Here's a newly-discovered film of Louis Armstrong in the studio, recording "I Ain't Got Nobody." We only get to see one song for now; the rest of the session will eventually be released by the Louis Armstrong House Museum.
Here's the story of how the film was discovered:
These two YouTube items were posted last month, but I just was made aware of them - Thanks, Tom!
My Saturday adult combo class has finally finished our latest long-term project: playing through all 55 tunes in the collection, Charles Mingus - More Than a Fake Book. We started in December 2014, and read through one (sometimes two) tunes each Saturday. Some tunes had to be carried over for a second week for us to come close to dealing with them. We missed a few weeks due to vacations. Now, in May 2016, some 70 weeks later, we can say we at least "attempted" all 55 tunes.
I can enthusiastically recommend the Mingus book. The vast majority of the tunes are interesting, fun to jam on, and (mostly) playable by reasonably experienced players. They range from simple to complex. The charts are nicely done - with only a few exceptions, they are clear, without too many typos. Each composition is accompanied by informative text: first recordings, personnel, assorted anecdotes. Only a few of these tunes have made it into the more mainstream fakebooks, and many of them deserve to be more widely known and played.
BTW, if you've ever wondered about the correct changes to "Goodbye Porkpie Hat," you'll find them here.
We're still cycling through the jazz standards "list of shame," now expanded to 150 must-know tunes. In addition Mike, our guitarist, has made up a list of must-know ballads for us to work through.
For our next project, I'll be bringing in some of my favorite bossas and sambas, that are not among the 10 or 15 overplayed ones that you find in American fakebooks. We're starting with a few Roberto Menescal tunes (check this website). I don't think we'll undertake the complete works of Jobim or Menescal or Ary Barroso; that would be a bit much for us. I'll just bring in 20 or so less-known classics, and we'll work on our bossa/samba groove, one tune per week. That should keep us busy for a while.
If you are interested in music copyright law, here's a website you should check: Music Copyright Infringement Resource, sponsored by Columbia Law School and the USC Gould School of Law. It details over 160 cases from 1844 to the present, including often-amusing introductory comments on each case, and the texts of the decisions.
There's far more reading here than I have time for, and the legalese is often dense, but I can recommend a look at these cases, at least:
My Sweet Lord (1976 - George Harrison was found to have "subconsciously" infringed on the Chiffons' "He's So Fine," plaintiffs were awarded damages)
When Sunny Gets Blue (1986 - parody "When Sunny Sniffs Glue" was held to be "fair use")
Satin Doll (1993, Estate of Duke Ellington vs. Estate of Billy Strayhorn - the judgment states that chord progressions may be an element of copyright!)
Feel Like I'm Fixin' to Die Rag (2003, Babette Ory vs. Country Joe McDonald - case was dismissed on the grounds of time elapsed since the alleged offense)
Copyright infringement issues that did not result in litigation, or were settled out of court, did not make it onto this data base, e.g. Chuck Berry/Beach Boys ("Sweet Little Sixteen"/"Surfin' USA"), and Jorge Ben Jor/Rod Stewart ("Taj Mahal"/"Do Ya Think I'm Sexy"). Berry settled for a co-writing credit, and Stewart agreed to donate proceeds to UNICEF.
There's another recent music plagiarism case in the news, alleging that Led Zeppelin's "Stairway to Heaven" was cribbed from Spirit's "Taurus." I listened to the songs in question, and IMHO, the suit is utterly without merit. But what do I know? I thought the recent "Blurred Lines" case brought against Robin Thicke and Pharrell Williams by the heirs of Marvin Gaye was also utterly without merit, but the jury awarded Gaye's family $4 million.
One of the bluesiest jazz ballads is Matt Dennis' "Angel Eyes," lyrics by Earl Brent. It's been recorded by Frank Sinatra, Ella Fitzgerald, and many others. Here's Chet Baker, in a rather dark version:
You'll find differing versions of the chords, depending on what source you consult. Looking just at the "A" section, here is the original sheet music (it's in Dm, while most current fakebook versions are in Cm). Click to enlarge:
As is common with sheet music versions, the piano part probably represents the composer's intentions fairly well, while the chord symbols attempt, not always successfully, to provide a sort of vertical cross-section that will work for a guitarist trying to play along. In any case, this tune has been re-harmonized by several generations of musicians, in varying ways.
One spot subject to reharmonization is the first bar, beats 3 and 4: What is the best way to harmonize the b5 blues lick in the melody? The sheet music, above, does it with two diminished chords. Bearing in mind that the following versions put the tune into the key of Cm, here are a few other ways to play it:
The old bootleg Real Book uses two beats of a bVIdom chord (Ab7, in the key of C).
The Hal Leonard "6th Edition" Real Book uses one beat each of Dm7b5 and G7#5 (this doesn't work well, IMO).
The Sher Music "New Real Book" uses one beat each of D7 and G7, but also shows the diminished chord harmonization as an alternative, as well as another take on the first bar: | Cm/C Eb/C D/C Db/C | , one beat each.
Check the nice descending bass line in the sheet music, going lower, as fits the mood of the song.
I don't want to get too caught up in the harmonization issues here, but if you compare the sheet music above to just about any fake book version (bearing in mind that the sheet music is in D minor), you'll see some other differences. You can decide for yourself what works best. I'd go with Sher.
Regarding the bridge:
The bridge to "Angel Eyes" goes like this in the sheet music (shown here in the now-current overall key of C minor):
The last two bars here are generally revised to | C#m7 F#7 | Dm7 G7 ||, in keeping with modern players' predilection for II V sequences.
The bridge sections of "Do You Know What It Means to Miss New Orleans," "Everything Happens to Me," and "This Masquerade" all follow the same pattern as "Angel Eyes" - that is, II V I twice, then II V I down a half step, followed by a 2-bar sequence to set up the return to the last "A" section.
The similarities between the bridges of these tunes made me wonder which one was written first. Here's the chronology:
1941 - "Everything Happens to Me" (music by Matt Dennis)
1946 - "Do You Know What It Means to Miss New Orleans" (Louis Alter)
1946 - "Angel Eyes" (Matt Dennis)
("This Masquerade," written in 1972 by Leon Russell, is an outlier)
The melodies of the bridges to "Angel Eyes" and "Do You Know What It Means to Miss New Orleans" (henceforth referred to as "DYKWIMTMNO") are also very, very similar, in both melodic rhythm and in melodic contour. Here's Billie Holiday:
It's as though one composer had copied the other on the bridge, but that's impossible to really know. Both tunes were composed in 1946, and both were released to the public in 1947 - "DYKWIMTMNO" as a song in the movie musical "New Orleans" (the clip above), "Angel Eyes" in a recording by Herb Jeffries. It's hard to know which one came first, and it seems unlikely that either Dennis or Alter could have heard the other one's song before it was publicly released. However, Alter had certainly heard Dennis' "Everything Happens to Me" previously, since that tune dates from 1941, with a popular recording by Frank Sinatra and Tommy Dorsey.
Alter's "DYKWIMTMNO" starts in C, with the bridge moving to the key of Ab, then G. "Angel Eyes" moves similarly. That is, in both cases the bridge starts in the key of the b6. "Everything Happens to Me" moves differently, starting in Bb, with the bridge in Eb, then D (bridge starts in the key of the 4).
Perhaps Alter liked the chord pattern in "Everything," and used it in "DYKWIMTMNO," whereupon Dennis wrote it again into "Angel Eyes," swiping the melodic contours of Alter's bridge and the key relationship to the "A" section as well. Probably not, though, right?
Both composers were excellent musicians. Matt Dennis was a jazz pianist and singer as well as a songwriter (he also wrote "Let's Get Away From it All," "The Night We Called it a Day," and "Violets for Your Furs"). Louis Alter was a pianist who began writing for films in 1929, and later appeared as a pianist with the Los Angeles Philharmonic (Alter too wrote a number of hits, including "You Turned the Tables On Me").
You can hear Matt Dennis singing and playing "Angel Eyes" in the 1953 movie "Jennifer," in the video below, at 55:22.
Here's Matt Dennis singing and playing "Everything Happens to Me," including some additional amusing lyrics:
Regarding the "A" section of "Angel Eyes":
I hear a definite similarity to "St. James Infirmary" in melodic contour, in underlying harmony, and in its minor-key b5 blues licks (discussed in this earlier post). And in mood too, for that matter. Here's the Louis Armstrong recording from 1928:
I don't have any final answers here on the relationship between any of these tunes or their possible derivation, I'm afraid - just observations.
In a tangential matter, perhaps you have noticed that the melody of "House of the Rising Sun" is very close to "St. James Infirmary." I did a little internet research on this. It turns out that "House of the Rising Sun" has two completely different melodies. There is an earlier, major-key version of the song, recorded by a number of folk performers beginning in the 1930s - check Youtube for versions by Leadbelly, Georgia Turner, Ashley & Foster, and Roy Acuff. The minor-key version (e.g., as recorded by Eric Burdon and the Animals in 1964) was first recorded by Josh White in 1950. White seems to have combined the "House" lyrics with the "St. James" melody.
The melody to "St. James Infirmary" was first recorded in 1924, as part of an instrumental called "Charleston Cabin," by Whitey Kaufman's Pennsylvania Serenaders. In 1927, the lyrics were recorded by Fess Williams and His Royal Flush Orchestra under the title "Gambler's Blues" (note: Fess Williams was Charles Mingus' uncle...but I digress). The first recording of melody and lyrics under the title "St. James Infirmary" seems to have been Armstrong's, in 1928.
Finally, here is a great 1933 Cab Calloway version of "St. James." It was just too good not to include. Cab sings at 4:21:
"I'm Afraid the Masquerade is Over" (1938) is one of the great "Golden Age" ballads. The music is by Allie Wrubel, and lyrics by Herbert Magidson. Here's a perfect performance by Sarah Vaughan:
I heard this next tune a few days ago on a PBS channel - "El Dia Que Me Quieras," a classic tango written by Carlos Gardel for the 1935 movie of the same name. The version I heard was a live performance, played by Astor Piazzola on bandoneon. I couldn't find that clip on YouTube, but this one is nearly as good:
Kind of similar? The movie opened in New York in 1935. I suppose it's possible that Wrubel heard Gardel's tune and used the melody as a basis for "Masquerade," knowingly or unknowingly.
Even if you think this is a stretch, these are some pretty great songs!
Carlos Lyra's "Influência do Jazz" is a 1962 bossa nova classic. Lyra's lyrics complain about the corrupting influence of jazz on samba. It's a bit tongue in cheek, though, as "Influência do Jazz" itself shows the influence of jazz. In fact, bossa nova couldn't have existed without the influence of jazz.
It's hard to miss the melodic similarity of "Influência" with "Moonlight in Vermont" (Karl Suessdorf, 1944):
An English translation of the lyrics and some background on "Influência" are on Victoria Broadus' very interesting website, lyricalbrazil.com.
While I hear "Moonlight in Vermont" as a likely starting point for Lyra's melody, Broadus suggests parallels with "You Were Meant for Me" (Nacio Herb Brown, 1929, but best known from its use in "Singin' in the Rain," 1952) and "Indian Love Call" (Rudolf Friml, 1924, but redone over the years by many artists).
Here's another - Franz Lehar's "Meine Lippen, sie küssen so heiss," from his operetta "Giuditta" (1934). I heard this one on the PBS "Classic Arts Showcase" the other night. The melody in question is at 1:08.
Chronologically, the order is Friml - Brown - Lehar - Suessdorf - Lyra. There definitely are some similarities, some closer and some a bit of a stretch.
The similarities don't really prove anything. Good melodies can be independently arrived at; if there is borrowing it can be unconscious. Some of these similarities are certainly just coincidence. Correlation does not imply causation. I still think Lyra was referencing "Moonlight," though.
