About the Composer

There was a cute article in last Sunday’s San Francisco Chronicle about an apparent new ukelele fad that’s sweeping the nation. It was interesting to me, because I’d been just starting to take notice of the instrument. It just seems to keep cropping up. I noticed only recently, for example, that it’s buried in the texture of a couple of Burt Bacharach songs, (albeit mostly bad ones).

The main reason the ukelele is on my mind at the moment is the now overexposed Israel Kamakawiwo’ole recording of his “Somewhere Over the Rainbow”/”What a Wonderful World” medley, which I listen to a lot with my son. His playing of the instrument is one of many beautiful things about that recording.

If you don’t know what I’m referring to, you’ll recognize it when you hear the clip, as it’s been quite overexposed in recent years. It’s a reworking of these songs accompanied only by ukelele, where the melody is drastically altered and the harmony is completely original. It’s wildly popular, and with good reason. Here’s a bit of it for reference:

Now I’ll let you in on my theory as to why this song is so mysteriously beautiful:

Inversions.

I’m guessing that a typical chord chart for this song would read: C - Em - F - G, etc. But, owing to the particular tuning of the tenor ukelele, with the low open G, almost every chord is an inversion, and the bass never sings anything other than G, G# and A.

So the result is: C/G - Em/G - F/A - G - F/A - G - Em/G - Am - F/A. It’s more beautiful this way because the voice leading is better. Everything your counterpoint teacher taught you is true. (I’m willing to overlook the first chord being in 2nd inversion in Bruddah Iz’s case.)

(By the way, here’s an interesting bit of background on this recording that I just found while researching this.)

In researching the last post I came across something that has me howling. A couple of Dutch guys made this loopy music video using a Burt Bacharach song I’d never heard before (from a movie I’ve never heard of before). The song isn’t much to blog about, but video is hilarious.

Here’s a little-known song by Burt Bacharach that I like a lot. “Fool Killer” follows and elusive, moody chord progression and is pretty sophisticated for a 60’s pop song. The instrumentation displays Bacharach’s usual cleverness and restraint. Vibes and little guitar tremolos combine with the odd chord progression to match the mysterious quality of the lyrics. As always with Bacharach, pay attention to the violins, which (as always with Bacharach) come in for the second verse.

This song was recorded by Gene Pitney for a movie in 1965, but some sort of business mix-up between Burt’s and Gene’s people resulted in the end of the singer’s working relationship with Bacharach and the song was not used for the film.

Here’s the song, accompanied by a weird montage of Gene Pitney album covers. (It’s all I could find. Oh, well.)

Lately I’ve been listening to this Burt Bacharach compilation I bought several years ago (now that I have a car with a CD player). This three-disc Look Of Love compilation spans from the earliest part of his career in the ’50’s (theme song from The Blob anyone?) up to the mid-Seventies, when he produced some truly cloying and awful stuff (”Living Together, Growing Together” …ugh… deliver me!).

For my taste, Bacharach was in his prime in the Brill Building days of the early Sixties, when he helped to pioneer the use of orchestral instruments in pop music. These songs are really worth studying, as there’s a lot of hidden sophistication buried in them.

It’s been pointed out many times that he was a bit of an odd duck in those days, with the occasional use of changing meters, etc, but for me, what really makes him stand out as a songwriter is a rare contrapuntal depth heard in those early songs. Bacharach studied with the likes of Martinu and Milhaud, and certainly knew what he was doing. Since he did his own arrangements, the vocal lines and instrumental lines interact and inform each other in ways not achieved in most pop music. Melodic lines in the orchestration share equal space with the vocal line, and are in some cases more interesting. In fact, I usually sing along with the countermelodies, but then, I’m pretty weird. (Can you listen to “Walk on By” without singing that staccato “answer” in the trumpet?)

I thought it would be fun to take a little-known song from this compilation, “It’s Love That Really Counts”, as recorded by the Shirelles, and try to explain what I think is so cool about it. Well several things, actually. For one thing, I’m not positive, but I believe the melody is entirely pentatonic. We like that. But, it’s mostly orchestration and counterpoint. The arrangement is in impeccable taste — a lesson in self-restraint. For the first verse it’s just bass, guitar and very sparse percussion (mostly vibraslap!). The piano comes in only to lightly parallel the title line “it’s love that really counts”, and otherwise is left out. He’s consistent about that too: the piano only comes in for that line throughout the song.

As is typical with Burt, violins come in for the second verse, but they don’t do too much — just sustained chords. The next “love that really counts’ refrain is where the arrangement is truly inspired: whereas a typical arrangement would probably have the violins parallel the vocal line with lush chords, Burt has them holding tremolo chords sul ponticello with a dramatic swell.

Now, as the song winds up toward a close, the violins take on a contrapuntal role. The vocal line is relatively bland, but the violins upstage it with a magical leap of a minor 10th. It’s too hard to describe….

Listen to the Excerpt (click the “play” triangle icon below)

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First, it’s the refrain with the tremolo violins. Then, around “so take me in your arms”, listen to what the violins are doing. Listen a few times.

I haven’t heard Burt’s new album At This Time yet. Perhaps I’ll mention it here if I ever do. I did enjoy his collaboration with Elvis Costello, Painted from Memory, at first, but then I got really sick of it.

Still… can’t get enough of this 60’s stuff.