Fifty years ago a singer named Lyn Collins released a funk record that would become a very influential song in hip hop; samples from it were used in dozens of rap songs. That record, written and produced by James Brown, was “Think (About It).”
“Think (About It)’ only made it to #66 on Billboard’s Hot 100, but did reach the top 10 on the Soul chart.
If you’re familiar with “It Takes Two” by Rob Base & DJ E-Z Rock, you will instantly recognize the distinctive “Woo-Yeah” sample that is the heart of “It Takes Two.” A 1989 article in Spin magazine ranked it as the greatest single of all time! (Spin was obviously trying hard to be hip.)
On its own, “Think” is a fun listen. The grooves are funky and support Collins’ muscular growl. Her performance is worthy of the female empowerment lyrics.
Hey, fellas I’m talking to you, you and you too Do you guys know who I’m talking to?
Those of you who go out and stay Out all night and half the next day And expect us to be home When you get there
But let me tell you something The sisters are not going for that no more ‘Cause we realize two things That you aren’t doing anything for us We can better do by ourselves
So from now on, we gonna use What we got to get what we want
So, you’d better think, think Now’s the time when we have That’s the thing I never will forget
Collins died in 2005 at the age of 56, from heart disease.
A sad occasion to remember a fine singer and excellent band.
This obit goes out of its way to credit the Saints as groundbreaking because they beat the Sex Pistols and Damned to record release, but omits all of those who came before who weren’t called punks. Seems sloppy, and does not diminish what Bailey and the Saints did.
Today’s SotW is coming to you from the great city of New Orleans. It is quite a bit different than most of my posts. For starters, it reaches back to the early 1930s, by far the oldest song I’ve ever featured. It is “Heebie Jeebies” by NOLA’s own Boswell Sisters.
The Boswell Sisters were a trio of real-life siblings led by Connie Boswell, who was unable to walk due to a childhood bout with polio, and her sisters Martha and Vet. As a result, the group typically performed with Connie and Martha seated at the piano with Vet standing behind them. This was a ploy designed to disguise Connie’s disability.
When you first hear this song, it will remind you of other female, harmony vocal groups, like the Andrew Sisters, whom the Boswells preceded and influenced. But don’t be fooled. The Boswells were classically trained musicians but were also jazz hipsters true to their New Orleans roots. In fact, the original recording of “Heebie Jeebies” was originally recorded by New Orleans jazz icon Louis Armstrong and his Hot Five in 1926.
But don’t take my word for it. In his book Eminent Hipsters, Steely Dan’s Donald Fagen discusses the Boswells’ version of “Heebie Jeebies.”
The Boswells could have just remade the record in their key. Instead, they bust the piece out by giving it a nuanced dramatic structure complete with tempo changes, ritenutos (slowdowns), additional lyrics, new melodic material, special vocal effects and their unmatchable group dynamics…
After a wordless introduction, the Sisters rip into the chorus. They’ve got the heebie jeebie blues and the only cure is to bring the feeling to critical mass by doing the heebie jeebie dance. Then Martha’s piano slows to an easy blues tempo and Connie, in an ethereal solo, explains the situation:
I been havin’ ‘em – havin’ ‘em all day long
I got the heebies but I can’t go wrong
‘Cause when I got ‘em I just roll along
Now listen everybody while I sing this song…
The newly composed melody and lyrics in this section totally change the character of the piece. Suddenly, having a case of the heebie jeebies isn’t all that funny. It’s a specific sort of agitated depression, and moreover, now stated by Connie as a gentle blues, it’s a state of mind specific to women. Banishing the blue devils with a beat, Martha and Vet then join in at the faster tempo. One chorus later, they paraphrase Armstrong’s scat vocal, but arranged as an ensemble for all three voices. Finally, they correct the Hot Fives’ famously flubbed hokum finish, and all is well again on Camp Street. The Boswells have transformed Armstrong’s party tune into a sonic moving picture of a woman’s inner life over a day’s time. And all this without sacrificing any jazz heat.
Here’s the Louis Armstrong version for context.
There are two items of note regarding Armstrong’s recording. The first is that accounts of the recording session have reported that his scat vocal was spontaneous because he dropped his lyric sheet during the take. The other point of interest is what Fagen referred to as the “famously flubbed hokum finish.” Wikipedia describes it as “a line (that) is delivered too early, leaving the break over which it should have been spoken completely empty.”
If you like this song by the Boswell Sisters, dig a little deeper. There are treasures to be discovered!
I had this idea to write a post that featured a few of my favorite rock songs with a Latin flavor. But not the obvious ones performed by Latin artists like Santana. As I listened to them, I realized I didn’t have the technical expertise to properly describe them. Were they Samba, Rhumba, Bossa Nova? How do you tell the difference?
I strive for factual accuracy in these posts (though I’m sure I’ve made mistakes) so I gave a list of my selections to my high school friend, Dan D, who has a DMA (Doctor of Musical Arts) and teaches courses in trumpet, Chamber Music, Music Theory and The Beatles. I asked Dan for help. Here’s what he had to say:
So I gave a listen to these (songs) with your question in mind. The Samba, Rhumba, and Bossa Nova all share similar characteristics and each one of these works are not completely defined by the Latin genre – they are Latin-infused rock tunes. The genre not closely identified in any of them as rhumba. The conga sound is prevalent in any of them. For rhumba, the Beatle cover of “Mr. Moonlight” by Roy Lee Johnson fits that bill. Samba and Bossa Nova are closely allied. Often, the Bossa Nova is associated with jazz idioms. I could identify a jazz flavor in the Guess Who and Steely Dan tunes but it is not really that strong to differentiate. So with all that said, I am most apt to describe these tunes with a Samba flavor. Whew! A long, winding answer!
Thanks, Dan! So here are a few tunes I like that are loosely tied together through “a Samba flavor.”
“Undun” was the B-side to The Guess Who’s “Laughing.” Written by Randy Bachman, it reached #22 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1969. (“Laughing” rose to #10.) In an interview with Ear of the Newt, Bachman was quoted saying “I remember the joy of hearing that (“Undun”) on the radio, figuring ‘Wow, a song with more than three chords,’ you know, ‘with lyrics that don’t rhyme.’ “
He goes on to describe the inspiration for the song came when he learned about a woman who went into a coma after taking some bad acid at a party he attended in Vancouver.
“Sunlight” comes from one of my favorite Buried Treasure albums – Elephant Mountain (1969), by The Youngbloods. Lester Bangs endorsed the album in his review for Rolling Stone. Written by Jesse Colin Young, “Sunlight” is an ode for a special woman.
Have you seen the sunlight pouring through her hair Felt her warm mouth on you in the summer’s air Running in a field of brown Laughing rolling on the ground Smiling as she pulls you down That’s the way she feels about you
Three Dog Night, who in their early days were masters at finding great songs to record, covered “Sunlight” on their 1970 album Naturally.
Steely Dan’s “Only a Fool Would Say That” (1972) has often been interpreted as a dig at John Lennon’s utopian worldview as professed in “Imagine.” This position was recently described in an article in Far Out, by Sam Kemp.
I’m not sure I buy into Kemp’s thesis. Steely Dan’s lyrics are always cryptic and subject to varied interpretations. To me, it’s a cynical knock on hippy idealism more generally.
Wait until the very end of the song where you can hear laughter and someone utter the phrase “Jiji, solamente un tonto lo mencionara”, “Only a fool would say that” in Spanish!
The debut, eponymous album by Marshall Crenshaw was released 40 years ago this month. It is a really fine album, filled with catchy songs that his fans love, but has flown under the radar for most people, even many music lovers.
Crenshaw received his first break in the music industry in the late ‘70s when he won a slot in the musical Beatlemania, in the role of John Lennon. It was during his stint with the show that he wrote many of the songs on Marshall Crenshaw, including the popular “Someday, Someway.”
“Someday, Someway” sparkles with jangly power-pop hooks and harmonies, with a nod to ‘50s Rockabilly. It’s impossible to hold back a smile when you hear it.
In a PBS program, On Canvas, that first aired in 2013, Crenshaw said that the lyrics for “Someday, Someway” were written to describe “the awkward beginnings of a marriage” when you suddenly realize you’re in something permanent.
I can’t stand to see you sad I can’t bear to hear you cry If you can’t tell me what you need All I can do is wonder why
Someday, someway aww Someday, someway, yeah now Someday, someway Maybe I’ll understand you
After all you’ve done for me All I really want to do Is take the love you brought my way And give it all right back to you
The album was given a brighter sheen with the help of producer Richard Gotterher, who did the same for Blondie and The Go-Gos.
Back in 1976, a band called Klaatu released their first album. For some reason they chose to package the album without any photos or credits. This anonymity led to speculation as to who was behind this “mystery band.”
That speculation took flight when journalist Steven Smith, of the Providence Journal, published an article suggesting that Klaatu might really be The Beatles, reunited under a pseudonym. This rumor seemed to be supported by the Beatlesque sound of some of the recordings and the coincidence that they were released on Capitol Records – the same as The Beatles’ early records in the US.
It was later revealed that Klaatu was a group of Canadian musicians. “Sub-Rosa Subway” and “Calling Occupants of Interplanetary Craft” were minor hits (both reached #62 on the Billboard Hot 100). “Interplanetary” was covered by The Carpenters who carried it to #32 in the US in 1977.
Around the same time, in the mid-’70s, another band chose to labor in obscurity – San Francisco’s Art Rock band, The Residents.
In a 2018 article for NPR Music, writer Jason Roth described The Residents’ approach to music:
The group’s musical canon – comprising over 60 albums that collectively are more of an ongoing act of cultural subversion than a traditional catalog of songs – includes a “four-part trilogy” of concept albums about a subterranean race of mole people, a record that contains exactly 40 one-minute-long commercials for itself and an album of Eskimo folk music consisting of what The Residents imagined Eskimo folk music might sound like. Which also, naturally, provided the group with its critical and commercial breakthrough.
The Residents’ debut album was titled Meet the Residents and had one of the best covers ever – a defaced parody of Meet the Beatles (released on April Fool’s Day, 1974). This too, caused some rumors to circulate that The Beatles were behind the group.
The album opens with an anarchistic, deconstructed (unrecognizable) version of Nancy Sinatra’s “The Boots Are Made For Walking.” Not everyone will be able to make it through the cut’s brief, less than 2 minutes, of chaos.
From 2010 to 2016, the band toured using the character names “Randy, Chuck, and Bob.” But in 2017, Hardy Fox revealed himself as the primary composer for the band as well as “Chuck.” Apparently he decided to finally expose his identity because he was sick and dying.
If you’re a fan or are interested in learning more about The Residents, check out the new book documenting their history from 1972 to 1983.
