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What’s in a Song: Body and Soul (2)
[Image: "Body and Soul's" opening measures, highlighting the dotted eighth rest] From the wonderful Jazz Standards site’s musicological writeup: Because of its complex chord progressions, “Body and Soul” remains a favorite of jazz musicians. The unusual changes in key and tempo are also highly attractive and provide a large degree of improvisational freedom. “Unusual changes in [...]
What’s in a Song: Body and Soul (1)
It starts in silence. By the end, the singer has thrown him- or herself melodramatically, almost operatically on the mercy of a lost love. It’s drenched in self-pity, but was written for and first performed by a woman once dubbed “Hollywood’s first maneater.” One of its most famous covers includes no vocal at all, and [...]
What’s in a Song/Midweek Music Break: “Blue Skies”
Few people remember the short-lived 1926 musical Betsy anymore, although its music and lyrics came from powerhouse songwriting duo Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart. There’s a reason few people remember it: Rodgers and Hart had written nothing memorable for it. (A Hart-related site calls it “a beautifully mounted mess, top-heavy with ensemble numbers in the [...]
What’s in a Song: Smoke Gets in Your Eyes (2)
[Another entry in an occasional series about American songs with long histories. This one follows Part 1, about the history of the composition of "Smoke Gets in Your Eyes." You can read Part 1, posted last week, here.] [Video clip above assembled from the first film version of Roberta (1935); Irene Dunne sings it here. [...]
What’s In a Song: Smoke Gets in Your Eyes (1)
[One of a continuing series of posts on American popular songs with long histories. As is usually the case, this one on the history of "Smoke Gets in Your Eyes" will be was followed in a couple days by Part 2, about some of the cover versions.] Where Were You in ’62? So asked one [...]
What’s in a Song: Simple Gifts (2)
[Above: portion of letter from Aaron Copland to Harold Spivacke, Chief of the Music Division at the Library of Congress. Original in the Library of Congress's Aaron Copland Collection.] [Below, click Play button to begin Appalachian Spring, the seventh section. While audio is playing, volume control appears at left -- a row of little vertical [...]
What’s in a Song: Simple Gifts (1)
The great tangled rope of popular music (American and otherwise) includes so many disparate strands that to speak of it as a single “thing” invites ridicule: show tunes and jazz, bluegrass and ragtime, country, folk, rock, metal, rap, and hip-hop… And then what about “easy listening”? and popular classical music, like Gershwin’s and Copland’s? New [...]
What’s in a Song: Fever (2)
[This is the second of two posts about the popular song "Fever." Part 1 was a couple days ago, here.] As I mentioned in Part 1 of this “Fever” mini-series, the song’s lyrics and pulsing rhythm (and reputation!) seem to lead immature and/or lazy performers down sexual pathways they haven’t really earned the privilege of [...]
What’s in a Song: Fever (1)
[This is another in an occasional series on popular songs with appeal across the generations. This post will be broken into two parts; Part 2 will appear in a few days is here.] As a kid, I once read a “funny” comic-book episode in which aliens landed in mid-20th-century America and reported back to their [...]
What’s in a Song: Cry Me a River (2)
[This is Part 2 of a two-part series about the song "Cry Me a River," made popular, originally, in a recording released in 1955. Part 1, about the song's history, appeared a few days ago. As I indicated there, if you hope to learn anything from this about the Justin Timberlake song of the same [...]
