5 Songs Dec. 15, 2023

Here we go with a second batch of songs I wish I could play on the radio

I started this feature last Friday. The idea is to highlight five songs I would most likely have played on my radio show if management hadn’t acted so horribly that I left on strike. There are hundreds of thousands of possibilities to choose from. These are what I landed on this week.

Duke Ellington Orchestra – “Fly Me to the Moon” 1965 from Ellington ’65. In 1964, Frank Sinatra had a hit record with a then ten-year-old song called “Fly Me to the Moon (In Other Words).” If you were alive then, you know that record. At that time, everybody was talking about the race to actually get to the moon, so there was always that subtext to this otherwise sweet love song. Trumpeter Cootie Williams had rejoined Ellington a couple years earlier – his original tenure had been from 1929-1940. Ellington and/or his partner Billy Strayhorn came up with an arrangement of “Fly Me to the Moon” that featured Williams in impeccable form. Opening with a typical Ellington piano intro (which actually would make a pretty cool sample for a hip hop number), Williams lays out the melody with a few slight tickles while the saxes play a light counter tune and the brass punctuates every few bars. Williams gets to improvise a chorus or two, never going too far from the tune but always holding our attention. There is a brief coda after the last verse, repeating the “in other words” part of the song, as Williams and the whole orchestra race to the moon for the final chord.

Brown – “The Boss” 1973 from Black Caesar. Everybody else was making blacksploitation soundtrack music, so why shouldn’t the Godfather of Soul get his chance? This unusually restrained effort was actually released as a single, though I don’t think it went far up the charts. It’s pretty cool, though. Typical of Brown’s material from this time, it’s a simple vamp with a bridge, then a turnaround back to the original vamp. Not so typically, however, those are minor chords in the A section, letting us feel that he really did “pay the cost to be the boss.” That B section is more celebratory – “Look at me! Got money to burn!” Critics hated this record when it was released, but this song is pretty hard to resist. James Brown singing as a character who doesn’t feel completely comfortable bragging “Look at me you know what you see / You see a bad mother”? Yes, please.

Ray Charles, “Drown in My Own Tears,” 1956 single, available on any decent Ray Charles compilation from this period. What an unusual record! Session drummer David “Panama” Francis probably had to work harder than he ever had to merely drop those steady thuds on the snare  in lock step with bassist Paul West on every down beat at a very slow tempo with nary a touch on the other parts of his kit. Ray Charles fills most of the rhythmic accents with his piano. The horn section serves as a response to the mournful vocal, full of pain wrapped in confidence, a combination you don’t hear all that often. The song itself was about five years old at the time, and had been an r&b hit by Sonny Thompson. I’ve never heard that version, a testament to how thoroughly Ray Charles co-opted the song for himself. Charles gives a master class in how to bend, push, extend, clip, and slide on each syllable of the song, without ever losing the melody or the message of loss in the lyric. And then, when the song is nearly over, the horns are replaced by a small vocal chorus with a remarkable harmony responding with the only words that matter: “Drown in my own tears.” Just a stunning record.

Oscar Brown, Jr. – “Afro Blue” 1961 from Sin & Soul. The song was originally a 1959 instrumental by the great Mongo Santamaria. Brown wrote lyrics for it the next year, but Abbey Lincoln beat him to the recording punch. Two years after Brown recorded it for his debut album, John Coltrane did the definitive jazz version which I practically memorized decades ago. This Brown version is fascinating, though, because it’s just his vocals with conga drum accompaniment. Brown tapped into the emerging Afrocentric interest of his time, and figured the song title evoked images of people dancing to drums, and then he zoomed in to a young man and woman connecting and slipping away to a “secluded place.” To this day, Brown is underrated both as a songwriter and a singer, though he sold a lot of records at the time. Here, he hugs the undulating melody close, bringing a sensual sinuousness that is highly effective.

Blind Willie McTell – “Talkin’ To Myself” 1930 available on multiple Blind Willie McTell compilations. “No one ever sang the blues like Blind Willie McTell,” sang Bob Dylan in possibly his greatest song of the 1980s. I knew of McTell before I heard that song, but I don’t think I ever actually heard him until later. The Piedmont blues style from the East Coast is still less popular among blues fans than the rougher Delta approach, but man, it can be a joy to hear. This song is an eight-bar blues, and McTell finger picks a jaunty piano-like guitar accompaniment to his sweet-voiced declaration of complex principles involving sex, race, and the impossibility of escape from all those women who want him. “I even went down to the depot with my suitcase in my hand / Crowd of women runned crying “Mr. Samuel won’t you be my man?”” (This record was released under the name Blind Sammie – McTell’s middle name was Samuel.)