USA – Page 99

Chick Corea + Gary Burton | Crystal Silence

Longtime collaborators Chick Corea and Gary Burton, pianist and vibraphonist respectively, released their jazz duo album Crystal Silence in 1972. (A follow-up album, New Crystal Silence, was released in 2008.) Allmusic called the record “a sublime indication of what two master improvisers can do given quality raw material… Improvised music is rarely this coherent and melodic.”

Corea, a titanic pianist in the history of jazz music, is known for helping introduce the jazz fusion genre as a member of Miles Davis’s band in the 1960s. A 60-time Grammy nominated performer and 23-time winner, the 79 year old Corea passed away on February 11, 2021 from a rare form of cancer.

While this performance by Corea and Burton doesn’t directly modulate, the interplay and improvisation between the two push at the boundaries of the A minor tonality throughout, reflecting the innovative spirit Corea championed throughout his career.

RaeLynn | Lonely Call

“Lonely Call” is featured on WildHorse, the 2017 debut album of American country singer/songwriter RaeLynn. The song depicts RaeLynn’s breakup with boyfriend Josh when she was 18 (they would subsequently get back together and eventually get married.) “‘Lonely Call’ is a confessional,” RaeLynn said in an interview with Rolling Stone. “My WildHorse record is like my diary. It’s so funny to listen back because I was so sad when we broke up, when I hear those lyrics I’m like, ‘That’s exactly how it felt, that’s exactly how it was.’”

Writing for the radio network Taste of Country, critic Sterling Whitaker described the track as “an amalgam of sweet pop-country melodicism and some surprisingly traditional instruments, with a reverb-drenched banjo and simple acoustic guitars framing the gentle, moody verse before stacked guitars lift the song up into a sweeping chorus. RaeLynn’s uniquely smoky vocal tone is perfectly suited to the aching, regretful subject matter that she’s delivering, and the result is a track that is so universally identifiable that it could very well carry her career to new heights at country radio.”

Key change at 2:54.

Hall + Oates | I Ain’t Gonna Take It This Time

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.

Neil Young | Winterlong

To quote novelist Anne Lamott: “If you don’t die of thirst, there are blessings in the desert. You can be pulled into limitlessness, which we all yearn for, or you can do the beauty of minutiae, the scrimshaw of tiny and precise. The sky is your ocean, and the crystal silence will uplift you like great gospel music, or Neil Young.”

Young, the longtime folk/rock sage and a resident of LA’s storied Laurel Canyon during its heyday as a music nexus, has penned a dozen or more well-known hits. But “Winterlong” was a concert-only rarity for the Canadian-born artist — until the track inexplicably showed up on a compilation album. Songfacts reports: “One of Neil Young’s rarities, ‘Winterlong’ finds him yearning and waiting, possibly for a woman, but that’s no sure thing. All we know is, he’s looking to find his way, and not sure how to get there. The song contains one of the more evocative lines in Young’s catalog: ‘It’s all illusion anyway.’ Fans recall hearing Young perform this song as early as 1970. It’s likely he recorded it in 1974 during the session for his album On The Beach, but ‘Winterlong’ wasn’t released until 1977, which it appeared on the Decade collection.”

Starting in C major, the chorus starts squarely in C but ends in D major at 1:18. At 1:38, C major returns. 2:21 – 2:40 brings another D major patch before the tune ends in C major.

The Police | Man In a Suitcase

After the success of its second album, UK/US-hybrid rock/pop/reggae trio The Police were under orders from their record label to write a hit album (Zenyatta Mondatta). This focus was quite a change from the band’s earlier goals as they were defining their sound — but also different from its later days of almost total artistic freedom as a supergroup.

In a 1982 interview with Creem excerpted on the band’s website, drummer Stewart Copeland recalls the challenges inherent in making the 1980 album: “‘We’ve got to do an album in four weeks we know we can do it, we’ve done it before. But this time it’s going to go straight to number one.’ Whilst we were in the studio, our sales figures were being discussed by people from the record company – and we hadn’t even got the thing on tape, let alone on vinyl. We were very acutely aware, that we were Creating A Product For The Market-place. The market-place was there in the studio with us. It made it a very commercial album, a very slick, clean album that showed we can do that … It’s very difficult to make an album that’s tailor-made to go straight to the top of the charts.”

The frenetic album track “Man in a Suitcase” starts in F major, but after the bridge (1:14 – 1:28) there’s a jump to G major. Many thanks to our frequent contributor JB for this submission!

for Mark

Bill Charlap | It’s Love

“It’s Love” is from the 1953 Broadway musical Wonderful Town, featuring a score by Leonard Bernstein and lyricists Betty Comden and Adolph Green. The tune, a popular call for jazz combos, is included on jazz pianist Bill Charlap‘s 2003 album Somewhere: The Music of Leonard Bernstein. Charlap is joined on the record by bassist Peter Washington and drummer Kenny Washington. The track starts in D, and following a drum solo, modulates to Gb at 4:46.

Jonatha Brooke | Back in the Circus

A singer/songwriter since the early 90s, Jonatha Brooke has a sound which the San Francisco Chronicle describes as “catchy original melodies and thorny lyrics.” She rode the tectonic shifts of that era’s music business: “I was in the middle of a national tour when (the record label) MCA dropped me. One second you’re a princess on the throne, and the next week no one will return your phone calls.”

AllMusic reviews Brooke’s 2004 release, Back in the Circus: “(Brooke’s) perseverance has paid off. Like Aimee Mann, she’s maneuvered a broken staircase of fluctuating acceptance, band breakups, and record label shakeups with nimble feet and a consistent songwriting vision. Now, she’s arrived on the top floor landing with Back in the Circus, a typically audacious effort that showcases her singing and writing even as it flirts with new musical directions … The title track is an unbalanced and dizzying cocktail, with accordion, keys, guitar, and laptops all joining in the fray. ‘Back in the circus / But at least I know the routine / Got back-to-back matinees / Me and the drag queens.’ Is the roller coaster ride a reference to her career, or life in general?”

The tune’s spare accompaniment could indeed be mistaken for a circus pit band, keeping the lyric front and center. The Bb minor verse gives way to Ab minor on the chorus (initially at 1:03).

Make Our Garden Grow (from “Candide”)

“Make Our Garden Grow” is the final number in Leonard Bernstein’s 1956 operetta Candide, based on Voltaire’s 1759 novella. This virtual performance was coordinated and produced by Jeremy Robin Lyons. “During this time of global trauma, it is increasingly clear that we are all in this together,” he said. “In the sense of our collective responsibilities for taking care of each other through public health as well as economically, for taking care of the planet we share (which happens to be the only one we have!), and for pulling together with a spirit of hope, motivation, and cooperation while working towards a brighter future. I think we are also experiencing the need for art in the face of the most difficult times, and the importance of community in the face of isolation. So I felt an impetus to reach out to friends and strangers alike through the internet, bringing people together through music and producing a mass collaboration with as much heart as possible.”

Key changes at 0:22, 1:35, and 2:42

New York Rock + Soul Revue | Lonely Teardrops

“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.

Jackie Wilson’s original:

Bob Kelly | I Was Young

“I Was Young” is the opening track on composer/pianist Bob Kelly‘s debut EP Open Road, released earlier this month. Kelly’s website notes that he is ” … a NYC-based pianist, composer, and music director. His work as a music director, pianist, and orchestrator/arranger for musical theatre includes productions and educational programs throughout NYC and across the country.”

Featuring vocalists Andrew Way and Daniel Youngelman, the song modulates at 2:23.