|
|
|
 |
|
|
HOME | ABOUT | BIOS | EMAIL |
|
 |
| |
Wednesday, May 14, 2008
SPANISH HARLEM
Ben E. King
Atlantic : 1960
Available on: Spanish Harlem/Don't Play That Song
Collectables : 1998
[Buy It]
SPANISH HARLEM
Aretha Franklin
Atlantic : 1971
Available on: Queen of Soul
Atlantic : 1992
[Buy It]
SPANISH HARLEM
Smith Smith
Unity : 1968
Available on: Keep That Lovelight Shining
[Out of Print]
ESCALES (PORTS OF CALL): MODERE TRES RYTHME
Jacques Ibert : 1924
Minnesota Orchestra: Eihi Oue, conductor
Available on: Ports of Call
Reference : 1997
[Buy It]
Atlantic Records was one of the very few indie labels to survive the transition from the 50s to the 60s, and they did it by shifting their emphasis slightly away from black rock and rollers (Ray Charles, Ruth Brown, The Coasters, The Clovers, The Drifters, Big Joe Turner), amping up their arrangements, and coming up with series of in-betwixt, throwin'-shit-at-the-wall recordings. (In conversation, the label's boss, Ahmet Ertegun described them as "synthetic.") And so, Atlantic's first white artist, Bobby Darin, scored with "Splish Splash," and "Mack the Knife," and Ben E. King scored his first hit with "Spanish Harlem," which rose higher on the pop charts than it did as rhythm and blues.
The song was written by Jerry Leiber and Phil Spector, who came up with an ascending melody which reminded Leiber of Ibert's Ports of Call, L'Escales. "It had that particular Spanish sound, so I kept pushing him in that direction," Leiber recalled. "Building the chords, a third up, a third up. He wrote the tune, but I was pushing him in the direction of a contour that was really an imitation of L'Escales. While he was doing this, I got the idea, which was literal. It was Spanish, 'Spanish Harlem,' and I wrote it - wrote it on the spot."
A Spanish melody, set to a Brazilian (Baion) rhythm ("By My Baby," by the Ronettes, would use it, too - "for a while, that rhythm became everyone's idea of what rock and roll was," Leiber's partner, Mike Stoller, would say.) And, of course, strings on top. (According to the American Masters biography of Ertegun - which is 20x better than the half-assed AM bio of Marvin Gaye, which PBS aired last week - the strings annoyed one of Atlantic's founders, Herb Abramson, so much that he left the company.)
Synthetic.
J'OUVERT BARRIO
Roaring Lion
Available on: The Sacred 78s
Ice : 1994
[Out of Print]
Compare "Spanish Harlem" to Roaring Lion's J'ouvert Barrio, which was recorded a few decades earlier.
The drumming, and the tightly-structured call-and-response, are utterly African. The trumpet and saxophone solos are utterly American. The lyrics combine English and patois, and conflate the sacred and the secular. And the violin at the end sounds like something you'd hear on a Django Reinhardt recording.
Synthetic?
MAMBO IN AFRICA
Maya Angelou
Miss Calypso
Scamp : 1956
[Buy It]
I LEARN A MERENGUE, MAMA
Robert Mitchum
Calypso - Is Like So
Scamp: 1957
[Buy It]
FIRE DOWN THERE
The Charmer
Monogram : c. 1954
Available on: Calypso Favorites: 1953-1954
Bostrox : 2000
[Out of Print]
Moistworks readers know that I've got a real soft spot for real calypso. In America, the form was once so popular that it threatened to eclipse rock and roll in the public imagination. Maya Angelou, Robert Mitchum, and Louis Farrakhan (or, Louis Eugene Walcott, who performed as The Charmer) all cut calypso albums.
But, with the exception of Farrakhan (who was once a serious musician, and spent some years playing alongside of bona-fide Calypsonians), American calypsonians aspired to the condition of Harry Belafonte, and the results made "Spanish Harlem" sound like folk music.
BELAFONTE
King Solomon
Carnival Kings & Pink Gin
Cook : 1957
[Buy It]
What I'm really talking about here is cultural colonialism, which brings me to a song called "Barbados Carnival."
I first heard it on Dizzy Gillespie's 1964 album Jambo Caribe!; according to the liner notes, "'Barbados Carnival' was written by [Gillespie's] multitalented bassist-guitarist-vocalist Chris White, whose wildsounding [sic] 'ah! ah!' echoes infectuously throughout this tune. Chris discovered his inspiration for this assertive rhythmic refrain on the island of Barbados in the West Indies." Needless to say, the song's credited to Chris White. But the other day, I came across another recording of "Barbados Carnival" - except for an extra verse, it's almost identical, and while I can't find a date, I'm 99.999% sure it's earlier. Which leads me to think that, if Dizzy Gillespie's sidemen are treating Trinidad's music as their own, personal property - well, draw your own conclusions:
BARBADOS CARNIVAL
Dizzy Gillespie
Jambo Caribe!
Verve : 1964
[Buy It]
BARBADOS CARNIVAL
Mighty Panther
Available on: Legends of Calypso
Arc : 2002
[Buy It]Labels: alex, calypso, kitsch, pop
posted by Alex
LINK |
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
