"Well, You Needn't"

Frank Morgan

(1987, from Bebop Lives!)

This snaky rendition of the Monk standard is actually from a live show in 2006, the year before Morgan died, but he first recorded it in 1987 on one of his early forays back into jazz after 30 years away. I got curious about Morgan because I've been reading this Francis Davis book and there's a good piece about him in there. (The Davis book is good, even the one about how he doesn't get rap is smarter than most such things.) Even here toward the end he has a lot of lyricism in him. 

I'm only a few songs in so I have no particular impression yet, other than it's nice to hear Brownstein's prickly, knotty guitar and deadpan voice again, especially on top of Weiss's urgent beats. Hoping it's a little more satisfying than the solo album last year by Corin Tucker (the other 1/3 of S-K), which was fine but not much more. 

"Rum and Coca Cola"

Lord Invader

(1943)

Like most people who know this song, or most Americans anyway, I first heard the Andrews Sisters version. They had a huge hit with it the year after Lord Invader's recording stormed the Caribbean. A bunch of verses got changed (leading to major court battles about who "wrote" it), and the moral and political implications got diluted, but you still get, "Both mother and daughter/working for the Yankee dollar." And even the original wasn't exactly original--Lord Invader put the words to a familiar folk tune. The whole legal and artistic history is laid out well here. The Andrews Sisters' arrangement also keeps the calypso rhythm, though smoothed out from Lord Invader's hard, jaunty swing. Its success was an early shot in the calypso crossover that culminated a decade later with Harry Belafonte. Anyway, you could spend an awful lot of time teasing out the complications and contradictions in the song's history. (E.g., how did an anti-colonial song about Trinidadians prostituting themselves for G.I.s  become a huge hit sung by three perky white women during the last year of World War II?) Or you could just listen to it and have a good time.

"Cadillac on 22s"

David Banner

(2003, from Mississippi: The Album)

This laid-back jam, with its rolling acoustic guitar sample (courtesy of the Jacksons' "Destiny"), stood out on the Mississippi rapper's 2003 debut exactly because it's so gentle. Where most of the album had Banner (born Lavell Crump) either partying ("Like a Pimp") or vituperating (the political rant "Bush," the Conan-sampling "F--k 'Em"), "Cadillac on 22s" is meditative and languorous. It's a song about driving around a small Southern town, thinking 'bout life, not in any hurry because there's nowhere particular to go. The video superimposes a neighborhood tragedy that doesn't quite suit the vibe but lends some heft to Banner's pensive lyrics. "Maybe hell ain't a place meant for us to burn," he muses, in conversation with a possibly present deity. "Maybe Earth is just a place for us to learn/ Bout your love, your will and grace." But then he adds, "Sometimes I wish I wasn't born in the first place." The song is full of vulnerability and doubt uncharacteristic of the brash Southern hip-hop that the album otherwise exemplified. Either despite or because of that, it remains one of my favorite singles of the era.

"This Beat Goes On/Switchin' to Glide"

The Kings

(1980, from The Kings Are Here)

In honor of Canada Day (don't tell me you didn't know it's Canada Day), here's a great semi-lost slice of Maple Leaf new wave. The Kings are/were a bicoastal band (Wikipedia indicates they're still active), with roots in both Vancouver and Ontario, and this twofer single from their first album was the closest thing they had to a hit in the U.S. It's a seamless medley of two upbeat rockers, with endearingly Canadian lyrics--nobody else would rhyme "wanna" with "Torontah," or invest the line "I don't give a hoot about what people have to say" with so much verve. So as we prepare for our own national celebration down here in the U.S.A., take a few minutes to pour out a little Labatt's for our friends in the Great White North.

There was nothing subtle or sophisticated about Clemons' playing -- he was a Jersey bar-band hornblower, and even as Springsteen matured as a writer and tried different settings for his songs (acoustic guitars, synthesizers), Clemons provided an easy shortcut whenever Bruce needed to get back in touch with his roots. He had had serious health problems, including spinal surgery, and recent tours had been a trial for him. But, he told music writer Peter Mescarlin, "There's something about being on stage. I call it the Healing Floor. I do all this shit up there and then I think back later and say, 'How the hell did I do that?' But it's what I'm supposed to do. It revives me."

"Wanna Get With You"

Guy

(1990, from The Future)

Twenty years on, after R&B has been reinvented a few more times, it's easy to forget the influence Teddy Riley had on the sound of American pop music in the late '80s and early '90s. The then-young Harlem producer helped bring R&B to terms with hip-hop, creating a sound that took its name from a song by Riley's brother's band, Wreckx-n-Effect (produced by Riley): "New Jack Swing." The "swing" was real -- Riley's productions, most notably Bobby Brown's "My Prerogative," had a hip-swiveling shuffle that made everything else on the radio sound like it was standing still. Besides his wide-ranging contract work, Riley had his own bands. The first was Guy, a trio with singer-brothers Aaron and Damion Hall. They never entirely crossed over, but their popularity on the R&B charts was enough to send their second album, 1990's The Future, to platinum sales. "Wanna Get With You," the first single from tne album, was a top 10 R&B hit, though it didn't crack the pop top 40. It's a good summation of the Riley sound: gunshot snare cracks, banks of blaring synths, the requisite rap break, and stop-start rhythm seizures that directly influenced his most obvious successors, Timbaland and the Neptunes. 

(A reunited Guy, without Riley, is headlining the Summer Soul Jam on July 9 at World's Fair Park.)

"Try Again"

Aaliyah

(2000, from the soundtrack to Romeo Must Die)

Everybody has a favorite Aaliyah-Timbaland single. Or, at least, everybody should. And while I won't argue if you go for "Are You That Somebody" or "We Need a Resolution" or "One in a Million"--because, obviously, there are no bad Aaliyah-Timbaland singles--this one is mine. It's the most minimalist (minimalistest?) of their collaborations, just two chords (Am and Em, if you're playing along at home), a rhythm track that sounds like it was built from an aerosol spray can and a kitchen pot, and an anxious, squelching synth-bass line that burbles out of Timbo's Roland TB-303. It was also Aaliyah's only song to hit number one on the Billboard pop charts. The chorus suggests self-help--"If at first you don't succeed/ Dust yourself off and try again"--but it's really a conditional come-on. As usual, the cool-voiced, cool-eyed Aaliyah is positioned just out of reach, watching you watch her, and suggesting that she might be yours if you just hang in there: "This ain't a yes/ This ain't a no/ Just do your thing/ We'll see how it goes." She's not teasing, she's just not promising anything. The entire song makes a virtue of its taut restraint--the funk is implied, in the spaces between. 

(Aaliyah, of course, died the next year in a plane crash, at 22. Hers isn't the only sad story associated with this song. It was co-written by Timbaland and Static Major, the Kentucky rapper/singer/producer who also has author credits on "Are You That Somebody," "More Than a Woman," and a bunch of other great tracks. He died in 2008 at 33 of a rare autoimmune disorder.)