” was written and first released in 1967 by the American rock band The Rascals (formerly known as The Young Rascals.) Its Afro-Cuban groove and relaxed vibe quickly led to the tune becoming one of the band’s signature songs, and it has since been covered by numerous other artists. This performance, by the British/Irish boy band The Overtones, was featured on the 2012 album Higher. Key change at 2:16.
“There isn’t a lot in contemporary music that Labrinth can’t do,” declares AllMusic. “The London-based artist is a singer, rapper, multi-instrumentalist, songwriter, and producer who has enjoyed success as a solo artist while also working alongside such stars as the Weeknd, Ed Sheeran, and Sia. Although he has released only two solo albums,Electronic Earth (2012) and Imagination & the Misfit Kid (2019), he has regularly appeared near or at the top of the U.K. singles chart since the dawn of the 2010s.”
In 2014’s “Jealous,” C major is challenged by its relative minor over the first verses and choruses, but there’s a huge shift at the bridge (3:20) as the protagonist’s hopelessness becomes ever more clear. Focusing on that bridge, pianist / composer / music educator Mark Shilansky writes:
“The Gbo (3:20) sounds like a pivot chord. It’s like a #VIo chord in A minor, but then it vacillates back and forth with F7b9 and Gbo again, so it sounds like it’s V7/V in the key of Eb, the V of Bb.” Paraphrasing a comment from one of his Berklee faculty colleagues: “a dim7 chord can resolve four different ways; it’s usually best analyzed in relation to the chord it resolves to.”
Mark continues: “Then it kind of abandons function and jumps to Ab (3:30), the IV in the key of Eb. There is some voice leading to which you could attribute this progression: A moving to Ab; the C and Eb staying the same; the Gb moving to G (even though some of this movement is octave-displaced). And then he’s pretty firmly in Eb for the rest of the tune. It’s a pretty risky modulation and it barely works, but if it does I think it’s because of the voice-leading. I’ve never seen a modulation like it. I would have resolved the Gbo7 to something else before I tiptoed into Eb. But maybe because it’s so ambiguous, it forms prosody with the desperation of the lyrics — like the narrator himself is lost.”
Hall and Oates came into being during the height of the Philly Soul sound. “Daryl Hall had become friends with The Temptations as they rose to stardom from the streets of Philadelphia,” reports SoulCountry. “‘They were an outrageous influence on me,’ Hall said. He joined them on the road some, ‘trying to be their assistant,’ picking up their suits at the cleaners and grabbing their coffee.
‘After the show, they would just go and sing gospel songs and stuff,’ Hall said. ‘I felt that was something I belonged doing. It was really a lot of interracial interaction, and it’s why I sing the kind of music that I sing,’ he continued. ‘There’s been a lot of misunderstanding over the years by people who can’t even imagine that.'”
The 1990 power ballad “I Ain’t Gonna Take It This Time,” like so much of the band’s output, straddles the lines among rock, pop, and soul. The tune starts in D minor; at 1:37, a multi-section bridge builds tension until 2:37, which brings a mammoth shift to F# major.
“At a time when rock concerts are putting an increasing emphasis on spectacle and choreography, it is refreshing to attend a show at which genuine interplay among musicians is the main attraction,” notes a New York Times review of a 1990 concert by the New York Rock & Soul Revue. “… Seasoned pop veterans working together in an unusually flexible and informal setting … a loosely-structured round-robin format.” According to AllMusic, the concert lineup included the organizer of the short series of shows, Steely Dan’s Donald Fagen, as well as Phoebe Snow, Charles Brown, Michael McDonald, Eddie and David Brigati (the Rascals), and Boz Scaggs. In the liner notes, Fagen called the selected tunes “durable music.”
Songfacts reports that “Lonely Teardrops,” made famous in 1959 by Jackie Wilson, was “written by Tyran Carlo (the pen name of Wilson’s cousin Roquel Davis) and a pre-Motown Berry Gordy Jr., who co-wrote eight other songs for Wilson. This song gave Gordy him the confidence to rent a building in Detroit and start the Tamla label, which would become Motown.” The tune was a #1 R&B hit, also reaching top 10 on the Pop charts.
Unlike the single-key original, the NYR+SR version has a quick key-of-the-moment lift from 2:19 to 2:26, but it’s a fake out that returns us to the original key almost immediately; 2:59 brings a real key change.
The first of three singles released from the 1981 album Breakin’ Away, “We’re In This Love Together” is one of Al Jarreau‘s most successful tunes. It reached the #15 spot on the Billboard Hot 100, and the #6 and #1 spots on the Adult Contemporary charts in the US and Canada respectively. Key change at 2:04.
Hailed by Rolling Stone as one of the 500 greatest songs of all time, Stevie Wonder‘s “You Are The Sunshine Of My Life” was featured on his 1972 album Talking Book. The track was awarded Best Male Pop Vocal Performance at the Grammy’s, and nominated for both Record and Song of the Year; it also was Wonder’s third song to hit the #1 spot on the Billboard Hot 100 chart. Key change at 2:09.
The Arts Fuse describes The Bad Pilot, the 2019 album by John Powhida International Airport (winners of the 2011 Rock & Roll Rumble and multiple Boston Music Award nominees), as “clearly rooted in the 1970s — but that decade was nothing if not kaleidoscopic … the sound and feel of everything from Philly soul to new wave, hard rock, funk, and progressive rock.” JPIA’s recent release “Michael 3 O’Clock” continues that trend, incorporating kaleidoscopic effects on the video in addition to the melange of styles on the track.
Powhida relates some of the tune’s backstory: “I saw Michael Quercio and the 3 O’Clock Band open for REM. A direct quote from him to a heckler: ‘REM will be out in a second. Suck on this, honey.’ Trailblazers of the Paisley Underground scene with The Bangles and others … Prince was a fan and held his hand in a meeting, then signed them to Paisley Park.” AllMusic details that The 3 O’Clock “incorporated the chiming guitars of the Byrds and the Beatles into their pop songs with a psychedelic bent, and the clothes to match.” While this track centers the sheen of Philly Soul, it’s appropriately completed by a gilded paisley frame, including the filigree of Peter Moore’s artful backup vocal and string arrangement.
The ballads of the Philly Soul canon certainly never shied away from melancholy. Instead, they stared the emotion down bravely while featuring ecstatically gorgeous arrangements and harmonies — providing incentive for the listener to stick around instead of running back to bubble-gum pop. Meanwhile, Powhida has the guts to stare down his influences and a potentially pivotal missed connection while taking us along for the ride. A capsule review on Powhida’s Bandcamp page lauds the tune’s mix of “admiration, resentment, and a little heartbreak” — not bad for a four-minute narrative.
After the tune opens with a guitar hook over a mysterious suspended chord, the groove starts the track in earnest at 0:09 in an uncomplicated A major. The verse then shifts to a second section in C major at 0:37. The chorus, in E minor, admittedly owes a huge melodic debt to the chorus of The Stylistics’ “You Are Everything,” but mixes in plenty of Powhida’s trademark wit — so clever that Quercio reportedly couldn’t stay mad for long, even after being artfully skewered:
SuperCaliforniaFragileDiva what goes on inside your head? / PsychoRelicDandyLiar Michael 3 o’Clock it’s time for bed
Verse 2 and Chorus 2 continue the pattern, followed by a beautifully contrasting bridge, starting with a surprising palate-cleansing sidebar (C major) at 1:56, then a jump to C# minor at 1:59. At 2:44, JPo delivers one final double-sided homage before his pitch glissandos downward like an anchor falling to the bottom of a pond — making the modulation upward to E minor for the final wall-of-sound choruses all the more massive. After a minor-key echo of The Beatles’ “All You Need Is Love” at the start of the outro, we somehow end this unlikely travelogue where we began, shifting back to A major and a reprise of the opening hook at 3:51.
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