According to the website of R&B/jazz vibraphonist/vocalist Roy Ayers, he’s known as “the Godfather of Neo-Soul. He continues to bridge the gap between generations of music lovers. In the 60s he was an award-winning jazz vibraphonist and transformed into a popular R&B band leader in the 70s/80s.”
Although he started performing in the late 1940s and was a part of the acid jazz sound of the 1970s with his band Ubiquity, he’s been prominently sampled by Dr. Dre, J. Cole, Tyler the Creator, Jill Scott and more, “earning him a vaunted place among music producers and DJs,” (LA Times). Again from his own website: “Today, (Ayers) is an iconic figure still in great demand with music industry heavyweights, including Mary J. Blige, Erykah Badu, 50 Cent, A Tribe Called Quest, Tupac and Ice Cube. Many of Ayers’ songs have been frequently sampled and remixed by DJs worldwide.”
“Searchin'” (1976) starts in E minor but shifts to G minor for its choruses (for the first time from 0:46 – 1:25) before reverting to the original key.
Oscar Hammerstein, a mentor of Sondheim’s, “taught him that in writing lyrics ‘the whole point is to underwrite not overwrite, because music is so rich an art itself.'”
In his hands? Rich indeed. His innovative harmonies and textures aside, “Sondheim raised the status of the musical, which had often been considered comforting and unadventurous family entertainment, and used it to explore adult relationships in all their complexity,” (The Guardian). Andrew Lloyd Webber: “The musical theatre giant of our times, an inspiration not just to two but to three generations, [whose] contribution to theatre will never be equalled.”
Fellow musical theatre composer Jason Robert Brown remembers: “I was 16 years old when I played Charley in Merrily We Roll Along at my summer camp in upstate New York. I suspect that everything I know about how to craft musical theater scores comes from having spent those four weeks inside that show, getting to know it as an actor, as a pianist, and as a young writer having stumbled upon the keys to a creative life I didn’t know was possible … Aspiring to work at that level is the most delightfully impossible task I could have ever set for myself. I hope I never get all the way there,”(Buzzfeed).
Here’s the inimitable, much-missed Marin Mazzie singing “Losing My Mind” from Sondheim’s Follies (1970). This performance is just exquisite; the key change at about 3:00 is a highlight.
Clifton Davis, known for writing “Never Can Say Goodbye” for the Jackson 5, wrote “Here Comes The Sunrise” for the newly Diana Ross-less (-free?) Supremes, released on their 1971 album Touch (The Diana Ross Project). ” … a nice song, a mid-tempo pop number with just the right amount of bounce; the Billboard review of Touch called this song a ‘chart possibility,’ and it’s easy to imagine it getting some radio play …
“Touch received strong reviews from critics; Billboard raved, ‘The trio really has its act together, and are sounding more exciting than ever,’ and Rolling Stone called the album ‘an unqualified success and the final proof that the Supremes will continue without Diana Ross.’ Indeed, the trio sounds extremely confident, tackling an eclectic group of songs with great skill; lead singer (Jean) Terrell, in particular, turns in some of the finest work of her Motown career, shaking off any bit of lingering hesitancy and attacking each song with impressive versatility and vocal elasticity. Touch falls just shy of being a perfect album, but it’s close … Touch certainly deserved more success than it eventually found, and stands up today as a smart, satisfying artistic statement.”
After a start in G major, an early bridge (1:01) leads to a short instrumental interlude (1:24 – 1:29) featuring unexpected brass syncopations over a patch of sumptuous harmonies, dropping us into G# major for the balance of the tune.
Berklee describes its Indian Ensemble: “What started out as a class at Berklee College of Music in 2011 has become one of the hippest global acts to emerge from Boston … Founded by Indian Berklee alumna and faculty member Annette Philip ’09, the ensemble provides an open and inclusive creative space for musicians from all over the world to explore, study, interpret, and create music influenced by the rich and varied mosaic that is Indian music today.” The Ensemble has garnered more than 200 million YouTube views, at one point comprising over 50% of Berklee’s total. “‘Indian music wasn’t being taught in Berklee as formally as other genres, so we founded this ensemble … The idea is to nurture the next generation of musicians from India and given them a pathway into the global music scene. We have people from 44 countries in this ensemble,'” Philip explained in an India Today interview.
From the 2019 video’s description: “In December 2018, the Berklee India Exchange team got an unusual request: to reimagine and interpret a Metallica classic of our choice. The Berklee Indian Ensemble has always been known to experiment, but this one took us by surprise. The brainchild of Mirek Vana, the Metallica Project at Berklee is a Boston Conservatory at Berklee and Berklee College of Music collaboration featuring a contemporary dance reimagination of Metallica’s songs, arranged, recorded, and performed in four different musical styles, the fourth being Indian music … ‘For Whom the Bell Tolls’ felt like a natural fit, and soon, a new version came to life.”
After starting in E minor, there’s a shift to a quieter instrumental interlude in C# minor (3:40 – 3:57) before the original key returns.
“Who could ever forget that bizarre moment in 1979 when Ethel Merman, the first lady of American musical theater, became the ‘first lady’ of disco with the release of her notorious camp-classic disco album on A&M Records?” asks Billboard.“One is tempted to ask why, but it was the ’70s and disco was a hot commodity, so why not? The concept was so absurd that it almost bordered on brilliant … Along with other titanic musical oddities like William Shatner Sings, Tammy Faye Bakker’s “Ballad of Jim and Tammy,” Goldie Hawn’s Goldie, and Jackie Gleason Presents Aphrodisia, The Ethel Merman Disco Album is one of those priceless anomalies in popular music that’s too surreal to ignore.”
Sheet music of the original composition by Irving Berlin sold over a million copies upon its release in 1911. Merman took the original and ran with it, jumping on the caboose of the disco train for this track (and the entire album). The Merman biography Brass Diva states that she loved the beat of disco, though she didn’t understand the words!
Starting with a short nod to authentic ragtime during the intro, the tune then transitions to a calcified disco groove for the duration. Starting in Bb, there’s a transition at 1:15 to B and again at 2:29 to C (with manic backing vocals and cutting-edge electronic drum fills to boot!)
Many thanks to uber-regular contributor JB for this submission! For anyone who was alive — and less than retirement age — in mid-1970s America, “Carry On Wayward Son” was nothing less than inescapable.
“I’ve always thought Kansas was an interesting hybrid of two different genres: Prog vs. ‘trad’ rock … I remember hearing a surprising amount of Kansas at frat parties during college, mixed in with the Stones and Lynyrd Skynyrd — you’d never hear Genesis or Gentle Giant in a frat basement, but there was Kansas, WAY more rhythmically and harmonically complex than the other hard rock songs … a sheep in wolf’s clothing, as it were.”
LouderSound reports that “the track peaked at #11 in the US (1976), helping to propel parent album Leftoverture to #5 in the Billboard Hot 100 … Four decades on, it’s become more even famous than the band that recorded it, its meaning almost lost to ubiquity. It was the second most played track on US classic rock radio in 1995, topping the same chart in 1997, and at the last count, having appeared in TV comedy shows and films that include South Park and Anchorman: The Legend Of Ron Burgundy, has logged up more than two million downloads during the digital era.”
After the tune begins in A minor, 4:14 brings a shift to E minor.
“Why” is from the 1990 musical Tick, Tick…Boom! by Jonathan Larson.Larson wrote Tick, Tick as he was approaching age 30 and questioning whether he should continue pursuing a career in the theater after struggling for years to get his work recognized and produced. The show is autobiographical, and of course Larson would finally find success with his acclaimed, Tony-winning 1996 musical Rent, which opened in 1996. Unfortunately Larson did not live to experience the fame that he had so long sought, as he passed away suddenly at age 35 from an aortic dissection the night of Rent’s first Off-Broadway performance.
“Why” comes near the end of the show; it depicts Jon remembering how and why he fell in love with theater in the first place, and what amount of sacrifice is required for sustaining a career in the arts. He ultimately decides he can’t picture himself doing anything else. The track modulates at 3:39.
A new film adaptation of Tick, Tick…Boom!, starring Andrew Garfield and directed by Lin-Manuel Miranda, premieres on Netflix this Friday.
On their album An Evening with Silk Sonic, released today: “Working together as Silk Sonic, Bruno Mars and Anderson .Paak revisit that bygone analog era (the 70s) in a hybrid of homage, parody, throwback and meticulous reverse engineering, tossing in some cheerfully knowing anachronisms,” (New York Times). “They flaunt skill, effort and scholarship, like teacher’s pets winning a science-fair prize; they also sound like they’re having a great time.”
Mars and .Paak inhabit different regions of the R&B/Soul/Pop/HipHop vortex, but the overlapping section of the resulting venn diagram is intriguing — and apparently synergystic. The NYTimes continues: “Silk Sonic comes across as a continuation for Mars and a playfully affectionate tangent for Paak. Mars is a multi-instrumentalist with a strong retro streak … Paak’s catalog has delved into more complicated matters. On his albums, named after places where he has lived, he switches between singing and rapping, and his lyrics take on contemporary conditions; he’s also a musician steeped in live-band soul and R&B, and a hard-hitting drummer … On An Evening With Silk Sonic, Paak’s specificity merges with Mars’s pop generalities, while both of them double down on craftsmanship and cleverness.” With Parliament Funkadelic’s bassist Bootsy Collins serving as something of an intermittent master of ceremonies, the album “revives the sound of 1970s groups like Earth, Wind & Fire, the Spinners, the Manhattans, the Chi-Lites and the Delfonics … a Fabergé egg of an album: a lavish, impeccable bauble, a purely ornamental not-quite-period piece. Mars and Paak don’t pretend to be making any grand statement, but there’s delight in every detail.”
After a short intro peppered with compound chords, the tune settles in somewhere in the E major/E Lydian neighborhood. That duality is spelled out multiple times in the chorus (the first time at 0:44):
F#/G# — A/B — Emaj7
The use of densely-packed chromatic bass motion combined with compound chords as connective tissue (1:44 and elsewhere) keeps us happily wondering where we might touch down next. At 3:16, an extended outro leaves earth’s atmosphere entirely as the groove falls away. We continue to ascend a ladder of brief modulations (3:54), further and further into an ecstatic stratosphere — but not without a knowing and neighborly wave from Bootsy.
Featured on the 2016 album 24K Magic, “Versace on the Floor” is an homage to the slow jams of the 1990s, and gives singer Bruno Mars a chance to show off his sentimental side.
In an interview with Rolling Stone, Mars claimed the song through several different iterations before arriving at the final version. “At a certain point, I needed to stop telling you we’re gonna get down, and just get down,” Mars said of his inspiration for the hook.
The track charted moderately well, peaking at #33 on the Billboard Top 100 in the US. A music video, starring American actress and singer Zendaya, and a popular remix produced by French DJ David Guetta, were both released in 2017.
The tune begins in D major and modulates up to Eb for the final chorus at 3:19.
“Shania Twain has been in our lives seemingly forever,” (WideOpenCountry). “So long that it’s hard to even imagine that she has a beginning. Shania just… is. Well, we all start somewhere and country music’s favorite Canadian is no different. Her first major hit, “Whose Bed Have Your Boots Been Under,” from her second studio album The Woman in Me, reached No. 11 on the Billboard country music charts in 1995 and vaulted Shania into stardom. Twain’s first single to get recognition was actually so popular it won Song of the Year at the Canadian Country Music Awards.”
Shania co-wrote the song with then-husband, songwriter/producer Robert John “Mutt” Lange. Lange, who has produced AC/DC, Def Leppard, The Boomtown Rats, Foreigner, Michael Bolton, The Cars, Bryan Adams, Huey Lewis and the News, Billy Ocean, Celine Dion, Britney Spears, The Corrs, Maroon 5, Lady Gaga, Nickelback, and Muse, later produced Twain’s subsequent album Come On Over. According to the RIAA, the album became the best-selling country music album ever released and the best-selling studio album ever released by a female artist in any genre
After an instrumental break, a now-familiar chorus starts at 3:05 — but doesn’t get a chance to complete itself before 3:15 brings a second start for the chorus, this time a full step higher. Many thanks to Ziyad for another great contribution!
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