Horns: Two Tributes to Trumpeters

David Wilcox: Chet Baker's Swan Song

[purchase]

Sheryl Crown: We Do What We Can

[purchase]

Two smooth, moody bittersweet ballads of talent lost to the ages -- one nominally folk, the other pop -- which adopt jazz trope and trumpet as a mechanism for paying tribute to beloved jazz trumpet players.

David Wilcox' first person paean to Chet Baker, who struggled with drug addiction for much of his career, paints him as helpless and desperate; the sweet jazzfolk approach effectively evokes both Chet's typically sultry sound and the languid, surface-smooth heroin dreams which many believe prompted him to end his life by leaping off the balcony of a Amsterdam hotel room.

Meanwhile, popster Sheryl Crow dwells in the memory of her father as a frustrated jazzman and lawyer; the faint, high trumpet notes which underscore the arrangement are a subtle wail of lost promise, but the way they waft through the song like the tendrils of memory is perfect for the neo-noir subject treatment.

Interestingly, in addition to similarities of trumpet, trumpeter, tone and tempo, both of these songs are their respective albums' penultimate track; in each case, they are followed by a simple, equally slow song of hope and faith. Coincidence?

Horns: Stairway To Heaven

Considering this is a 1988 reggae version of one of the most overplayed songs of all time, this must be my most uncharacteristic post ever. But for this week's theme I couldn't resist sharing Zappa's amazing 5-piece horn recreation of the famous guitar solo at the end of Stairway.

From the self-destructive touring band behind The Best Band You Never Heard In Your Life [purchase], featuring the Fowler Brothers on horns (among others) and Ike Willis on vocals.

Frank Zappa: Stairway To Heaven

Horns: An Alternate Viewpoint

I like to try and approach things from a slightly different angle. I think from my few contributions on this site you can tell one of my favorite things to do is research a song and tell it's story instead of just talking about the song. When I saw this weeks theme I almost just skipped it. Nothing jumped right to mind. Then, after marinating on it for a couple of days the fog cleared and I realized what this theme needed...an alternate point of view.

SONG
Pronunciation: \ˈsȯŋ\ Function: noun
1: a short musical composition of words and music b: a collection of such compositions

So...you have a theme of horns, a music blog and football season starting next week. Why rack my brain looking for some Motown classic featuring horns? There is an element of music out there where the horn, instead of being an accent piece or a bit player, is the main man....the electric guitar if you will....the NCAA Marching Band.

So, in honor of the NCAA and NFL football seasons being right around the corner I am featuring the greatest college football fight song ever (granted, i may be a little biased) and some other's that I like. I hope y'all enjoy it.

The Best:
Florida State Seminole Marching Chiefs - War Chant

The Rest:
The Miami Hurricanes Fight Song
The Notre Dame Fighting Irish Fight Song
Alabama's Roll Tide Roll
Tennessee's Rocky Top
Michigan's Hail To The Victors

The NFL's Theme Song

[purchase]

(from Autopsy IV of ninebullets.net)

Horns: Most Likely You Go Your Way

Bob Dylan: Most Likely You Go Your Way (And I’ll Go Mine) 

[purchase]

In addition to being one of the many superbly verbose Dylan titles, “Most Likely You Go Your Way” is just jazzy. Dylan comes screamin’ in on the harp – backed up conservatively by a single trumpet – maybe… no horn expert. The horn is faded out of the mix almost entirely through the middle but quietly returns to help strut the song out alongside Dylan and his harmonica. As the lead off track on one of the first ever ‘Side 3s’ in Rock history, the song used the barnyard tempo to reel the listener back in for the second half of the seminal Blond on Blonde.




In 2007, English mixing phenom Mark Ronson earned unprecedented permission from Dylan to work-over the song. You may know Mark from his work as producer on Amy Winehouse’s Back To Black – and hey, he made her sound sober for an entire album. Ronson’s ‘cover’ interestingly enough does not take away from the song one bit. He found the original intention for the song that was hiding somewhere in the back of the mix with that lone trumpet, and simply blew it up. Ronson has been known to liberally apply horn sections to his music – and here he does not disappoint.

Mark Ronson: Most Likely You Go Your Way (And I’ll Go Mine) - Remix 

[purchase]

Check out Mark’s elaborate video for the remix (YouTube) – with a faceless, I’m Not There-type look at the various stages of Dylan.

Horns: Try A Little Tenderness

Otis Redding: Try A Little Tenderness

[purchase]

This song begins with one of my favorite horn parts in all of pop music. Then, as the song slowly builds up into the powerhouse that it becomes, the horns both support and compliment Otis Redding's vocals just right.

Horns: The Dry Cleaner From Des Moines

Back in Cars week, in my Cadillac post, I mentioned that Joni Mitchell had taken a dive deep into the heart of jazz. Now, It's time to tell that story.

Joni Mitchell: The Dry Cleaner From Des Moines

[purchase]


In the early part of her career, Joni Mitchell's music went from spare arrangements for voice and acoustic guitar or piano, to fuller arrangements. Throughout, she used harmonies that no one who liked folk music or pop had ever heard before. Many an amateur guitar player came close, when trying to play her songs, to giving up the instrument in despair, before they realized that Joni got those sounds by actually changing the tuning of her guitar. So it shouldn't have surprised anyone when David Crosby suggested that Joni try working with jazz musicians. After summing up the first part of her career with a live album, (Miles of Aisles), Joni gave it a shot.

Now I would guess that neither Crosby nor Mitchell knew any straight-ahead jazz players at that point, so her first experiments were done with Tom Scott and the LA Express. This was a group of LA studio musicians with jazz training who were paying the bills by playing on pop records; as a band, they were playing the kind of fusion jazz that I have described elsewhere as musical wallpaper. In combination with Joni Mitchell, however, the created two of her finest albums, Court and Spark and The Hissing of Summer Lawns.

Joni Mitchell has always had a great musical curiosity, and as she continued her exploration of jazz, she began to meet more musicians who could help point the way. From the sound of the album, I imagine that during the recording of Hejira, someone said to her, "Joni, if you want the bass to sound like Jaco Pastorius, why not get Jaco Pastorius?" And she did. By all accounts, they became great friends, and Pastorius was still around for the recording of Don Juan's Reckless Daughter.

So that was where things stood when a phone call came from out of the blue. Jazz legend Charles Mingus was dying, and he wanted Joni Mitchell to help him record his last album. After picking herself up from the floor, she agreed, and the resulting album was Mingus. Mitchell and Mingus worked against the clock to finish the album, but Charles Mingus died before it could be released. He did, however, get to hear demos of all the songs. After that experience, Mitchell apparently felt that she had gone as far as she could go with jazz. She summed up that part of her career with a live album, (Shadows and Light), and moved on. Sadly Jaco Pastorius also died around that same time.

"The Dry Cleaner From Des Moines" begins with a blast from the horn section, who then disappear. But fear not, they do reappear later, and the song does not work without them. There is also a solo soprano sax part, played by Wayne Shorter. Wayne Shorter and Jaco Pastorius had worked together before, in a band you may have heard of called Weather Report. I have included their best known song here as a bonus track.

Weather Report: Birdland

[purchase]



Submitted by Darius

Horns: The Long Tomorrow

Tied & Tickled Trio: The Long Tomorrow

[purchase]

In the late 90s, to talk about the many bands operating in Chicago was really to talk about maybe ten guys playing in multiple iterations. Tortoise was the central axis, with the Sea & Cake, Isotope 217, Chicago Underground Duo, Brokeback, Papa M, and countless others all circling the beast like little parasites. Most of these incarnations were releasing their records on the Thrill Jockey label.

Over in Munich (or thereabouts), the exact same thing was happening in parallel. Substitute the Notwist for Tortoise and ancillary moons Ms. John Soda, Console, Lali Puna, Schneider TM, and the Tied & Tickled Trio. As with the Chicago collective, most of these bands all released records through one label, Morr Music. Brothers Micha and Markus Acher take time from the electronica/rock fusing Notwist to contribute to the electronica/jazz fusing Trio—which by the way is actually a septet, including one member who improvises electronics right alongside the horn players.

"The Long Tomorrow" is the opening track from the 2003 album (and career highlight) Observing Systems. This album is the group's best synthesis of moody electronics within a fully functioning jazz ensemble. 1999's EA1 EA2 and 2001's Electric Avenue Tapes are also great albums, though not as fully realized as this album; last year's Aelita saw the group inexplicably abandon the horn section and move more toward electronica, dub, and ambient, to middling success.

Horns: Emerald City Hall

Mandible: Emerald City Hall [purchase]

Figuring that most people would be posting jazz, jazz samples, and jazz-influenced rock, I wanted to go in another direction. Mandible uses the trumpet, not for improvisational exhibition, but as a framing device for their challenging, spastic, but ultimately rewarding cartoon music. And I say "cartoon music" in the highest, Raymond Scott/Carl Stalling sense of the phrase. This is a band that isn't happy unless a song has at least 17 changes. OK, that's a slight exaggeration. But, if you're like me and you've ever wondered what it would sound like if They Might Be Giants covered Dark Side Of The Moon, now you have your answer. And like TMBG, Mandible is one of those rare bands that creates compositionally challenging music, yet maintains a total command of their humor sensors. Funny, off-beat, yet ultimately rewarding, (Here Come The) Mandible is the Raising Arizona of albums.

Horns: Luchini AKA This Is It

Camp Lo: Luchini AKA This Is It

[purchase]

Who'd have thought that Horn Week would turn SMM into a hip hop blog? This is the third post in two days to cover a hip hop track. Though, considering we collectively don't seem to own anything released after 1997, I have a feeling the trend won't hold.

Anyway, Camp Lo's Uptown Saturday Night is a (lost?) classic of the genre. Though the duo of Sonny Cheeba and Geechi Suede are still together, they never made another real dent into the mainstream after this single. But don't let that stop you from picking up the album if you ever see it. The whole thing is solid from end to end, heavily influenced by 60s and 70s funk and soul (as opposed to P-Funk, which was seeping into so much hip hop at the time), with a heavy dose of blaxploitation. I love the way the horns kick with the bass drum on this track. And I love both rappers' flow. Cheeba is cartoonishly cool while Suede is legitimately so (a template for Outkast?). Listen to the way Suede's flow just completely transforms mid-verse around the two minute mark.

Horns: I've Grown Accustomed To Her Face

Chet Baker: I've Grown Accustomed To Her Face

I'm not going to offer anything new from when I first posted this.

It's out of print* and full of scratchy-ness... If you can't dig that, mama, then you're outta my mind. Almost as much as Chet was out of his, back then.

But, you're still beautiful. Almost as much as Chet was...

...back then.

*Darius found it in print: See comments for a purchase link.

Horns: Spinning Wheel

Blood, Sweat & Tears: Spinning Wheel

[purchase]

Yet another Grammy-winning Jazz-influenced hybrid from NYC, this time from a band which fused pop, rock, blues and jazz instrumentation and style to form Jazz-Rock (which Wikipedia redirects as a synonym for Jazz Fusion, though I would argue that Jazz-Rock is much more pop- and blues oriented).

I have fond memories of discovering this 1969 sophomore self-titled release just to the left of the folk in my father's record collection one evening in the mid eighties, and subsequently staying up all night spinning and flipping it again and again, straining to catch every flourish and nuance, marveling at the interplay of ragged bluesrock vocals and tight horn arrangements. The album fully deserved its 1970 Grammy for Record of the Year, and the song easily merits its own Grammy for best instrumental arrangement accompanying a vocalist; though in a post-Chicago world it can be too-easily lumped together with the cheese, newcomers willing to listen deeply will find the sound as fresh and authentic as it once was, I think.

The horns here would become so much a part of the song that it would seem impossible to cover it without including them; though Vegas legend Jack Jones heads for a fusion lounge singer sound, and Shirley Bassey funks the place up with bass and blueswail, note how in each cover, the horns embed themselves in the arrangement just about where they were for the original.

Jack Jones: Spinning Wheel [purchase]

Shirley Bassey: Spinning Wheel [purchase]

Horns: Rebirth of Slick (Cool Like Dat)

Digable Planets: Rebirth of Slick (Cool Like Dat)

[purchase]

Matt broke the Hip Hop barrier before I could get to this track, and it's hard to top any song that includes both Michael Franti and William S. Burroughs, so I'll keep it short: though this first single from NYC Jazz / Hip Hop fusion trio Digable Planets uses horns only for a particular post-verse emphasis on the short titular chorus, without 'em, this would be a b-side on an album which, itself, marked the height of popularity for both this unusual hybrid form and the artists that created it. Instead, the blare of the horns frames the sparse, broken beat and otherwise-silence which accompanies the dreamy, thoughtful, intelligent lyrics, making a smooth, catchy post-street neo-Beatnik jazzpoetry which not only won a Grammy in 1993 for Best Rap Performance by a Duo or Group, but lingered in this adolescent's turntable for months.

Sadly, however, it's not hard to see why Digable Planets' second album was a flop: the rest of Reachin' (A New Refutation of Time and Space) pretty much sounds just like this track, so who needed more than one album of it? As a novelty, it is powerful and refreshing, well worth having; in the long run, diversification probably would have made a difference. Today, though all involved have under-the-radar solo careers, notably, it is turntablist, soundman, producer and remixer King Britt, nee Silkworm, who often plays with ?uestlove Thompson of The Roots, who is best known, rather than the three vocalists Butterfly, Doodlebug, and Ladybug Mecca.

Horns: Louis Armstrong

I think what gets lost in the fog of time is the full picture of Louis Armstrong. Most people today know him as the old d00d that sang Hello, Dolly and Wonderful World, wiping his brow between the occasional toots on his horn. Matt Glaser nailed Armstrong and his contributions during a 1998 interview for Ken Burns' Jazz:

Why is it that we are still talking about Louis Armstrong, almost 100 years after his birth?

Oh, man. I think the true, profoundly intellectual contribution of Louis Armstrong has not been fully understood by the general public. Here's this wonderful, warm, avuncular guy who's known to the people around the world as the guy who sang, "Hello, Dolly," smiling and laughing. But it reminds of a story of a, Freeman Dyson said about the physicist Richard Fineman. He said when he first met him he thought he was half genius and half buffoon. But after knowing him for a long time he realized he was all genius and all buffoon. And people, people expect art to be serious and, and dry and something, whereas Louis' art is as deep and as profound as any art that's ever been on Earth. And yet it's, it's an art of joy and, human experience embodied. So, and yet I think at the same time Louis was just part of the intellectual trend that was going on in other, in the arts and in the sciences. He was the first person to embody abstraction musically. Other people used abstraction in music, but over time. Composers would sit down and take an idea and toy with it over time, but Louis could spontaneously take a melody and abstract it, that is remove all the unessentials from this melody and be left with just this pure vision of what the melody could be. And this is of course an idea that has been the grist for Jazz musicians since that, since that time. And it can all be traced back to Louis, this idea of abstracting a melody.

You had a quote about they say that all philosophy...

Oh, yeah. I think it was Alfred North Whitehead, a philosopher, said that all of Western philosophy can be reduced to commentary on Plato. You can say that all of western philosophy is merely commentary on Plato. Well it's absolutely true that all of Jazz is commentary on Louie Armstrong. And you can show specific examples of this when you listen to the Miles Davis of the "Kind of Blue" album, the way he plays on "So What." Ba, ba, boo, boom, boo, boo, bee, bum, bee, bum, bum. Boo, boo... a simple melody that a, an initial motif is developed over time. That idea comes from Louis, and Miles himself said, "You cannot play anything on a trumpet that Louie Armstrong, Louie Armstrong did not play already." If you listen to his, the, the most profound advances that Louie Armstrong made were in the area of rhythm. Jazz is the ultimate temporal artform. Music is a temporal artform, but Jazz is ultimately the temporal artform. And it's about the human experience of time. How is time embodied? So you listen to Louis playing a quarter note, and suddenly your whole experience of that day has changed. You hear him playing this one quarter note, and time is not moving along in the way that it normally moves along. And if you listen to modern Jazz, it's taken sixty years for Louis' idea of sophisticated polyrhythm to meld down into the Jazz rhythm section, that is into the drums and the bass. When Louis was playing, he sounded like he came from Mars. He's playing the most sophisticated things imaginable and the other guys are playing very, what sounds now very dated. Louis' music never sounds dated, but the bands that he played with often did. But now sixty years later you have bands that are finally absorbed his messages, his ideas rhythmically. And that's still, this is still what Jazz musicians are working on, sixty years after his main recordings.

That's terrific. Can you imagine a moment in Denmark — what's this story?

Well, all of us have had these epochal moments where you, you see your, you see something or you hear some music and your life is changed forever. For me, it was seeing a film on television of Louie Armstrong playing in Copenhagen, Denmark in 1933, playing the tune "Dinah." He is absolutely on fire, unbelievable. And, and his solo on "Dinah" is a, is a perfect example of this abstraction. And it occurred to me that it was possible and no one will tell me otherwise, it's a fantasy that I treasure, that Werner Hizenberg could have been in the audience in Copenhagen in 1933. He lived in Copenhagen at that time, and in 1933 he won the Nobel prize for his work on quantum mechanics. And I've always had this fantasy that he and a couple of other scientists after a hard day of work on quantum mechanics went out that night, heard Louie Armstrong, and were completely blown away, and realized that in a completely different idiom, he embodied everything that they were working on. Profound new ideas about time, space and human, the human place in the cosmos. And they saw Louis playing and they thought, "Wow, that's it." In a language utterly different than their scientific language. And yet it's the same... a modern response, this is the story of modernism.

If you look at these paintings by Mondrian, when he started out painting a bridge when he was a young man, it looked like a bridge. You see it, it's a bridge. Then gradually over time, he would remove elements from that picture of the bridge, remove more elements, boil these elements down until,until there was just a gesture of a bridge, until the 1930's you would just see two lines in space. And, and Louis I'm sure was not thinking, "Oh, my God, I've got to do something just like Mondrian on the trumpet." But innately he was. Somehow these ideas were in the cosmos, and I personally would rather hear Louie communicate these ideas than anybody else, either Hizenberg or Mondrian or anybody. Because for him, these ideas are embodied, experienced and can be communicated in an embodied and experiential kind of way.

I wanna just talk a little bit about Einstein, because I really think the greatest parallel between Armstrong is with Louis, is, is with Albert Einstein. First of all, there are these obvious parallels that both of them were founders of new ways of looking at the world. Louis Armstrong founded Jazz phrasing, a new way of experiencing time. And, and Albert Einstein founded the theory of relativity. They were thought of by the general public in similar kinds of ways. They were avuncular, warm people who were known all over the world. I mean, Albert Einstein was known by everyone, even people who had no idea of what his theories were about. And they generally liked him, they liked his vibe. He was a warm, kind of strange-looking kind of guy who smiled alot. Louis Armstrong was known all over the world by people who had no real interest in Jazz, as this incredibly warm communicator of joy, even if they didn't know exactly why he should be so famous. So on, on that obvious level there's some relationship to them. But it occurred to me that there are a number of components that people commonly understand to be part of the theory of relativity. And one of those is that as you move closer to the speed of light, time slows down. So it occurred to me once while listening to a Louie Armstrong solo that he embodied this aspect of, of the theory of relativity. The faster the music would go, the more Louie sounded utterly at ease and utter, utterly relaxed. And you can actually do an experiment, what Einstein called "gedanken experiments," thought experiments. If you imagine all of the music removed except Louie's playing. And when you're left with just Louie's playing, what you have is freedom and eternity and rest. It's a paradox of music that music is both about being and becoming and music is the ultimate art of change and becoming. And yet at the same time, Louis' playing embodied being, just eternity, there is no time. And, and the faster the music went, the more Louis sounded relaxed.

He had slowed down time...

He had slowed, I think so. I really think so.

Somehow in his gut he was able to make time stop. And I think that's true for all great musicians, but no one more so than Louis Armstrong. That the faster the music went, the more it sounded like he was utterly at peace and utterly at ease. It's an extraordinary thing, really extraordinary.

Do you feel there's a connection between Einstein and Armstrong?

I've always felt that there's this connection between Louis Armstrong and Albert Einstein. And there's a connection between them on a variety of levels. They both initiated radical changes in human thought in their particular fields. Armstrong in music and Einstein in physics. Also paradoxically enough, they both, although they started these revolutionary schools, they both were kind of left behind by the, by their progeny. That is, Einstein never really got on board with quantum mechanics. He would say to Nils Bohr, "I refuse to believe that God plays dice with the universe." And Nils Bohr would say, "Stop telling God what to do." And Louis Armstrong, who really gave birth to Bebop, essentially in his solo on "Ding Dong Daddy from Dumas," he plays da, da, doop, da, doop, da, dap, do, dat, salt peanuts, which became the theme of Dizzy Gillespie. But he never really dug Bebop, and the Beboppers never realized their incredible debt to Armstrong.

Was there another scientific thing you wanted to throw out?

Yeah, I read a book by James Gliche called Chaos, which is about complexity theory and the Mandlebrat set. And it proves that in a finite space you can have infinite detail. And when I was listening to Louis play, I thought, "This is it. One note of Louis Armstrong is a finite amount of time." It takes place in three seconds, but there's an infinite amount of detail in that one note, it's complexity embodied.

I think we needed Louis Armstrong to get through this century. Do we need him?

I, you know, I'm just very happy to be on Earth when there is Louis Armstrong. People try to imagine what it was like to be on Earth before Mozart. Mozart's music is so important to us. Try to imagine what it was like to be on Earth before Louis Armstrong. It has meant so much to so many people, his music. It is, he makes people happy. I can't imagine a higher calling in life than that, I can't imagine a higher calling than making people feel joy.

Here's some choice Louie cuts - take the time to *really* listen to 'em.

Louis Armstrong & His Hot Seven: Potato Head Blues

[purchase]

Louis Armstrong: Tiger Rag

[purchase]

Louis Armstrong: Swing That Music

[purchase]

Horns: Ska Edition

The first thing I thought of when I saw this week's theme was, "Time for some ska". My first introduction to ska music came in 1979. It sounded like this:

Madness: One Step Beyond

[purchase]


I loved what I was hearing. I sought out all the ska I could find at the time, which led me to the Specials, Bad Manners, the English Beat, and the Selector. As I learned about the context for this music, I learned that ska was brought to England by Jamaican immigrants. The music was a precursor of reggae, popular in the 1960s. Once in England, the Jamaican immigrants started jamming with white English musicians who brought a punk element to the music. In the 1980s, the ska bands were the first interracial home-grown bands the English had seen. So this wave of ska bands referred to themselves as two-tone bands, and the label stuck.

So, I wondered, what did the Jamaican version sound like? I learned that the leading Jamaican ska band in the 1960s was the Skatalites. Unfortunately, most of the recordings from this period are very poor quality, but the music shines through. Roland Alphonso was originally a member of the Skatalites, and as heard here, he has remained faithful to the original Jamaican sound.

Roland Alphonso & The Soul Brothers: Phoenix City

[purchase]


Eventually, ska came to America in the late 1990s, in what is referred to as "the third wave". Some of the American bands have added a pop-punk accent to the sound, but I prefer those who have built on the two-tone sound. On of the best of these is the Toasters. They have remained faithful to their version of ska for many years.

The Toasters: Freedom

[purchase]


No one ever got rich playing ska, unfortunately. So many musicians who love the music, and play it well, don't stay with it; they broaden their sound to try to draw a wider audience, and wind up leaving the style behind. Save Ferris was a great ska band for one album; by the time they released their second album, all traces of the style had vanished. But that one album was great.

Save Ferris: Goodbye

[purchase]

Side note: If anybody has an mp3 of "In The Middle of the Night" by Madness, from One Step Beyond, please post it in the comments. Thanks.


Submitted by Darius

Horns: The Last Words Of Dutch Schultz

William S. Burroughs: The Last Words Of Dutch Schultz (This Is Insane)

[purchase]

Before Spearhead, Michael Franti was a member of The Disposable Heroes Of Hiphoprisy. Stepping away from their traditional rapping mode, the Heroes created a bed of music over which William S. Burroughs performed readings from some of his better known routines. The resulting album, Spare-Ass Annie and Other Tales, is by turns hilarious, disgusting, insightful, and insane. The insanity level is particularly high on the track I am sharing with you today.

Dutch Schultz (born Arthur Flegenheimer) was a New York City-area gangster in the 20s and 30s, who was "taken out" by his bosses when they worried he might rat on them... Though he was shot, and mortally wounded, it took nearly a full day for Dutch Schultz to die, during which time he drifted in and out of consciousness, babbling nonsensical and incoherent phrases. Thinking the words might be death-bed confessions, the police had a stenographer write down what the dying man was saying.

I don't know if the police were ever able to use any of Dutch Schultz' last words to their benefit, but Mr. William S. Burroughs managed to put them to quite good use for us!

Hip hop doesn't get too much play on The Machine, so this post might seem anomalous- but it's got horns!
.............
This song is taken from my (almost) worn out cassette copy of Spare-Ass Annie..., so the fidelity is not the best. My apologies for that, but I hope hope HOPE you are intrigued enough to track down your own copy. You will like it.

Horns: Mr. Jones

Talking Heads: Mr. Jones

[purchase]

Naked was to be the last Talking Heads album. The other members of the band had come to feel that David Byrne had taken over, leaving no room for their input. As great as Naked is, comparing its sound to Byrne's solo work immediately after the breakup of the band shows that they were right.

But what a way to go out! The album included the hit Nothing But Flowers, as well as Mr. Jones. Here Byrne uses Latin-style horns to kick this song into overdrive. For his solo album Rei Momo, Byrne would assemble a crack band of Latin musicians to continue exploring this sound.

Submitted by Darius

Horns: Tuatara

Tuatara: The Streets of New Delhi

[purchase]

Tuatara: Afterburner

[purchase]

According to their bio page on allmusic.com... "Tuatara is one of the more surprising and slightly ridiculous supergroups in rock history."

The band originally formed in 1996 with a core group of Peter Buck, Barrett Martin, Justin Harwood, and Skerik. Artists who have been a part of the group or have collaborated with Tuatara over the years include Scott McCaughey, Gary Louris, Victoria Williams, Mark Eitzel, and others.

Freedom from their established bands allows the members of Tuatara to follow whatever path their musical muse might take them down. Jazz, funk, rock, and world rhythms are all thrown into a blender with often mixed results, but it certainly is interesting to hear these alt-rockers try their hands at jazz and other musical styles.

Here are two tracks from the 1998 release, Trading with the Enemy. Most of the horns are provided by Skerik and Los Lobos' Steve Berlin.

Horns: Tenth Avenue Freeze Out

Bruce Springsteen: Tenth Avenue Freeze Out

[purchase]

Rock and roll should be fun. Bruce Springsteen used to be a lot of fun. This song is a perfect example. It makes you feel good to listen to it. Very exuberant and peppy.

It's also a great example of horn-driven rock. And it's not only Clarence Clemons doing the driving in this one. Mainly it's the brass riff. To my ears it sounds great.

Horns: Got To Get You Into My Life

The Beatles: Got To Get You Into My Life

[purchase]

Earth Wind & Fire: Got To Get You Into My Life

[purchase]

Bloggers don't usually bother prattling on about The Beatles; there seems to be an unspoken assumption in modern culture that the larger-than-life phenomenon of the Beatles as icons somehow contains their history, making any discourse moot. And it is true, I suppose, that the Beatles' use of horns is so culturally recognizable, it's practically memetic; I'm sure I'm not the only one who grew up believing that the French stole the first few bars of All You Need Is Love for their national anthem.

But before the brassband sound of 1967's Sgt. Pepper and its horn-carrying cover, or the faux-military capriciousness of the psychedelic, love-happy 1969 Yellow Submarine, came the sunshiny britpop of 1966 masterpiece Revolver, and it is here, in the underrated Got To Get You Into My Life, we find Beatles' first use of horns -- in truth, a better harbinger of the anthemic, almost carnivalesque sound of Sgt. Pepper than the animated nonsense of a brightly lit underwater world which would follow, though GTGYIML didn't chart until 1976, a full decade after its original release, when it was re-cast as a single with Helter Skelter on the B-side.

The song takes on a darker foreshadowing, too, revealing the kernels of later, deeper Beatles songs, if you accept the underground explanation, later confirmed in Paul's 1998 bio, that he wrote this one about his desire to smoke marijuana, rather than about, say, a girl.

Meanwhile, where the original song's use of brass provides a blare of orchestral sound right from the starting block, thus framing the Beatles' paean to reefer with a swinging pace, Earth Wind & Fire adopt a totally different approach for their take on the song for 1977 movie Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. Here, the electric fuzz of funk takes the intro, while the horn section takes a more Disco-era turn as a form of rhythmic flair more typically found in elevators than anywhere else these days. Take the two versions together, and despite the fact that they ultimately achieved their fame within a year from each other, you've got practically a textbook study in contrast between two musical genres, and their respective use of brass.

Horns: If I Can't Have You

Etta James & Harvey Fuqua: If I Can't Have You

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I've been scarce from SMM for the last couple of weeks (and probably will continue to be for the rest of the month), but I couldn't let this week's theme go by without throwing this one up. "If I Can't Have You" is not only my favorite Etta James song, it's among my favorite songs by anyone, ever. This song makes you happy, makes you dopey, makes you want to go up to your woman and give her a kiss or a pinch. And the sax that comes in during the chorus makes you want to do it in the most lascivious way possible: shoulders rollin', legs struttin'.

Harvey Fuqua's delivery in particular really makes the song. Every time I hear this tune I imagine Bill Cosby lip syncing—"I just don't—I just don't—I just don't want to be bothered with nobody..."—this is like the song that never made it to one of those classic Cosby Show episodes where the family lip syncs an r&b classic.