Recognized as the most played record by British broadcasting of the past 70 years, more than 1,000 cover versions have been recorded by other artists. And as one might imagine it all began at a party when non-musician lyricist, Keith Reid overheard someone say to a rather inebriated woman, “you’ve turned a whiter shade of pale.”
When it’s not alluding to Chaucer’s story of courtly love in “The Miller’s Tale” the song blends Reid’s intimations of drunken seduction with vocalist and keyboardist, Gary Brooker’s Bach-inspired melody. Organist Matthew Fisher also received belated credit and it’s interesting to note that “A Whiter Shade of Pale” doesn’t actually crib from Bach’s “Air on the G String” as much as it does Percy Sledge’s “When a Man Loves a Woman”.
Formed in Southend-on-Sea in 1967, Procol Harum (not Harem) got its name from a friend’s Burmese cat, which itself got the name from its owner’s poor Latin translation of “beyond these things.” Perhaps the first group to incorporate a lyricist as a full member of the band (King Crimson later did the same), “Whiter Shade of Pale” was Procol Harum’s debut release, reaching Number One in the UK and Number Five in the US during that groovy Summer of Love.
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They all knew one another as students at Kent State University and were decidedly affected by the events of that sad, sad day in 1970. But while Mark Mothersbaugh and Gerald Casale took a snarky, industrial route to form Devo (Casale was standing mere yards away from two friends when they were killed), Chrissie Hynde saved her shekels and moved to England.
Born in Akron in 1951, Hynde, who had studied art in college tried writing for a while but eventually found herself working in Malcolm McLaren’s London clothing store. It was there that she met teenaged Sid Vicious and tried to convince him to marry her so that she could claim permanent residency.
No luck with that and after time spent in Paris and Cleveland (such a juxtaposition) Hynde managed to make her way back to London where she played for early versions of The Clash and The Damned before finally forming a group of her own in 1978. Of course the group needed a name, especially after a series of song demos began to be passed around, and in honor of The Platters’ “The Great Pretender” Hynde dubbed it, “Pretenders.”
First released as a single in 1982, when it reached Number 17 on the UK charts and Number 5 on the American Billboard Charts, this song was originally meant to be about Hynde’s ex, Ray Davies of the Kinks, with whom she had a daughter. But before it could be recorded the focus changed after the group’s guitarist (James Honeyman-Scott) died of a drug overdose.
Purposely reflecting Sam Cooke’s 1960 hit “Chain Gang” with its memorable chain-gang chant, “Back on the Chain Gang” would eventually find its way onto the reorganized group’s third album, “Learning to Crawl” in 1984.
It was the first recording by a non-British artist on Apple Records and it was called, quite simply, James Taylor. Beset by heroin addiction and clinical depression, the then-unknown Taylor had been signed-on by Peter Asher who, in 1968, was head of A&R (artists and repertoire) for the new label.
Once part of the English duo, Peter and Gordon, it was Asher’s incredible fortune to be the older brother of Jane, who was Paul McCartney’s girlfriend in the mid-‘60s. As a result Peter and Gordon ended up with a number of Lennon-McCartney discards, including their biggest hit, “World Without Love”. After the duo disbanded Asher, who read philosophy at King’s College London (shameless plug), went on to Apple Records.
Upon signing Taylor, Asher agreed to produce the album (and perform as a backup vocalist as well) and although it wasn’t a commercial success he had such faith in the young American’s potential that he moved to the States and became his manager. Asher also produced many of Taylor’s recordings between 1970 and 1985, beginning with “Sweet Baby James”.
Produced at Trident Studio, then the most technologically advanced studio in England, “James Taylor” was recorded using session time that had been booked by the Beatles, who were then recording “The White Album.” Paul McCartney and George Harrison showed particular interest in what Taylor was doing… and Taylor, of course, was mindful of them.
So much so that he changed the name of one of the songs from the original “I Feel Fine” (also the name of the Beatle’s eighth single) to “Something in the Way She Moves.” Irony of ironies the retitled song then served as the starting point for the first (and most successful) Beatle’s track that Harrison ever wrote. Note Taylor’s song title, and then think of the first line to Harrison’s “Something.”
McCartney and Harrison also guested on this number, which poignantly refers to Taylor’s affliction but also includes the line “with a holy host of others standing ’round me,” referring to the Beatles in the room. Mainly however, “Carolina in My Mind” refers to his increasing homesickness for the tranquil Piedmont where he spent his formative years, a sentiment that hasn’t gone unnoticed.
Although born in Boston, James Taylor was raised in Chapel Hill, where his father was dean of UNC’s School of Medicine and every year the UNC graduating class sings it during commencement. In fact, nearly a half a century after those days when he felt as if he was on “the dark side of the moon,” the song is recognized as the Tarheel State’s unofficial anthem. And no surprise, it’s a favorite of the neighboring Palmetto State too.
Having just about recovered from a random case of colitis (something I’d never even heard of ’til last weekend) I was thanking heaven for intravenous therapy, sophisticated antibiotics and for the nursing profession in general when it occurred to me that despite its drawbacks we do live in an enchanted age.
2013 may not have the dash and brio of times gone by but at least our odds of remaining sentient are better. Hey, if William Henry Harrison hadn’t caught pneumonia while taking the oath of office he may have been a great president, and if Thomas Wright Waller had made it beyond the age of 40 his name would surely be as tip-of-the-tongue as that of Louis Armstrong.
Born in Harlem in 1904 to a preacher father and a church organist mother, Waller was playing piano at six and composing organ music at fourteen. Having learned the “stride” style he turned professional at fifteen (against his father’s wishes) and between his first recording session in 1922 (on piano roll) and his last in 1943, recorded well over 600 jazz, ragtime, swing and classical “sides.”
Everything about him was legendary: his appetite for food and liquor (hence the name “Fats”); his ability to master any keyboard he saw, from pipe organ (which he called the “God box”) to celesta; his facility for fitting in to any performance role (e.g. as soloist, sideman or as the leader of a crackerjack ensemble); his otherworldly ability to lay down recordings in a single take; his comedic timing; his generosity and easygoing disposition; and especially his room-filling vivacity. You get the feeling Fats Waller was fun to be around.
Right through the ‘20s and ‘30s the man had a lead foot for life, flinging aside racial handicaps to become one of the most popular performers of his time both at home and abroad. Certainly that was the case in 1926 when he was kidnapped after a performance in Chicago.
Forced into a darkened building with a gun at his back, he quickly discovered himself to be the guest entertainer for Al Capone’s birthday bash, already in full swing. Delighted to know that the gangsters weren’t going to kill him he played for three days, finally arriving back at his hotel in a drunken stupor with thousands of dollars of tips in his pocket.
All the while, Waller was writing songs (over 400 were copyrighted, while others were not) and adding more than a page or two to today’s book of jazz standards. “Both big in body and in mind…(he was) a bubbling bundle of joy,” recalled one collaborator.
By 1943, he was just breaking into film (alongside Lena Horne and Cab Calloway in “Stormy Weather”) when it all came to an end on the eastbound Super Chief one December night. Recovering from a bout of influenza, Fats Waller succumbed to pneumonia and died just prior to the train’s arrival in Kansas City. Word swept through the station so quickly that his dear friend Louis Armstrong, a passenger on the unboarding/boarding westbound train, heard the news then and there…and cried for hours on end.
Recorded by Fats Waller and His Rhythm in 1937, “The Joint is Jumpin’” is about a Prohibition era Rent Party. Said to have played a major role in the development of early jazz and blues music and particular to Harlem, where local musicians were at a premium, tenants would throw a party (sometimes hiring competing musicians who would take turns trying to outdo each other) and pass the hat to help pay their rents.
I gave myself a year, and after a year I gave myself another. Now after another year I’m giving myself a number (but I’m not taking away my name).
It was 7:45 a.m. on 23 February 2011, in the middle of School Vacation Week and I had a good portion of the cast of Concord Carlisle High School’s pending production of “The Producer’s” asleep in my rec room. Figuring I wasn’t going to get any work done between then and 8:00 when it was time to holler “Rise and Shine!” and make everyone a healthy breakfast, I decided to start a simple hobby.
I thought it might be fun to see if I could come up with a year’s worth of interesting popular songs, which I could e-mail every day to a small group of friends. I began with “House at Pooh Corner” by Kenny Loggins, figuring at the very least I’d end up with an interesting circuit of music.
I was pretty diligent and had posted 340 songs by the time 23 February 2012 had rolled around. Those 25 missed days represented time away from my desk. Fervently hoping that a hobby that’s all about research and commentary without personal profit somehow squeezes into the “Fair Use Doctrine” of copyright law I decided to turn my hobby into a daily blog, Thisrightbrain.com.
I also decided to adopt Henry David Thoreau’s idea of taking two years worth of material and condensing it into one year’s worth of really good material, as he did with “Walden, or a Year in the Woods.” Figuring to make one more circuit around the calendar, I selected the best songs from the previous year (let’s face it, there were some “misses”) while adding some new ones and burnishing my write-ups in hopes of coming up with one really good collection. It was also an opportunity to get creative with a lifetime’s worth of photographs by trying to match (mainly) old pictures with a lyric from that day’s song.
And now we’ve circled around to 23 February 2013 and this is posting Number 695. This year there were 36 missed days (factoring in the leap year) again representing time away from the desk. But as the blog postings only amount to 295, my goal is to post 70 more songs and write-ups. Considering I have three book projects going, some will be delighted to know that I then plan to take a break. In the mean time, what shall we cover today?
Released in 1994, “Return to Pooh Corner” is an album by Kenny Loggins. Described as “music for parents and children to enjoy together,” it features songs written by John Lennon, Jimmy Webb, Paul Simon and Rickie Lee Jones among others, as well as several traditional children’s songs. Re-written for those parents among us (and featuring Amy Grant) this is an updated version of a once and future featured song…
Perhaps you too are “marked by the imaginative or emotional appeal of what is heroic, adventurous, remote, mysterious…” which is how one dictionary defines one who is a “Romantic.” If so, you no doubt realize that Romanticism (which came in part as a reaction to the Industrial Revolution) is only a few hundred years old.
But what may surprise you is that the concept of romantic love itself (i.e. romance) isn’t much older, dating back only as far as the late Middle Ages, when “of the Roman style” referred to the advent of chivalry, which eventually incorporated the notion of courtly love. Prior to that there were fertility rites.
There may have been complex forms of courtship (and the ever-ready libido), but feelings of emotional intimacy and attraction, aka the “sweet new style” (as 14th century troubadours called it) is something rather new to our species. So take heart you dreamers, you idealists, you modern romantics with your heads stuck in the clouds. You’re living in the right age and this song’s for you.
Written and sung by Tim Lopez of Chicago-based Plain White T’s, “Rhythm of Love” was included on the band’s six album “Wonders of the Younger” in 2010 and has since sold over a million copies. It marks Lopez’s first solo lead with the group.
Formed by high school friends Tom Higgenson (who normally sings lead) and Ken Fletcher in 1997, Plain White T’s spent much of their first decade generating an underground pop punk following. All that changed in 2007 with the release of their Number 1 hit, “Hey There Delilah,” which Higgenson wrote as a romantic paean to nationally ranked steeplechase runner, Delilah DiCrescenzo… And the “sweet new style” soldiers on.
Sometimes you can’t hurry these things. In 1958 a Detroit junior high school student named Florence Ballard befriended Paul Williams of the male singing group, The Primes.
Ballard was a good singer, as was Williams’ girlfriend Betty McGlown, so The Primes’ manager decided to create a sister group and Ballard quickly recruited her friends Mary Wilson and Diana Ross.
Soon the Doo-wop singing “Primettes” were gaining a following around the Detroit area where they performed at sock hops and talent shows. Eventually Ross asked an old neighbor, Smokey Robinson, to help the group land an audition with Motown executive Berry Gordy, who allowed them to contribute hand claps and background vocals for other Motown artists such as Marvin Gaye and Mary Wells.
When Gordy finally agreed to sign the girls to his label (by which point McGlown had left the group to get married), it was under the condition that they change their name, as The Primes were now called The Temptations. And so in 1961 The Supremes were born.
Written and produced by the Motown team of Holland/Dozier/Holland for the then-prime-time Supremes, and soon featured on “The Supremes A’ Go-Go” (the first LP by an all-female group to reach Number 1 on the Billboard Album charts) “You Can’t Hurry Love” crowned the Billboard Singles charts and peaked at Number 5 in the UK in the summer of ‘66…where it got a second breath sixteen years later when Phil Collins topped the UK Singles charts with it for two weeks in 1983.
Still, despite his clever video with white socks, shades, multiple selves…and just pure fun, Collins never managed to match the panache of Mademoiselles Ross, Wilson and Ballard who went on to release their own Italian cover of the song “L’amore verrà”.
Although Johnny Mercer is said to have written the lyrics with Judy Garland in mind, this song was first sung by that “bombshell of bombs,” Dorothy Lamour in the 1942 film “The Fleet’s In.” With music composed by the film’s director, Victor Schertzinger, and featuring the Jimmy Dorsey Orchestra, it became one of Lamour’s signature themes…until Francis Edward Ifield ran away with it 20 years later.
Born in 1937, Ifield taught himself to yodel as a young teen while milking the family cows, about 30 miles outside of Sydney. By the age of 19 he’d become the biggest recording star in Australia and after venturing to ‘Ol Blighty in 1959 he became the first person ever to have three consecutive Number 1 British hits.
Of course the streak began with Dorothy Lamour’s old signature song. While it peaked at Number 5 in the States, “I Remember You” topped the British charts for a full seven weeks in 1962, making Frank Ifield the first person ever to sell one million records in UK, along the way.
The bumper sticker on the Dodge Charger says, “Proud Parents of a ‘D’ Student” and the camera follows a group of ’70s suburban teens (in bad need of a hobby) while they meander through their seditious day. In the backseat sits the nearly beatific Billy Corgan, front man for the Smashing Pumpkins.
Entitled “1979” it won the 1996 MTV Video Music Award for Best Alternative Video and it’s fitting to know that after it was shot in suburban Chicago someone left the footage on top of a car before driving away. The band (everyone had a bit part) had to fly back from New York, where they were performing, and reshoot the entire video.
Formed in 1988, the (Cure-influenced) Smashing Pumpkins started out with vocalist, Corgan, guitarist James Iha, and a drum machine. In time bassist, D’arcy Wtretzky and jazz drummer, Jimmy Chamberlain joined the group, which released its debut album, “Gish” in 1991. Although critically acclaimed, it was their second album, “Siamese Dream” in 1994 that brought them breakthrough success…paving the way for a grinding international tour schedule.
In 1995 the slightly despondent Corgan took a break from the road and wrote dozens and dozens of songs, 28 of which would be included on the Smashing Pumpkins’ double-album, “Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness” in 1996. One that wasn’t initially slated for the album was (the partially completed) “1979” which the producer felt wasn’t good enough.
But of all the dozens and dozens of songs he’d just written, Corgan considered this one to be the most important, so he did enough revising for it to become a track on the second disc. When it was released a single “1979” reached Number 12 on the Billboard Charts in ‘96 and is by far the group’s biggest (and some might say, most accessible) hit.
After Hurricane Sandy she released her EP (“Live From Laurel Canyon”) with tens of thousands of dollars in proceeds going to a relief fund. After the appalling shooting at the Sandy Hook Elementary School she recorded a rendition of “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” (and then performed it on Good Morning America) with all proceeds going to benefit The United Way of Western Connecticut and other local charities.
An ambassador for The VH1 Save The Music Foundation (dedicated to raising awareness about the importance of music education and restoring the teaching of instrumental music in America’s public schools), Ingrid Ellen Egbert Michaelson is perhaps best known for her myriad of songs featured in advertising campaigns for the likes of: Old Navy, Traveler’s Insurance, Opel/Vauxhall, Motts Apple Juice, Ritz Crackers, Google Chrome, etc.
….And on such television shows as: Grey’s Anatomy, Bones, Scrubs, The Big C, One Tree Hill, Parenthood, Ugly Betty, Brothers & Sisters, Army Wives, Hellcats, Body of Proof, In Plain Sight, The Vampire Diaries, So You Think You Can Dance, Enlightened, etc. etc.
Born in 1979 in Staten Island, Michaelson took up the piano at the age of four and “trained until seven” at Manhattan’s Third Street Music School. After graduating from Staten Island Technical High School and Binghamton University, where she majored in Theater, she began to record her own music in 2002 and self-promoted it on MySpace, while performing at local venues and directing children’s theater.
Dubbed the “DIY Diva” by London’s “Daily Mail” she eventually self-produced her first album “Slow the Rain” (as she has since done with each of her albums) and released it on her own label, Cabin 24 Records.
Featured on her fourth album “Everybody” in 2009, this song, “The Chain” (with its truly wonderful first line and curly-cue last stanza) goes to show how studio recording itself can be an art form.
A live version was previously included on Ingrid Michaelson’s 2008 compilation album, “Be OK” which debuted at 35 on the Billboard Album Chart and sold 15,000 copies in its first week… Naturally, part of the proceeds went to the charity, Stand Up To Cancer.
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