American singer Andy Williams made Leroy Anderson’s 1948 standard “Sleigh Ride” the lead track of his 1965 album Merry Christmas. According to Anderson biographer Steven Metcalf, ‘Sleigh Ride’… has been performed and recorded by a wider array of musical artists than any other piece in the history of Western music.” This is our first time featuring the tune on MotD.
Williams’ cover begins in Eb and quickly modulates up to E at 0:18. This is followed by series of successive half-step modulations at 0:45, 0:53, 1:39, and 1:48.
Reminiscent of the classic “Baby, It’s Cold Outside” but leaning more towards a PG-13 rating, “The Naughty List” was written by country singer/songwriter Phil Vassar and released as a single with Vassar and former American Idol contestant Kellie Pickler.
It begins in A and modulates up half step to Bb at 1:57.
“Manhattan in December” is featured on Merry Christmas, Darling, Tony-winning actress Stephanie J. Block’s debut holiday album released earlier this year. The record also features tracks with Block’s husband and daughter.
The jazzy number starts out in F and shifts up a half step to Gb at 3:08.
“Christmas Spirit” is featured on Richard Marx’s eponymous 2012 holiday album. Marx co-wrote the song with Fee Waybill, the former lead singer of The Tubes and frequent collaborator with Marx.
The track begins in G and modulates down to E for the first chorus at 0:49. It returns to G for the verse at 1:25 and again moves to E for the chorus at 1:54. A final modulation up a step to F# occurs at 2:56.
“In the 1970s in Minneapolis, bass player Jimmy ‘Flim’ Johnson hooked up with a couple of other studio musicians named Billy Barber (piano) and Bill Berg (drums), and created a jazz group they whimsically called Flim & The BBs. (Billy Barber, Bill Berg – BBs – OK, you got it),” (VinylDiscovery). “Woodwind/reed player Dick Oatts was an integral part of the group as well, but his name wasn’t part of the group’s name because (I’m guessing) Flim & the BB’s and Oatts just didn’t have the right ring to it.
Their music is best described as fusion or contemporary jazz, which would normally make me run for the hills. But these guys are different: They are inventive, technically superb, and seem to always inject a touch of whimsy into their playing. As one reviewer put it, ‘They’re playing is the perfect combination of tight and loose.’ The whimsy shows up in the band’s name of course, but also in their album titles and artwork.”
Featuring a supple fretless bass melody at its start, “New Snow” (from 1992’s This is a Recording), with guest vocalist Michael Ruff, starts in Ab major. At 2:27, a downward modulation to F major is in effect for an instrumental bridge until 2:57, where the tune reverts up to Ab.
“Stevie Wonder is a soul music giant, a beloved American icon, and an indisputable genius of popular music,” (AllMusic). “The musician’s heightened awareness of sound — a consequence of his blindness — has helped him create vibrant music teeming with joyous positivity, even when he’s written about heartbreak and addressed issues of race, spirituality, and society in general. Wonder’s recordings are a richly eclectic and singular brew of soul, funk, rock & roll, Broadway/Tin Pan Alley-style pop, jazz, reggae, and African elements. Combined with his elastic voice, peerless melodic facility, gift for complex arrangements, and taste for lovely ballads, his broad appeal over the decades has been unmatched.”
The 1967 album I Was Made to Love Her “was rushed out to capitalize on the success of the title song, which was Wonder’s biggest pop hit since ‘Fingertips, Pt. 2,’ and would not be bettered until ‘Superstition’ in 1972 … There are several contributions from the Wonder team at Motown, covers of other Motown hits, and stabs at sounding like Ray Charles, James Brown, and Otis Redding. At 17, Wonder was becoming both a remarkable mimic, and an original talent on his own.”
Between the prominent piano fills, the layers of female backup singers, and Stevie’s interpretation on lead vocal, it certainly seems that this was the Ray Charles section of the album! At 1:24, at just about the tune’s half-point, a half-step key change hits, followed by another at 1:53.
Dubbed by Ryan Scott Oliver as “one of the most gifted up-and-coming composer-lyricists I know,” Ethan Carlson’s music has been performed at iconic NYC venues such as Joe’s Pub, 54 Below, and Don’t Tell Mama. “Jericho” is part of Carlson’s show Her Sound, which was performed at the Public Theater last year, and is sung here by cast member Kerstin Anderson. The song begins in Db and modulates up to Eb at 4:12.
“In the ‘20s and ‘30s Kansas City was a hotbed of jazz, and pianist/bandleader Bennie Moten was at the heart of it,” (JazzStandards.com). “The recordings with his Kansas City Orchestra from 1923 to 1935 document the evolution of his style as he moved from ragtime to jazz in the mid-to late ‘20s, establishing what came to be known as the ‘Kansas City style.’ He began raiding another established K.C. band, Walter Page’s Blue Devils. By the end of the decade Count Basie, Jimmy Rushing, Hot Lips Page, Eddie Durham and Ben Webster had left the Blue Devils to join Moten. When Moten died suddenly in 1935, Basie took over leadership and the group eventually developed into the Count Basie Orchestra.
In A New History of Jazz, Alyn Shipton describes the development of Moten’s style. ‘Whereas his first discs show a rhythmic stiffness and a debt to ragtime, despite a reliance on the harmonic structure of the blues, he went on to define the loose, blues-influenced style, with a four-bar pulse, which became the predominant local jazz genre, and underpinned the work of later Kansas City bands like those of Count Basie and Jay McShann.’”
Many covers of 1932’s “Moten Swing” exist, but the standard is strongly associated with Basie. After a opening section in Ab major where the piano hearkens back to the light touch that was Basie’s unmistakeable trademark, 1:38 brings an explosive, syncopated modulation to C major. At 1:53, we’ve returned to Ab major for the final A section.
“Of all the Gary Lewis and the Playboys’ sixties hits, their first, ‘This Diamond Ring,’ was the biggest,” (Forbes). “It took just six weeks to climb to #1 on the U.S. Billboard 100 chart, on February 20, 1965, knocking The Beatles’ ‘Eight Days A Week’ from the top spot. The tune has since stood the test of time: It is still a staple on classic rock radio stations.”
Lewis remembers how the tune came to be the foundation of his career: “‘We were 19 years old, in college, our first or second year. The band played sorority and fraternity parties for 40 bucks a night. We auditioned at Disneyland, and got a job there in the summer of ’64. Our producer, Snuffy Garrett, was out at the park with his family. He was head of A&R at Liberty Records. After our show, he came backstage to talk about recording. He had (the) song … and asked us to come over to Liberty to tell him what we thought of it. I said sure, but I would have said I liked it no matter what it was. It just happened to be ‘Diamond Ring,’ and we cut it. It stunned the hell out of us … We ended up with seven top-10s in a row. We and The Beach Boys were the only American groups able to stay on the charts during the whole British Invasion.'”
After a start in C minor, the chorus shifts to F# major at 0:22, then pivots up a half-step to the dominant of the original C minor (0:40) and back to the original C minor (0:44). The pattern holds throughout. Quite an upbeat tune in comparison to the sad lyrics! Many thanks to our second-time contributor Dave Mandl for this submission.
Grammy-winning multi-instrumentalist Paul McCandless plays oboe on this arrangement of the Christian hymn “We Gather Together,” originally written in 1597 and often associated with Thanksgiving Day in the United States. The track is the first cut on the 1998 Windham Hill collection Thanksgiving. It begins in G, and modulates up to A at 2:18.
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