Tuesday, July 31, 2007

HE'S CUT-UP GOOD!!!

A friend of mine recently posted one of his montages of sound to his site, so I thought I'd put up a few of my "Cut-Up" tapes. 

It's sort of funny, but back when I had to do these "cut-ups" with the pause button on a cassette recorder (along with another cassette player, a record player and a reel to reel), I made these tapes all the time - hours of them. Since having access to computers and programs which might make this sort of thing easier, I've made about a dozen mash-ups and a total of two of these sorts of cut-ups. 

Today, I'm putting up a link to one cut-up of Harry Belafonte's masterful "Jamaica Farewell", that I particularly like, and another one of "King of the Road" by Roger Miller, which is almost as good. I typically only sliced up records I really like, not having the stomach for learning to know records I don't like well enough to effectively cut them up. My style was the random word replacing the perfectly normal lyrics of the original song. Some of these inserts may be familiar to you, others are from private recordings in my collection. A few of them are in questionable taste. 

Each of these reconfigurations of popular songs were done over 25 years ago. I hope you enjoy them.

Play:  


ADDENDUM, 2021: I actually don't know which versions of these two songs I originally shared - I did "cut-ups" of each of them multiple times, but I think I have the right ones. 

I think I planned to feature more of these as the weeks and years went by, but with the exception of a couple of Mash-Ups, I never did. If anyone is interested, I still have all the old tapes, and they are digitized, and I could share more. While I enjoy the above two, there are a bunch that are much better. 

Saturday, July 28, 2007

My New Favorite Record

I first heard this song about four months ago, and since then, it's sometimes seemed like it's the only thing I've been listening to ever since. It's called "What's She Got (That I Ain't Got?) and it's by Betty Jayne.

This is a song-poem record, as far as I can tell (NOTE: See addendum below), but it's unlike just about any I've ever heard. The amount of arrangement and planning that must have gone into this record amazes me, as do a lot of other features of the recording.

Where to begin? The insane amount of echo? The sparse instrumentation, featuring a guitarist who clearly has spend hours on end listening to "Love is Strange"? The key change in the middle? The complex (for a song-poem) backing vocals, sometimes singing oohs and aahs, in three part harmony in spots, sometimes singing the lyrics to the song in harmony with the lead? The violin (!!) that pops out of nowhere to lead into the first bridge? 

Those are all great. In fact, there's not a moment of this record that I don't adore, even after dozens of listens. But a few things stand out. First are the lyrics. I expected a song with this title to be a whine, or at least something of a pouty complaint. But instead, they contain an indignant challenge, not just about the singer's qualities in comparison with the current girl, but also the good points of countless other girls, too:

"Her hair is blonde, with natural curls, but so is mine, and a lot of other girls'"

In other words, 'this girl you're with, she's okay and all, but there are PLENTY of other girls you'd like better, not just me'. (I know it's not a good thing that all of the comparisons made are with regard to looks and kissing ability, but such was the era...)

The writer was Edith Hopkins, who went on to establish her own song-poem label, using many of those who are today the best known names in the field from that era, and I have yet to hear one of her songs that hasn't been far above average for this genre. In fact, my guess is she wrote the words and music to her songs, and used the song-poem teams as hired help for her demos.

In this case, she got a perfect singer for the job, and that's perhaps the biggest reason I can't do without this record. Betty Jayne, whoever she was, sells this song like every word of it rings true to her. She's got me sold! If I was around, back then, and she was singing this to me, I'd probably think twice about her challenge, and then another six or eight times. Her inflection for the line "Sugar Sweet and Pepper Hot" is unbelievably sexy.

Saving the best for last, there is a moment in this song that transcends just about everything else, where all of the above adds up to 15 seconds of music I never want to be without again. It's the first bridge, starting at about the 33 second point, with that violin mentioned above. The backing vocals kick in, just short of sounding out of control, Betty ups the challenge with an irresistible vocal, and the guitarist goes to town. I find this segment of music as intoxicating as anything I've ever heard.

Hope you enjoy it at least half as much as I do, and perhaps quite a bit more!

Play:  

ADDENDUM, 2021: After living with this record for 14 years, hearing from Edith Hopkins' family, and learning more about her career, it's now clear to me that this record was not a song-poem effort, and was at the worst a vanity release, and more likely an actual attempt at producing a hit record. I won't go into all the details here, but although Edith Hopkins did later engage song-poem companies, her releases, especially the early ones such as this one, are not song-poems in the traditional sense, and in this case, not at all. 

Also, I have never for a moment fallen out of love with this record. I think  it's one of the half dozen greatest singles ever released. The b-side is great, too.