[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O1eOsMc2Fgg[/youtube]
Something for the weekend. Killing me Softly with His Song , written by Charles Fox with lyrics by Norman Gimbel. Out of the musical wasteland that was the Seventies, this is one of the few songs that I enjoy. Sung by many artists, this version by Roberta Flack is the standard. The song had an interesting genesis if one believes one version of how it came about.
Don McLean, he of American Pie and Vincent, was singing and folk singer Lori Lieberman had an emotional reaction to his song Empty Chairs. She wrote a poem and the song was based on the poem. She sang the song in 1972 a year before Flack’s version. Here is her version:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WxY47jh9owA[/youtube]
McLean did not realize that he had inspired the song until years afterwards and was humbled by the thought that such a great song had its inspiration in a reaction to one of his songs. Here is Mclean performing Empty Chairs:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jtrIc8vq7wU[/youtube]
Charles Fox however denies Lieberman’s version of the origin of the song:
“It really didn’t happen that way. Norman Gimbel and I wrote that song for a young artist whose name was Lori Lieberman. Norman had a book that he would put titles of songs, song ideas and lyrics or something that struck him at different times. And he pulled out the book and he was looking through it, and he says, ‘Hey, what about a song title, ‘Killing Me Softly With His Blues’?’ Well, the ‘killing me softly’ part sounded very interesting, ‘with his blues’ sounded old fashioned in 1972 when we wrote it. So he thought for a while and he said, ‘What about ‘killing me softly with his song’? That has a unique twist to it.’ So we discussed what it could be, and obviously it’s about a song – listening to the song and being moved by the words. It’s like the words are speaking to what that person’s life is. Anyway, Norman went home and wrote an extraordinary lyric and called me later in the afternoon. I jotted it down over the phone. I sat down and the music just flowed right along with the words. And we got together the next morning and made a couple of adjustments with it and we played it for Lori, and she loved it, she said it reminds her of being at a Don McLean concert. So in her act, when she would appear, she would say that. And somehow the words got changed around so that we wrote it based on Don McLean, and even Don McLean I think has it on his Web site. But he doesn’t know. You know, he only knows what the legend is.”
Gimbel and Fox also wrote I Got a Name which was recorded by the late great Jim Croce. It was the only one of Croce’s hit songs not written by Croce himself.
While the 70’s had some bad acts, it was far, far, far from a musical wasteland. For starters, it featured some of the best acoustic folk singer/songwriters like Gordon Lightfoot, Croce, Dan Fogelberg, Harry Chapin, and yes, John Denver.
It had great R&B acts in addition to Flack like Al Wilson, The Spinners, The Commodores, and Al Green.
In the rock genre you had good bands like Three Dog Night, The Allman Brothers, Bob Seger, Chicago, with their brilliant blend of hard rock, jazz, and Latin sound.
Had some great one hit wonders too like Brandy by Looking Glass and Dancing in the Moonlight by King Harvest.
I could come up more examples, but I think that suffices for now.
“John Denver”
De mortuis nihil nisi bonum.
The song figured in the movie About a Boy.
There was a good deal of schlock peddled in the 1970s, but there usually is. The mass-marketed music of the first decade after the 2d World War was very thick with it. Active in the 1970s were David Bowie, Yes, Traffic, Supertramp, Genesis, Steve Miller, Chicago, Al Green. Dave Bruebeck was still active.
“De mortuis nihil nisi bonum.”
🙂
Art and Greg, I’m afraid you are beating your heads against brick walls debating with Don about ’70’s music – I gave up a couple of years ago 😉
Always loved this song – of course, Roberta Flack’s version is the benchmark.
Haven’r heard Lori Lieberman before – very nice. She has a sort of Barbra Streisand sense about her.
Have always admired Don McLean. When living in Australia in the 80’s, he came to Sydney to do a live concert in the Opera House ( I think). The show was live on TV also. The guy came out with his acoustic guitar, sat on a simple stool, and held his audience – including I’m sure, arguably another million live TV audience – spellbound for two hours. Brilliant.
“Art and Greg, I’m afraid you are beating your heads against brick walls debating with Don about ’70′s music”
You better believe it! I can rant for hours on the subject of disco alone! Any decade that could produce “Kung Fu Fighting” was cursed beyond redemption.
I was never a big Bowie fan, although I did like Space Odessy (Ground Control to Major Tom). As for Traffic, their frontman Steve Winwood is a first rate musician, The same could be said for Phil Collins, although I was never too much into Genesis.
As for Chicago, 25 or 6 to 4 was the most brilliant blend of hard rock and Latin jazz ever produced, meaningless lyrics notwithstanding. Terry Kath’s smoking guitar solo against the horn emsemble backdrop is one for the ages.
Mass marketing in music existed with the WWII big band as much as it did with music afterward. That can both a good and bad thing.
There was one duo in 70’s, Seals and Crofts of Summer Breeze and Diamond Girl fame that, one year after Poe v. Wade, put out probably the very first explicitly pro-life song called Unborn Child. Unfortunately, it never got any real airplay, due in part to pro-abort groups pressuring radio stations not to play that song and organizing boycotts of their concerts. These guys were not even Christians. They were devout Bahai’ Faith followers. But they deserve a great deal of credit for putting their careers on the line to record and release that song which was the title track of the album. I know of at least of few examples of women who decided not to go through with their abortions after hearing that song. I wish more pro-lifers knew this and gave these guys the recognition they deserve for that effort.
If you watch the video on the You Tube page, you’ll find the comments interesting.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bm7JACG-CTk
Any decade that could produce “Kung Fu Fighting”[and ABBA} was cursed beyond redemption.
In the word of Charles Dickens, “It was the best of times and the worst of times.”
Art and Greg, I’m afraid you are beating your heads against brick walls debating with Don about ’70′s music – I gave up a couple of years ago
I am not sure what he has against Carl Douglas. ABBA was insipid, but what do you expect from Scandinavia?
The trouble is, if a decade is peculiarly cursed, you have to ask what was being produced in any other decade. In my house, we bought some Time-Life CDs a number of years ago of popular music sorted by the decade. You expose yourself not just to Sinatra and Rosemary Clooney but a mess of other material on the radio ca. 1950 and you realize (pace Jo Stafford) that the advent of rock music was not in and of itself an indicator of decadence. Operetta was evidently quite popular co-incident with Swing. (Both Opera and Operetta are an assault on the senses).
My last two visits to art museums (in 1997 and 1999 respectively, one in Quebec City and one in Seattle) persuaded me that unless a museum or gallery has a discrete commitment to displaying representational art produced prior to about 1920, you will have a depressing time of it. It is not hard to pick out the gems in popular music, but in the art world, it has grown difficult to imagine anything with the imprimatur of the art establishment would ever be worth viewing. You can go to crafts fairs, I guess, but you run the risk of your wife retaliating against you for some slight by hoovering up a mess of macrame and hanging it in your living room.
The most notable innovation in popular music since 1979 have been the advent of that horrible anti-music called ‘rap’ or ‘hip-hop’. That really is a curse. (And just who is this ‘Katy Perry’ person???)
It was the 1950s that saw the switch from “music that people already liked being sold in recorded form” to “mass marketed recordings that influenced what people liked” due to the explosion of the number of radio stations and recording studios. This is why in just 10 short years, popular music went from Frank Sinatra, Benny Goodman, Tommy Dorsey and Arte Shaw (complete with 15-20 member mini-orchestras) to “Rock Around the Clock” and “At The Hop.”
Just as Marchall McLuhan later predicted in “Understanding Media” that TV would fundamentally alter the way people actually percieve thier surroundings, the increased affordability and supply of recorded music in the 1950s affected its substance, so that quicker, easier and cheaper-to-produce releases became the norm in order for music businesses to maximize profits.
Just like today with social media and pocket video and communication devices – what people find themselves able to do now that they could not before will then become the standard.
This is why in just 10 short years, popular music went from Frank Sinatra, Benny Goodman, Tommy Dorsey and Arte Shaw (complete with 15-20 member mini-orchestras) to “Rock Around the Clock” and “At The Hop.”
Somewhere swirling around the internet is an interview with Jo Stafford in which she offers a precis of how the recording industry had changed from when she was at her peak. Her earliest hit was in 1944.
1. Prior to 1955, the roles of singer and songwriter were seldom if ever combined.
2. There were usually several versions of a song circulating at one time. “A song had a chance to find itself” on the radio and in the record stores.
3. Anthony Esolen has described the distinction between ‘popular culture’ and ‘mass entertainment’ as that between the music people sing and play for themselves and the music they merely consume. I am not sure what portion of the music marketed in the first decade after the war consisted of standards. You can pick some cherries, though. The signature hits of Jo Stafford, Peggy Lee, Kay Starr, Rosemary Clooney, Patti Page, and Teresa Brewer were first published in 1951, 1956, 1951, 1939, 1947, and 1949, respectively. “Tennessee Waltz” might be something people subsequently sung in other settings and “Music, Music, Music” is so familiar it seems much more venerable than it is. The others, while enjoyable, not so much.
Also recall Rosemary Clooney’s story of how it was she came to sing “Come on-A My House”. Mitch Miller called her into his office and played a demonstration record of the song. She argued with him about it, saying the song was not right for her. He listened a while and then said, “Rosie, if you’re not here at the recording session Monday, you’re fired.” She said, “It is strange how quickly that got through to me”. Jo Stafford offered a complaint many decades later (which I do not think Clooney shared) that Miller made a habit of mismatching singer and song. They were to a great extent employees.