celebrate: Celebration/Kool & the Gang

 

As Jordan Becker pointed out earlier this week, there is lots of room for celebration if you look at life with that kind of a mind-set (He wrote: "Another thing to celebrate about writing for SMM is how much I’ve learned about music because I (usually) do research ..."). Like him, I find that I find that SMM has helped me to grow - and that is one more little reason for celebration. Of music. Of the role that SMM has played for us. 

Like JD Becker, I celebrate the learning that writing for SMM seems to require, which is part of why I appreciate Seuras Og's celebration of candy ("Celebrations is the brand name for a selection of miniature chocolate bars over here"). What? See? Many ways to celebrate. May your year-end celebrations be "all right", as the lyrics of this song say.

From me/this post? Kool & the Gang are still touring and making music. Producer of this song, Eumir Deodato, is also still at it, too. Like a number of groups that have managed to survive 50 years and still produce music, Kool & the Gang have made changes over the years, but Robert "Kool" Bell  has been there all along, as have George Brown and Dennis Thomas. (Well, no. Thomas died not too long back, but he was there throughout.)

You may not know their songs Jungle Boogie or Hollywood Swinging, their first big hits, but you must live on another planet if you don't know Celebration. You probably also know Cherish.

The Kool & the Gang official website notes that Celebration has been added to the Library of Congress. That means it has been designated as "a work of enduring importance to American culture" and so needs to be preserved. Wikipedia tells us it is their first and only Billboard No.1 hit.

Celebration was produced by Eumir Deodato, the Brazilian pianist/composer and producer also known for work with Paul Desmond (Take Five), Frank Sinatra, Bjork.... Interestingly, he is also the grandfather of Hailey Bieber. 

 Kylie Minogue did a cover of the song, and the song is not surprisingly a staple at all sorts of celebratory events where you may have heard it played. 

"Ce-le-brate good times, come on!"

Little/Few: Little Eva

 [purchase]

When she was fifteen years old, Eva Boyd moved from North Carolina to Brighton Beach, Brooklyn, and worked as a maid and occasional babysitter. We’d probably never have heard of Boyd if it weren’t for two important facts. First, she had a great voice, and second, the couple she babysat for was Carole King and Gerry Goffin. 

There’s a story that King and Goffin wrote “The Loco-Motion” for Boyd because they liked her dancing style, but that’s supposedly apocryphal. In fact, they originally wrote the song to capitalize on the craze for “dance songs” for Dee Dee Sharp, who’d had a dance song hit with “Mashed Potato Time,” but she declined. Boyd had sung the demo version, and when Sharp passed, they returned to Boyd, and the record was released in 1962 under Boyd’s nickname, “Little Eva,” on Don Kirshner’s Dimension Records. Because there was no existing “Loco-Motion” dance, Little Eva had to create one. You can see her, to some degree, and the background dancers, to a greater degree, doing the dance in the video, which was recorded in 1965 on the TV show Shindig!, and is the only video of her singing the song (although I’m pretty sure she’s lip synching). 

“The Loco-Motion” became a big hit—hitting No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 and ending the year as the No. 7 biggest song of 1962. It later charted in other countries again in the 70’s and 80’s. There’s another story that Eva was only paid $50 for the song, but since she didn’t own it, it is likely that $50 was her weekly salary, which was at least 3 times what she was making from babysitting. Goffin and King mined Boyd’s troubled personal life for the song, "He Hit Me (And It Felt Like a Kiss),” a creepy song about abuse recorded by The Crystals, which I wrote a little about here (scroll down...), but is best mostly forgotten. 

After her success with “The Loco-Motion,” Boyd was stereotyped as a “dance song” artist, and had trouble getting good material, despite her talent and close ties to the Goffin/King family, although another of her dance song, “Let’s Turkey Trot,” gets dusted off every year for Thanksgiving (as does “Mashed Potato Time,” for that matter) and she was able to tour during the 1960s. She retired from music in 1971, basically penniless. Until a hit cover of the song by Kylie Minogue in 1988 (which Boyd said she didn’t like) raised her profile enough to hit the oldies circuit. Boyd was diagnosed with cervical cancer in 2001 and she died in 2003.

Spies & Secrets: It's No Secret

purchase [Jefferson Airplane Takes Off]

James Bond, The Man from UNCLE, Our Man Flint ... the 60s spawned an interest in spies that played out in various TV and movie productions both in the US and in the UK.

Way out in San Fransisco, things were headed in a different direction. The "kids" out there tended to look askance at government antics - establishment lies and secrets. Some thumbed their noses, some were outright in-your-face hostile, in the streets protesting the government, while others chose to share their anti-government message in lyrics and song. Among those choosing music was Jefferson Airplane. Check out the lyrics for We Can Be Together.

Just a few weeks back, J.David noted the passing of Marty Balin, but in doing so, probably didn't anticipate that someone else would bring it back around in the Spies/Secrets theme.

Jefferson Airplane Takes Off. One of the earliest albums I owned. My musical proclivity then, as now, was pretty eclectic. Probably my favorite from this, their first album is <Let's Get Together> - a full on plea for the hippie-dom philosophy of "we are all brothers (and sisters)". After that track? It's a toss-up between <Come Up the Years> and <It's No Secret>.

<It's No Secret> isn't a song about spies. It's a plaintive Marty Balin love song. This, of course, before Grace Slick. And there doesn't appear to be any spying going on here. After all "it's no secret".
But consider the lyrics (credited to Balin):

As I get older the years they get heavy for you
Oh is it any wonder why I feel that my whole life is through
Yeah, when I stop feeling how strong my love is for you
Oh, know I'll be empty wanting your love like I do

This is nothing like the Beatles <Love Me Do>. The chord changes are beyond the Beatles' I-IV-V, and the notion of love that the song expounds is beyond the innocence of the "Love Me Do" type.

Incidentally, there are other <It's No Secret>s out there - because sometimes love IS a personal secret:

Elvis on a totally different track (he sings "... no secret what God can do"):

Kylie Minogue