1,001 songs to listen to before you die...

[LittleDaniel]

Ooooh I love that Cab Calloway song (though I mostly know it through the amazing Betty Boop short*) and Robert Johnson is one of my favorite blues musicians so I'm gonna have to check out the rest of this and follow along!

I'm with Puke, hopefully there's some Woody Guthrie on here, if only because I'd be interested in what song they would pick.

 

 

 

* 

 

[MalaCloudy Black]

I mean it has to be "This Land Is Your Land", right?

[LittleDaniel]

It probably would be, but I'd much prefer to see something like "Do Re Mi" or "Pretty Boy Floyd" as opposed to something that's so ubiquitous in the states

[Liam]

Wouldn't it most probably be the most obvious/ubiquitous choice, considering the nature of the book? I'm expecting most choices to be fairly on the nose or logical in terms of being the person's biggest hits.

[GoGo Yubari]

That Lead Belly choice isn't the most obvious one, IMO, that would be "In the Pines" or "Goodnight Irene."

[Malenko]

Billie Holiday (with one L), what a legend. I'd say there could/should be more from her but Strange Fruit was her most successful song so maybe that's all we're getting.

And Somewhere Over the Rainbow being included is fair in my book. Regardless of its origin. It's a beautiful song.

 

Also, thanks for the background on each song.

[Skummy]

On 04/01/2020 at 11:01, Liam said:

10.      

‘Brother, Can You Spare A Dime?’, Bing Crosby (1932)

A song that very much caught the tone of the time period, ‘Brother, Can You Spare A Dime?’ came during the time of the Great Depression and told a story of a man who suffered through this moment in history. Written for a musical (Americana), the lyrics cleverly use ideas around railroads and towers, these bastions of industrialisation and perceived development, to add to the sense of melancholy as the narrator speaks of his involvement in the building of these, only to now be begging for a dime. Crosby’s voice is melodious, yet urgent as things progress, finely building a sense of what the character was and what he had become.

I love Cab Calloway and a lot of the blues stuff you've been posting, love the idea for the thread - I just wanted to comment specifically on Bing, as the importance of his vocal style is massively underappreciated, because it's completely taken for granted. But if you listen to the earlier songs on this list, the vocals tend to be big loud baritones, or call-and-response, or (like the early Cajun music) vocal styles that sound quite odd to modern ears, because the singers were used to singing in such a way as to be heard from the stage, or from the centre of a barn. For volume in public performance, basically.

Crosby's real significance was in singing for a microphone, and for recording, before anyone else really did. It means he's able to add more inflection and, arguably, emotion to the vocals, to place emphasis on the lyrics a little more, and it feels more intimate and almost conversational for it. 

 

Somewhere Over The Rainbow is a wonderful song, I'd make a case for it as one of the finest ever written. I know a drag act who used to begin the show as Wizard of Oz Dorothy performing it, then end the show as old, bitter Judy Garland performing the same song, to demonstrate how context can make it either hopeful or despairing. 

 

[Liam]

6 hours ago, Malenko said:

Billie Holiday (with one L), what a legend. I'd say there could/should be more from her but Strange Fruit was her most successful song so maybe that's all we're getting.

And Somewhere Over the Rainbow being included is fair in my book. Regardless of its origin. It's a beautiful song.

 

Also, thanks for the background on each song.

No worries. I don't really know a lot about music, so it helps to support my random musings with something of substance. 

[LittleDaniel]

10 hours ago, Liam said:

Wouldn't it most probably be the most obvious/ubiquitous choice, considering the nature of the book? I'm expecting most choices to be fairly on the nose or logical in terms of being the person's biggest hits.

Yeah, I went back and forth before I posted about whether or not that was, like, the whole point or not.  With "This Land is Your Land" in particular, at least in my case, that was a song that I learned in elementary school without learning who wrote it and I went probably a good 10-15 years between hearing the song for the first time and hearing my second Woody Guthrie song.

But, like, at the same time, if someone asked me to show them a Woody Guthrie song it would be pretty far down my list.

Regardless, love the thread!

[Liam]

2 minutes ago, LittleDaniel said:

Yeah, I went back and forth before I posted about whether or not that was, like, the whole point or not.  With "This Land is Your Land" in particular, at least in my case, that was a song that I learned in elementary school without learning who wrote it and I went probably a good 10-15 years between hearing the song for the first time and hearing my second Woody Guthrie song.

But, like, at the same time, if someone asked me to show them a Woody Guthrie song it would be pretty far down my list.

Regardless, love the thread!

Thanks for the kind words.

Funnily enough, I've never heard any Woody Guthrie whatsoever. Will be interested to see when/if he turns up.

[Malenko]

I'm pretty sure if your book was released this decade, "This Land Is Your Land" will.

When the Compilation/Book Woody at 100 was released he started being mentioned everywhere as a big influence for musicians (folk or otherwise) who weren't shy about their political leanings. Obviously he wasn't unknown beforehand but that box set was nominated for grammies and came out in a few best of lists by music critics. Personally, I don't care much about these lists and awards and I'm not judging one way or another but considering the type of book, popularity among the music community will be taken into account, and the easiest way to get him in the book will be through "This Land Is Your Land".

[Liam]

19.      

 ‘Mbube’, Solomon Linda and the Evening Birds (1939)

Another song on the list that has its history firmly rooted in the exploitation of the tune for financial gain, this was the song that eventually became reworked into ‘The Lion Sleeps Tonight’ (royalties of $15 million for its use in The Lion King gives a sense of the money earned) whilst Solomon Linda died a pauper. What makes its later iterations good songs is already present in the ‘original’ so to speak, with a simple and catchy melody as a base for Linda’s swooping vocals to play around on top. An interesting opportunity to hear the genesis of a song that is pretty universally known as of this day, even with the somewhat tragic nature of the financial exploitation surrounding it.

20.      

‘Java Jive’, The Ink Spots (1940)

Perhaps a window into a more sheltered world that was to be swept away by the tragedies of war and the eventual drug/sex excess of the 60s, this is an interesting addition to the list – a celebration of coffee by The Ink Spots. Outside of the band’s popularity during this time period, including tours of the United Kingdom, I don’t quite get why this is on the list…but I really like it. Fuck it. Works for me. The harmonising in particular is great to listen to and as a man who likes a cup of coffee, I salute them.

21.      

‘Gloomy Sunday’, Billie Holiday (1941)

Within the opening lines of ‘Gloomy Sunday’, the range of Holiday is instantly apparent as she moves effortlessly from the low to the high in her – at times almost seductive – lament for the dead. What’s interesting here is that this song was written by a Hungarian composer called Rezső Seress in the 30s and covered by other artists, yet this is considered the defining version. It even garnered some backlash for added lyrics that implied the song’s protagonist to be contemplating suicide (Seress himself would complete suicide around thirty years later). Never had death sounded so sexy or enticing until Holiday worked her charm on this song, you could argue. Holiday’s vocals are almost alcoholic in their headiness (helped along by the simple, yet effective, arrangement); the woozy smoothness of her lilting delivery is hard not to fall in love with. Probably my favourite song to date.

 

People have already, but do feel free to comment on any or all of the songs I post.

Edited January 7, 2020 by Liam

[Malenko]

The Ink Spots were pretty influential at the time. I understand they're different from pretty much everything you posted so far but they were influential for many people in doo-wop and rhythm and blues in general n the following decade. Also, many of their songs were used in movies and series (old and new), although mostly when the director wants to add an old timey vocal jazz vibe to a scene. The song itself is a surprise. They had many more successful/famous and I still feel the writer of that book will pick obvious choices more often than not.

[Skummy]

Yeah, the Ink Spots are another one that are really influential in terms of vocal styles, presaging a lot of major developments in popular music in the early '50s, and in bridging the gap between black and white audiences. I'm not sure why that song in particular was chosen, but it's as good a representation of their work as any. 

My favourite song of theirs is "I Don't Want To Set The World On Fire", which is used frequently in the Fallout series.

Gloomy Sunday is an absolute stone-cold classic, and genuinely moving every time I hear it. There's an urban legend of it being something of a cursed song, that so many people who performed or recorded it ended up committing suicide. 

[METALMAN]

I'd not heard that Ink Spots one before but I like it. Slight calypso lilt to it, almost reminds me of Blind Blake. I like the other ones too. 

It's good that this book features a decent smattering of songs from the 20s-40s. Most of these retrospectives that I'm familiar with tend to be more based on albums, but with the age of the LP only dawning in the mid 50s you usually get a collection that starts with Elvis Presley's debut or a Frank Sinatra one and has no real way of representing the nice music that came before.

There's a similar difficulty in classical music. In the 19th century lots of composers, especially the German/Austrian ones like Mahler, Schumann and Schubert wrote a number of great songs but nobody was really sure what to do with them because they weren't part of a symphony or a suite or an opera or whatever.

[Skummy]

12 minutes ago, metalman said:

Slight calypso lilt to it

Bit of a tangent, but I was actually hoping we'd start to see some calypso pop up as move into the '50s. I'm getting really into London-based Trinidadian music from the '50s at the moment, and some of it is absolutely wonderful, as it tends to be rich in social commentary, an interesting insight into the time. It feels like, as a genre, it was largely overlooked after reggae became prominent in the subsequent decade and now, listening to it with 60-70 years' remove, that makes it still feel quite fresh and interesting, even though it's unmistakably of its time. 

[Colly]

It kind of peaked with the seminal Leeds United Calypso in the 60s so they thought there's no point trying to top it.

[VerbalPuke]

On 06/01/2020 at 19:32, LittleDaniel said:

It probably would be, but I'd much prefer to see something like "Do Re Mi" or "Pretty Boy Floyd" as opposed to something that's so ubiquitous in the states

I really like the stuff off of Dust Bowl Ballads with Tom Joad Pt 1 and 2 as my favorite. It's a great song (songs), obviously just a quick re-telling of Grapes of Wrath. But I love that one of my favorite folk artists is singing about one of my favorite authors stories.

And Blowin' Down This Road, that's another great one.

[METALMAN]

1 hour ago, Colly said:

It kind of peaked with the seminal Leeds United Calypso in the 60s so they thought there's no point trying to top it.

Come on, we had this one just in the last decade:

 

 

[9 to 5]

4 hours ago, Skummy said:

 

My favourite song of theirs is "I Don't Want To Set The World On Fire", which is used frequently in the Fallout series.

Exactly the way I got into the Ink Spots.