Curio Cabinet / Song Curio

It's Flashback Friday, and almost the 4th of July! Enjoy these curios in honor of the holiday. 
For some, a trip to our nation's capital inspires feelings of patriotism and awe; for George Clinton, it was another opportunity to land the P-Funk mothership and spread the good word of the funk. After playing a show in Washington, D.C., Clinton was approached by two women who told him the concert experience felt like "one nation under a groove." Inspired, Clinton took his stage prop spaceship set into the studio and encouraged his motley crew of Thumpasaurians and Synnthezoidees musicians (all part of the P-Funk mythology) to add whatever they felt like playing to One Nation Under a Groove. The freedom to be as funky as they wanted could be heard through the irresistible pastiches of rhythms and harmonies—united under the "One nation…" refrain, and Bootsy Collins' revved-up bass lines. As intergalactic anthems go, this is one that shoots for the stars, and never runs out of booty-shaking fuel!

 

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[Image description: George Clinton and Parliament Funkadelic performing in Louisville, Kentucky on July 4th, 2008.] Credit & copyright: Joe Schneid, Wikimedia Commons, image cropped for size, image is hereby distributed under the same license linked here.

The secret to David Bowie’s first number one hit in the U.S.? Karma. John Lennon believed so, at least. The ex-Beatle did have a front row seat to Bowie’s stateside success, as he helped write and sing backup vocals for Fame, released on this day in 1975 on Bowie’s album Young Americans. It features a modified bridge originally played by Stevie Wonder (which Lennon and Bowie flipped backwards) and repeated, echoed cries of the word “fame” as the song’s narrator describes the pitfalls of celebrity. The funky tune was a far cry from Bowie’s Ziggy Stardust persona and accompanying album, which had flopped in the U.S. just a few years earlier. On John Lennon’s official website, the late musician described the process of helping Bowie achieve his first number one, just as Elton John had helped Lennon do with their 1974 collaboration, Whatever Gets You Thru The Night. “...I felt like that was like the karmic thing – you know, with me and Elton I got my first Number One – so I passed it on to Bowie and he got his,” Lennon explained. With records, what goes around always comes around.

[Image description: David Bowie wears an eyepatch and plays guitar during filming of his Rebel Rebel music video in 1974.] Credit & copyright: AVRO, Wikimedia Commons, image cropped for size, image is hereby distributed under the same license linked here.
 

It's Flashback Friday! In honor of World UFO Day, enjoy these curios all about mankind’s fascination with the mysteries of space. Electronica pairs well with intergalactic adventures. On this day in 2001, Daft Punk dropped Discovery, a pop-centric concept album that came packaged with Interstella 5555—a cosmic anime flick about a band poached by a nefarious music industry. To create the two-facet masterpiece, Daft Punk called upon famed Japanese animator Leiji Matsumoto, a childhood favorite of the cybernetic French duo. As Daft Punk crafted the music, Matsumoto simultaneously drew up corresponding scenes. The animator wisely employed body language to ensure his cartoon bandmates' mirth and misery not only matched the rhythms of Daft Punk's tunes, but danced in harmony around them. Take Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger, a mechanical jam built entirely around a jerky portion of Edwin Birdsong's funky Cola Bottle Baby (and later sampled by Kanye): Daft Punk's recursive, robotic lyrics and rhythmic pulses are coupled with Matsumoto's vision of a gem rock, retro-styled factory. In the music video, a peaceable band of blue aliens are systematically disassembled and reproduced into a mass-marketable super-group by a power-hungry music producer. But no spoilers here—watch the whole series to learn if the band escapes with their blue skins!
 

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Image credit & copyright: Fabio Venni, Wikimedia Commons, image cropped for size, image is hereby distributed under the same license linked here.

Music industry, make way for Stevie Wonder. The legendary soul and R&B musician got into the music business early, signing his first record deal at age 11 with Motown’s Tamla label. The following year, Wonder really made a name for himself as part of Motown’s traveling tour, The Motortown Revue. His live performance of Fingertips, a jazz piece full of complicated piano and simple lyrics, encouraged the audience to participate with calls and cheers. And participate they did. The audience was so taken with 12-year-old Wonder that they demanded he play longer, leading to the highly-improvised, electrically-energetic live recording of Fingertips Part 2. Even the Marvelettes, who were supposed to perform after Wonder, got in on the action by playing along with him, adding bass and other instruments to the mix. In 1963, the recording reached number one on the Billboard Pop Singles chart, making it Wonder’s first number one hit and the first live-recorded song to reach number one in the U.S. As if the track weren’t special enough, portions of Fingertips Part 2 feature a young Marvin Gaye on drums. Talk about a legendary performance.

[Image description: Stevie Wonder plays piano and sings at the White House in 2009.] Credit & copyright: Barack Obama Presidential Library, Wikimedia Commons, Public Domain
 

Trials and tribulations couldn’t make this hit fall to pieces. On this day in 1961, country star Patsy Cline was seriously injured in a head-on collision in Nashville just as I Fall to Pieces, the song that would go on to become her first number one single, was beginning to climb the charts. By then, the heartbreaking song had already overcome several issues on its way to being recorded. Several other well-known artists rejected the song when it was first pitched to them, including Brenda Lee, which made Cline wary of it. She also worried that the song’s background vocalists, the Jordanaires, might overpower her voice. Cline wasn’t crazy about the song’s signature, twangy steel guitars or lyrics about lost love that occasionally tipped into melodramatic territory. No one could tell that by her vocal performance, though, which is full of trembling vibrato and remembered as one of the best of her career. The song reached number one while Cline was still in the hospital, recovering from her injuries. How’s that for a get-well-soon pick-me-up?

[Image description: A black-and-white publicity photo of Patsy Cline smiling] Credit & copyright: Decca Records, Wikimedia Commons, Public Domain
 

It's Flashback Friday! In honor of National Marriage Day, enjoy these curios all about weddings. 
Every great musician has to start somewhere, and for Spanish composer Manuel de Falla, that somewhere was with the less-than-stellar opera La Vida Breve ("The Brief Life"). De Falla's 1913 work featured nearly as much instrumental music as vocals. Perhaps even odder was the one-hour, straightforward plot and libretto by Carlos Fernandez Shaw: a young gypsy woman named Salud falls for a wealthy man named Paco, who is betrothed to another. When Salud tries to win back Paco by crashing his wedding, Paco rejects her, and Salud dies from grief. La Vida Breve wasn't all a bust for de Falla though; with the encouragement of his friend and French composer Claude Debussy, the Spanish maestro re-worked many of the orchestrations, which prompted some of the instrumentals to live on in contemporary classical repertoires. Take the Danza from the start of Act II, whose dizzy triple meter melodies have been translated for guitar and violin soloists as a lively example of early 20th-century Spanish music. La Vida Breve may not have been the hit de Falla expected, but he did move on to bigger and better works in his lifetime. We can't say the same for Salud, though.

 

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Image credit & copyright: Archivo Manuel de Falla, Wikimedia Commons, Public Domain.
 

When a tune hits your eye like a big pizza pie…you just might have a hit. American crooner Dean Martin, born on this day in 1917, scored a whopping and somewhat controversial hit with 1953’s That’s Amore. The song was originally written for the movie The Caddy, starring Martin and Jerry Lewis, for a scene in which the two crooners return home to Italy. Martin himself wasn’t crazy about the song, which he felt capitalized on his Italian heritage in a particularly tacky way. The lyrics do compare love to pizza and pasta e fasule, after all, and the song’s swooping accordion mimicking the notes of each line really cranks the cheesiness up to eleven. At the height of its popularity, the bouncy earworm of a tune drew criticism from some Italian Americans for caricaturing their culture. Despite the controversy and Martin’s apprehensions though, That’s Amore went on to become one of his best-remembered hits and ushered in a wave of similar poppy songs about Italy, like Rosemary Clooney's Mambo Italiano, which Martin himself later covered and popularized. Vita bella, lucky fella!

[Image description: A black-and-white photo of Dean Martin wearing a suit and tie.] Credit & copyright: NBC Photo, Wikimedia Commons, Image cropped for size, Public Domain
 

It's Flashback Friday! On this day in 2001, the musical The Producers won a record-breaking 12 Tony Awards. In honor of this achievement, enjoy these curios all about theater.  We're not in Kansas anymore. When The Wiz opened on Broadway in 1975, its financial backers must have felt that way. Despite investments totaling over $1 million, the show seemed destined to flop. Pre-sale tickets weren't selling out, and critical reception was mixed. After one week of performances, the theater posted a closing notice. But thank Wiz for producer Ken Harper. He successfully lobbied investors to produce a television ad—considered a novelty in marketing at the time—for $110,000. Sales doubled in the first week of airing. The show was buoyed by the release of the official soundtrack in March, which featured the single Ease on Down the Road. The song would reach #1 on the disco charts and became a cultural milestone in its own right. Imagine the joy of listeners when, only three years later, they'd be treated to a Quincy Jones-produced version featuring Diana Ross and Michael Jackson. The road to the Emerald City has never been so catchy.  

[Image description: Diana Ross wears a neon green outfit while singing onstage.] Credit & copyright: DVSROSS, Wikimedia Commons, image cropped for size, this image is hereby distributed under the same license linked here.
 

Sometimes, you just really want to get out of Minneapolis. Songwriter and music producer Steven Greenburg certainly did, back in the late 1970s. So Greenburg penned Funkytown, a disco track about moving to New York City, and formed a band specifically to sing it. Greenburg called the band Lipps Inc., a play on “lip sync.” On this day in 1980, Funkytown hit number one on the U.S. singles chart and stayed there for four weeks. The song’s famously autotuned verses and bleepy synth hooks made for a hit that came to embody the disco era. Cynthia Johnson, a well-known Minnesotan singer and winner of the 1976 Miss Black Minnesota pageant, performed the song’s joyful, shouted vocals. Funkytown did indeed get Greenburg out of Minneapolis, along with the rest of Lipps Inc. Though they never had another number one hit, they kept movin’ and groovin’ with some energy until 1985.

[Image description: A disco ball sends light beams through a foggy room.] Credit & copyright: Cifer88, Pixabay
 

It's Flashback Friday! This week we’re throwing things waaay back with these curios all about ancient times and practices.
 
Talk about a show-stopping musical collaboration. On Wu Fei & Abigail Washburn, the titular artists explore a serendipitous meeting of traditional Chinese and Appalachian folk music. On the lead track, Water is Wide / Wusuli Boat Song, Wu Fei shows off her skills with the guzheng, a 2,000-year-old stringed instrument. She sings an ancient pastoral tune from the Nanai people of northern China called Wusuli Boat Song. Abigail Washburn joins in with a gentle, rolling clawhammer banjo rhythm, and harmonizes with a version of The Water is Wide. Washburn initially altered the forlorn love lyrics to meet the mother-and-child themes of Wusuli Boat Song when she and Wu discussed lullabies for their young children. What emerges from Water is Wide / Wusuli Boat Song is a piece that highlights the beauty and unique character of both folk music styles—making it the perfect soundtrack for welcoming a new, fortuitous lunar year.
 

Image credit & copyright: Gary Todd, Wikimedia Commons, Public Domain
 

And the winner is…Switzerland! American Idol is far from the first televised singing contest. The honor for longest-running annual, international, televised music competition goes to Europe’s Eurovision Song Contest, in which European countries compete to see which is the best at writing and performing songs. Held in Lugano, Switzerland, on this day in 1956, the very first Eurovision contest saw Swiss singer Lys Assia score the win for her country with her rendition of Refrain. Assia performed the song in French as it was originally written by Swiss radio moderator Émile Gardaz and Swiss composer Géo Voumard. The song adheres to the chanson style of French music, in which lyrics take a front seat and sometimes even run over the meter of each line. With its sweet melody and lyrics about long lost youth and love, Refrain was a dignified song for a dignified song contest. Eurovision’s first competitors might not recognize the pop-heavy, bombastic competition today. But hey, at least it’s still running.

[Image description: A black-and-white photo of Lys Assia, who won the first Eurovision Song Contest in 1956, performing at the 1958 contest.] Credit & copyright: Nederlandse Televisie Stichting, Beeld en Geluid Wiki, image cropped for size, this image is hereby distributed under the same license linked here.

It's Flashback Friday! In honor of Cher’s birthday, enjoy these curios about things that were going on in the 1960s and 70s, during the height of the pop star’s career.
 
In Daily Curio #1168, we explored the unlikely origin of Auto-Tune, the vocal processing software that can make even a terrible singer sound worthy of the airwaves. But Auto-Tune would be nothing if it weren't for Cher's Believe. The song, which topped the U.S. charts this week in 1999, was the first to let loose on Auto-Tune, turning the singer's sweet harmonies into the sounds of a crooning fembot. The song was the first single off the eponymous album, dedicated to Cher's ex-husband Sonny Bono, who had died earlier the year before in a skiing accident. It marked something of a rebirth for Cher's career, which had been languishing as she struggled to find a style to keep up with the times. Believe launched her a decade into the future, predating the groundbreaking fusion of Auto-Tune singing and rap that Kanye West would be lauded for in 2008's 808s and Heartbreak. It almost didn't happen: Cher's record label didn't like that the Auto-Tune masked their talent's recognizable voice. But the singer rebuffed: "You can change that part of it over my dead body. And that was the end of the discussion."  

[A black-and-white publicity photo of Cher from the 1970s.] Credit & copyright: Casablanca Records, Wikimedia Commons, Public Domain
 

Pop open those bubbly tunes. American musician Lawrence Welk, who passed away on this day in 1992, is best remembered for his televised musical variety show, The Lawrence Welk Show. Yet his T.V. fame was brought about through years of hard work as a touring bandleader. Welk specialized in a specific brand of big band music featuring romantic, danceable songs, often with Welk himself playing accordion. Due to his music’s bubbly tone, Welk described it as “champagne music.” His band even made a habit of performing in front of bubble machines. Welks’ 1961 hit Calcutta is a perfect example of the champagne style. Its cheerful, swaying melody leans heavily on the harpsichord and makes for perfectly light, danceable fare. Welks was hesitant to record the song at first, since it had originally been a German pop song titled Tivoli Melody, and he wasn’t sure it would work stateside. Yet it ended up topping the U.S. pop charts at a time when young rock and roll artists were dominating the music scene. Put a cork in it, whippersnappers!

[Image description: A black-and-white photo of Lawrence Welk as a young man, wearing a suit and smiling.] Credit & copyright: Frederick Brothers Agency, Wikimedia Commons, image cropped, Public Domain
 

It's Flashback Friday! In honor of International Tuba Day, enjoy these curios all about music and instruments.
 
20th century classical flute owes a great debt to Claude-Paul Taffanel. Born in 1844, the composer founded the French Flute School spent his lifetime revolutionizing the way the instrument was taught and played. A prodigy who played his first concert at age 10, Taffanel eventually became an instructor. He devised plans for students to receive individualized lessons, taught works by foreign composers like J.S. Bach, and learned to play with a gentle vibrato (rapid alteration of notes)—all things previously unheard of in French musical education. The fruits of his flute-composing labor can be heard in his Fantasia "Francesca Da Rimini," a flute and piano duet which likely takes its themes from the work of Taffanel's friend, Peter Tchaikovsky and his symphony Francesca da Rimini: Symphonic Fantasy after Dante. Like the ill-fated lover in Dante's Inferno, Taffnel's flute melodies swoon with desire. At about 3:07 minutes, the wind instrument plays a virtuosic set of arpeggiated notes, relaying the (quite literal) whirlwind of lust Da Rimini endures in the afterlife. Love might actually be hell in Francesca da Rimini's case, but it sure sounds heavenly with Taffanel's flute telling the tale!

 

Image credit & copyright: brendageisse, Pixabay
 

Might as well face it, this song was supposed to be a duet. Robert Palmer’s Addicted to Love, which hit number one on the Billboard Hot 100 on this day in 1986, is best remembered for its music video featuring identically-styled models unconvincingly pretending to play instruments. The song’s slow-yet-driving beat, bright keyboard riffs, and earworm of a chorus made it mandatory 1980s listening. Yet Palmer originally envisioned the song as a duet with R&B icon Chaka Khan. After writing the song himself, Palmer enlisted Khan to record it with him, with her singing the upper harmonies. Unfortunately, Khan’s label, Warner Brother Records, was less than pleased about the duet. Claiming that it would divert attention away from Khan’s upcoming LP, they demanded that her voice be deleted from the track. Palmer was forced to comply, and re-record Khan’s parts himself. In the end, Palmer’s varied vocal performance helped make the song iconic, and it became his very first number one hit. Not too shabby after such a major change.

[Image description: Robert Palmer performs onstage in 1986.] Credit & copyright: Nathan Callahan, Wikimedia Commons, image cropped for size, this image is hereby distributed under the same license linked here.

It's Flashback Friday! In honor of Viral Video Day, enjoy these curios all about how the internet has changed our lives.
 
As the internet finds itself weathering a maelstrom of fake news, Superorganism is a breath of fresh bandwidth. The group of Instagram-addicted couch surfers creates music that paints an idyllic picture of the web. Take Something for Your M.I.N.D., from their new self-titled album that dropped earlier this month: over a minimal loop, lead singer Orono Noguchi languidly mumbles nonsensical lyrics that seem as if they were spliced together from zany Tweets and Facebook updates. But as silly as the song is, it smuggles across a sneaking feeling of general discontent and listlessness. Korean lyrics studded throughout the booming chorus—a sampling of C'hantal's The Realm—reveal the deeper meaning of the song: whatever it is we need in our heart, we must first put in our mind. Sure enough, Superorganisms' naive faces and habit of producing music over email belie something profound. But similar to how we must navigate the convoluting internet, one must first sift through Superorganism's technicolor veneer to attain it!
 

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Image credit & copyright: Paul Hudson, Wikimedia Commons, image cropped for size, image is hereby distributed under the same license linked here.

Experiencing career trouble? Just release a genre-defining mega-hit. Country music lost a legend on this day in 2013, when George Jones passed away at age 81. His most famous song, 1980’s He Stopped Loving Her Today, not only went on to be named the second-greatest country song of all time by CMT, it revitalized Jones’ career at a time when things were looking bleak for the country crooner. At the time, Jones was publicly struggling with addiction and had been arrested several times. Jones’ producer, Billy Sherrill, suggested that Jones record He Stopped Loving Her Today, by famed country songwriters Bobby Braddock and Curly Putman. Jones wasn’t originally impressed with the track, calling it “morbid.” However, something magical happened when the song's lyrics, about a man loving a woman until his dying day, met Jones’ famously lonesome-sounding voice, accompanied by plenty of steel guitar. In his autobiography, Jones later wrote, “...a four-decade career was salvaged by a three-minute song.” Did we mention that the only song to top He Stopped Loving Her Today on CMT’s list was Stand By Your Man by Jones’ own ex-wife, Tammy Wynette? No wonder country music is famous for heartbreak.

[Image description: George Jones playing guitar while performing in 2002.] Credit & copyright: Secisek, Wikimedia Commons, Public Domain
 

It's Flashback Friday! In honor of the upcoming holiday, enjoy these curios about bunnies, eggs, and all things Easter.
 
These days, Easter is marked by chocolate bunnies and Easter egg hunts, but in 18th-century Germany, the day was decidedly more somber—filled with serious sermons and scripture readings. So imagine the surprise of Leipzig churchgoers when, in 1725, they heard the first public performance of Johann Sebastian Bach's Easter Oratorio. A joyous melody, executed by a full symphony, arrives at measure one and doesn't let up for 40 seconds. The oratorio's history may have something to do with it: historical documents show Bach adapted the work from a secular piece. This version of the opening Sinfonia, conducted by leading Bach expert John Eliot Gardiner, recreates the mood in all its glory. Those Leipzig churchgoers may have been excused for dancing in their pews.  

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[Image description: A statue of Bach in Leipzig] Credit & copyright: Walensky, Pixabay