seventies survival, update twelve

Posted on October 12th, 2007 by Scraps.
Categories: Music, Songs, 70s Survival.

I am listening to the top 1000 singles of the 1970s (as determined by Billboard) on shuffle play on my mp3 player, and gradually weeding out the songs I don't want to hear anymore.

Roberta Flack & Donny Hathaway, The Closer I Get to You
These sappy part-switching duets never seem to go away, or change. This one gets more than a little incoherent: "Sweeter and sweeter love grows," Donny sings, "and heaven's there for those who fool the tricks of time, but the hearts of love define true love in a special way." I think the key to singing lines like that is to not think about them at all. Roberta Flack only gets to sing the chorus, which barely changes and that's probably just as well. They only sing one line together, at the very end: "Pulling closer, sweet as the gravity". O-kay.

"The Closer I Get to You" is awash in long synth notes that are gated or pitch-shifted or something -- vocabulary help requested -- to produce a changing effect in the background that is weird for a pop song, and is one of those things that becomes very noticeable once a record gets a little warped, or on almost any cassette recording, which will give it an unignorable warble.

Eddie Kendricks, Boogie Down
Perfectly pleasant disposable bouncy pop-funk. One solid groove (with its eight beats divided into a nice 1-2 1-2-3 1-2-3 pattern), no especially interesting structural changes (though a lot of decorative changes in the arrangement), completely pointless repetitve lyrics. There's some buried horn that sounds like it's trying to burst out into a KC & the Sunshine Band song, and some strings that escaped from Silver Convention. It does have a nice extended transition from the chorus back to the verse, albeit with synthesizer farts.

I'm curious about the history of the word "boogie". In pop music it's associated both with funky disco and with danceable southern guitar rock (e.g., Little Feat). How did that happen?

6 comments.

Robert Legault

Comment on October 14th, 2007.

Wow--your captcha word is the subway zit doctor.

"Boogie" as a musical term seems to have come into use in the late 1940s, both for fast rhythmic blues (John Lee Hooker's "Boogie Chillen," 1948) and fast country dance music (Arthur Smith's "Guitar Boogie Shuffle," which was very widely covered by others, as well as the great series of Capitol records by Tennessee Ernie Ford: "Shotgun Boogie" and many others). It may go back as far as WW2, but I can't think of any blues or country with that word that is much earlier than that.

Scraps

Comment on October 15th, 2007.

Thanks! So the use of the word in diverse musical styles was there from the start, apparently.

(I get to set all my own captcha words with this plugin.)

Scott Underwood

Comment on October 19th, 2007.

Proper Records has a 4-CD box set called Hillbilly Boogie:
http://www.proper-records.co.uk/artists.php?action=alview&alid=2037

The oldest song is from 1939, I think -- I can't tell anymore because I gave the album away; I found it mostly unlistenable. It was quite a fad and lots of people tried to jump aboard. among the names are Bill Haley (and the Saddlemen), Chet Atkins, Hank Snow, Spade Cooley, and more. It's interesting to listen to it in the context of Western Swing bands like Bob Wills (and Spade Cooley) and early rock, like Sun Records sides or Ike Turner's "Rocket 88." The differences aren't that great.

Scraps

Comment on October 19th, 2007.

Awesome, thanks!

Robert Legault

Comment on October 22nd, 2007.

I'll second it: The Hillbilly Boogie box is awesome.

I forgot to mention, of course, that "boogie" comes from "boogie woogie," which was more or less started by three great jazz pianists, who I believe all worked at the same taxi garage: Albert Ammons, Pete Johnson, and Meade Lux Lewis. They recorded some of the first sides for Blue Note Records in, iirc, 1939. This sound, with its very rhythmic ostinato bass, was in many ways a forerunner of rock'n'roll, and it was picked up after the war by people like Don Raye and became the basis for the "boogie" sound, though the two are not exactly alike, but are in a relation kind of similar to (classic) ska and reggae.

Scraps

Comment on October 22nd, 2007.

One of the best benefits to me of starting this weblog is the musical education I get. Thanks.

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