Tag Archives: Fats Waller

What’s Your Name?

Posted on March 7, 2015 by themesongsteve
What’s Your Name?

Women have inspired most of the popular songs we listen to. Many popular songs have female names in their titles. So many that I have chosen to go alphabetically.

Amelia My two favorite songs on Joni Mitchell’s Hejira album have women’s names in their titles. Both “Song for Sharon” and “Amelia” are long, mesmerizing songs. The hypnotic music groove supplied by Joni’s guitar provides the perfect bed for the provocative lyrics. (Joni Mitchell is not only one of the best lyricists, but is also among the best guitarists in pop-rock music history.)

Joni's Hejira

Joni’s Hejira

“Amelia” is Amelia Earhart. Joni Mitchell has said that the song uses the aviator and her driven quest to represent her own overriding need to travel and perform music, to the disruption of family and relationships and a normal life. It’s a repetitive song that I never tire of. And we get to hear Ms. Mitchell’s Canadian r at the end of every verse as she sings “Amelia, it was just a false alarm.”

Bernadette The Four Tops had a string of powerful hits featuring lead vocalist Levi Stubbs. My favorites have always been their number ones, “Reach Out (I’ll Be There)” and “I Can’t Help Myself.” But just a notch below is their wonderful “Bernadette.” It’s a hard-driving number, like “Reach Out,” “Standing in the Shadows of Love,” and others that made these Motown stars second only to The Beach Boys as American hit-makers of the era.

I should also mention the Looking Glass hit “Brandy”—not because it’s a favorite, but because it’s the song my Sweetie asserts is her least favorite song of all time (with the exception of anything by Joni Mitchell, including “Amelia”). I had always loved imitating the lead vocal, with its quasi-lounge delivery, but especially liked doing so once I learned of my Sweetie’s annoyance by it. (Alas, I’m not able to do a convincing Join Mitchell impersonation.)

taraf

Carolina I recently made a discovery, upon listening again to the Romanian band Taraf de Haidouk’s 2001 album Band of Gypsies, that one song, “Carolina,” is a remake of a song from across the globe. The song is credited on the album to Gabi Voicila, but it’s actually a revved-up version of a song recorded in Jamaica in 1964 by The Folkes Brothers as “Oh Carolina,” one of the first ska/reggae songs. The original has a nice folky-Caribbean feel, which Shaggy, in 1993, turned into a delightful groove for his first hit. The woman is Caro-lie-na in the Jamaican versions, and Caro-lee-na in the Romanian, but it’s the same song.

Taraf de Haidouks are the quintessential “band of gypsies,” known for their frenetic, exultant workouts that feature violin, flute, impassioned vocals, and, underpinning it all (and occasionally taking a tasty ride) is the cimbalom, the happiest of musical instruments. It’s an Eastern European relative of the hammer dulcimer. It’s kind of like the back-end of an open grand piano, on which the cimbalom player strikes the strings with a mallet. The result is spidery and shimmery and enchanting. With a cimbalom aboard, a song’s lyrics may be sung in a language I don’t understand, and may be about failed crops or the death of a loved one, but the music sounds gleeful, and makes me want to tap, clap, and dance.

A happy cimbalom player

A happy cimbalom player

At any rate, I love Shaggy’s “Oh Carolina.” When subjected to Shaggy’s hits from the early ‘00s (while driving my daughter to school), I’d thought of him as a boring rapper whose verses worsened those mediocre songs that his guest artists sang. But Shaggy’s in control on “Oh Carolina.” I’ve reassessed Shaggy, due to that one song, which tops my running playlist. Groovy!

Fats

Fats

Dinah The great composer, pianist, singer, and raconteur Thomas “Fats” Waller did my favorite version of the 1925 song “Dinah.” It was written by Sam Lewis, Joe Young, and Harry Akst for Ethel Waters to sing in Plantation Revue. Many of my favorite singers recorded it, including The Boswell Sisters, The Mills Brothers, and Cliff Edwards. But Fats is the one I always hear. It’s got the sprightliness that he put across so well, and it seems timeless to me (although you’d be unlikely to hear anyone singing like that now—or singing that song any old way, for that matter).

p floyd

Emily One of Syd Barrett’s psychedelic-pop contributions to Pink Floyd’s repertoire was the loopy and beaty “See Emily Play.” It’s my favorite Pink Floyd song, which may mean I’m not a true Pink Floyd fan.

Honorable Mentions: Amity Great name. “Amity” is probably my favorite Elliott Smith song, though it isn’t really characteristic of his music.

Belle The great Al Green recorded one of his best albums a few years after his incredible string of hits. Belle featured a nice, acoustic guitar-driven title song, a laid-back but still vocally inventive Al entertains.

Caroline “Caroline, No” is the haunting closer of The Beach Boys’ much-praised Pet Sounds album. The album was mostly Brian and his toys, the session musicians he used to get all of those interesting colorations in the songs. The Boys were almost an afterthought. “Caroline, No” is all Brian, and was issued as a Brian Wilson single. The lyrics were by Tony Asher, but it comes from Brian’s heart and soul.

Delia Georgia bluesman Blind Wille McTell sings the sad story of “Little Delia,” accompanied by his twelve-string guitar. Delia gets herself mixed up with some bad “rounders,” especially one Kenny, who shoots her dead and winds up in jail. Sordid stuff, but a nice, bright tune!

Eleanor/ Elenore I must mention Paul McCartney’s “Eleanor Rigby,” which blew me away when I first heard it. And then there’s The Turtles’ “Elenore,” with its groovily square lyrics: “Elenore, gee, I think you’re swell.” “You’re my pride and joy, et cetera.” Wonderfully nerdy stuff from the Fluorescent Leech and Eddie.

Dream Jukebox: Shaggy’s “Oh Carolina” is frequently on my iPod playlists of music to run to. When I get my Dream Jukebox, I’ll find the record.

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Wedding Bell Blues

Posted on October 18, 2014 by themesongsteve
Wedding Bell Blues

My mom’s brother suggested that I learn the enchanting song “Oh! What It Seemed to Be” and sing it for Mom and Dad at their 50th wedding anniversary. “It was just a wedding in June, that’s all that it was / But, oh, what it seemed to be.” My parents were happily married for 62 years at the time my mom died.

The Bennie Benjamin/George David Weiss/Frankie Carle song was a hit four times in 1946, a couple of years before their wedding. Frankies Carle and Sinatra had number ones, followed by Helen Forrest/Dick Haymes and by Charlie Spivak. It is not heard enough these days, but Willie included it on one of his trip-through-the-past albums. My parents were quite touched to hear it, thinking of that day a half a century earlier.

oh what it seemed

Oh! What It Seemed to Be, on 78 rpm

By 1969, Connie Francis’s days as a pop idol were over. No more “Who’s Sorry Now?” and “Where the Boys Are.” Her last hit of the sixties, “The Wedding Cake,” made it to #33 on the Country & Western charts, but only got to #91 on the pop charts.

“The Wedding Cake” is an “It’s OK that you’re a failure, hon’—I vowed to take the bad along with the good” number. Connie sounds a little awkward as a country gal. Her dropped g’s don’t sound natural: “The weddin’ cake’s not all icin’.” It’s “country lite,” with backing tracks (or, as Connie would sing, “backin’ tracks”) that sound like an attempt to capture the feel (and success) of “Gentle on My Mind.” She never again got higher on the charts. Her last single, in 1982, was called “There’s Still a Few Good Songs Left in Me.” Probably true, but we never got to hear them.

prine

“You Never Can Tell” (#14, 1964), by Chuck Berry, is a classic tale of newlyweds. It features the usual brilliant Chuck Berry wordplay: “They furnished off an apartment with a two-room Roebuck sale / The coolerator was crammed with TV dinners and ginger ale.” It’s a much-covered number. Even John Prine, who seldom does the songs of others, has a nice version of the song on his 1975 Common Sense album. On the same album (not one of his best), Prine does a wedding song of his own, “Wedding Day in Funeralville.” “It’s wedding day in Funeralville / What shall I wear tonight?”

A wacky take on newlyweds is Arthur Fields’ and Walter Donovan’s “The Aba Daba Honeymoon,” which was a top hit in 1914 and then lay dormant for decades until it was revived in 1950. It charted no less than six times in 1950 and 1951, but has fallen out of fashion. It’s hard to imagine any of the hitmakers of the last five decades putting across this jaunty, quaint number that involves lovey-dovey monkeys who are married by “the big baboon, by the light of the moon” and then go “upon their aba daba honeymoon.” Cute. Miley? Taylor?

Good old boy & girl

Good old boy & girl

Crazier still is “Wedding in Cherokee Country,” one of the devastating low-life tales from Randy Newman’s poor white trash concept album masterpiece, Good Old Boys, from 1973. The singer is about to marry into a very dysfunctional family. The bride is a know-nothin’, do-nothin’ loser whose mother’s a whore and whose “granddaddy was a newsboy ‘til he was 84 / What a slimy old bastard he was.” The groom certainly has reservations about what he’s getting into, and we have no doubt that he’s doomed. The song is just one of a string of human-foible vignettes that grace this wonderful album.

A parson appears in a couple of my favorite oldies. In 1917’s “For Me and My Gal,” the “parson’s waiting.” In Fats Waller’s 1929 song “I’ve Got a Feeling I’m Falling,” he tells “mister parson”: “You’d better stand by me, ‘cause I’ve got a feeling I’m falling / Show me the ring and I’ll jump right through.”

Sheet music, "I've Got a Feeling I'm Falling"

Sheet music, “I’ve Got a Feeling I’m Falling”

A wedding can be a beautiful thing. Flowers, dresses, powder-blue tuxes, carefully chosen music. I’ve done some gigs as a wedding singer. Most, I think, went well. At the most recent wedding reception I sang, I had to follow an Elvis impersonator, who also sang in the church wedding. It’s the only type of gig that makes me nervous, because it’s a one-time thing (meant to be, anyway), that the bride, the groom, and the family and friends will remember forever.

My worst wedding gig was a problem of timing: the groom, a pal of mine, had his bachelor party the night before the wedding. Mistake. We got pretty drunk on tequila shots, and I got up to sing “Wooly Bully” and other party songs at the bar we closed down. The morning of the wedding, I was hung-over and I only made it through the wedding ceremony, a solemn affair in an Episcopalian church, by knocking back hair-of-the-dog tequila shots. Alas, the couple didn’t make it past their third anniversary.

A friend says that her mom and the guy she ended up with post-divorce, rather than marrying again, decided every Tuesday whether they’d remain together another week. So what about songs that celebrate the choice not to wed? One of the odder ones appears on Nina Simone’s wonderful 1965 album I Put a Spell on You. Compared to some of the powerful songs on the album, including “Feeling Good,” “Ne me quitte pas,” and the Screamin’ Jay Hawkins title track, “Marriage is for Old Folks” is a whimsical trifle. But it shows another side to the versatile Ms. Simone, one that comes out only occasionally. She sounds playful, coquettish. She even throws in a little high-pitched “doot-do-doo” sing-song part after each verse. Nina wants “crazy romancing, fellas advancing”—not the married life. “Marriage is for old folks, cold folks, not for me / One married he, one married she—whaddya got? / Two people watchin’ TV.”

Ms. Simone at the piano

Ms. Simone at the piano

Like Ray Charles, Nina Simone defied genre categorization. She delivered blues, folk, soul, standards, and pop, always genuinely and yet always with her unique stamp. She also did show tunes. Both “Feeling Good” and “Beautiful Land,” covered on I Put a Spell on You, were from the Anthony Newley/Leslie Bricusse show Roar of the Greasepaint. “Marriage is for Old Folks” was written by Leon Carr and Earl Shuman for the short-lived 1964 Off-Broadway show The Secret Life of Walter Mitty.

Honorable Mention: I included The Dixie Cups in my post on New Orleans, focusing on “Iko Iko,” their follow-up to “Chapel of Love,” but their big wedding hit is one of the best sing-along songs of the rock era. “Goin’ to the chapel and we’re gonna get married…”

Great Song Title: “Siki Siki Baba” by Kocani Orkestar—I don’t know what the title of this Roma song means, but I’ve read that the song has something to do with a wedding that the singer is not sure he can afford. Whatever it means, it’s a happy-sounding song, and I can imagine the Orkestar getting everyone off their feet with it at a wedding reception.

 

Any wedding (or anti-marriage) songs you enjoy? What songs were played at your wedding? During your honeymoon? At your divorce?

 

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A Flower is a Lovesome Thing

Posted on September 17, 2014 by themesongsteve
A Flower is a Lovesome Thing

A song I knew as “Lotus Blossom” actually started out as “Marijuana.” It was written in 1934 by Arthur Johnston and Sam Coslow for the movie Murder at the Vanities, a pre-code film with not only a song about marijuana’s soothing properties but with naked nymphs covering their breasts with their hands. I had heard “Marijuana” done by Bette Midler on her album Songs for the New Depression years ago, but at first didn’t place it as the same song when I heard “Lotus Blossom” sung by Dave Frishberg on his 1977 album Getting Some Fun out of Life. Frishberg, a fine jazz pianist, has written some wonderful songs, including novelties like “Van Lingle Mungo,” whose lyrics consist only of baseball players’ names.

Frishberg & friend

Frishberg & friend

I loved “Lotus Blossom” and quickly worked up a three-part harmony arrangement my trio still performs. In his Biographical Guide to the Great Jazz and Pop Singers, Will Friedwald wrote about the song’s transformation in his section on Kansas City singer Julia Lee, who did a fine lowdown recording of “Lotus Blossom” in the mid-forties. Friedwald notes that when the song was in the movie, pot was still legal but “a taboo and risqué subject for a mainstream pop song.” He says that Sam Coslow changed the title, but Coslow, in his autobiography Cocktails for Two, barely mentions “Marijuana” and mentions “Lotus Blossom” not at all.

Sam Coslow seems to have been quite a piece of work. It’s clear from his memoir that he did not find Spike Jones’ crazy, irreverent hit cover of Coslow’s most famous song, “Cocktails for Two,” funny and was not happy about it—except for the big royalty checks. (The subtitle of the memoir is The Many Lives of Giant Songwriter Sam Coslow. “Giant songwriter.” He wrote that about himself–sheesh!)

"Giant Songwriter"

“Giant Songwriter”

Another “Lotus Blossom”—one that was never explicitly about a mind-altering substance—was written by one of my favorite composers, Billy Strayhorn. A solo Duke Ellington at the piano was captured impromptu during the recording of …And His Mother Called Him “Bill,” the band’s tribute to Strayhorn, made while he was dying in a hospital bed across town. You can hear Duke’s anguish in the exquisite performance.

Strayhorn is most famous for the bouncy, up-tempo Ellington hit “Take the ‘A’ Train.” But he excelled at moody, impressionistic songs like “Lush Life” that have a deep, dark beauty. Several Strayhorn compositions were, like the gorgeous “Lotus Blossom,” named after flowers: “Lament for an Orchid,” “Blossom,” “Ballad for Very Tired and Very Sad Lotus Eaters,” “Violet Blue,” and “In a Blue Summer Garden.” Best of all, though, were “Passion Flower” (1941) and “A Flower is a Lovesome Thing” (1949).

There was no better pairing of instrumentalist and songwriter in all of popular music, I think, than Johnny Hodges and Billy Strayhorn. Hodges, an Ellington stalwart on sax, introduced both of these songs on side projects, and his alto careens and wails so plaintively that the immense emotional depth of Strayhorn via Hodges is overwhelming.

Strayhorn's The Peaceful Side, with erroneous credits

Strayhorn’s The Peaceful Side, with erroneous credits

Many others have covered these songs, often beautifully. Strayhorn himself recorded them in Paris in 1961, on The Peaceful Side. They’re beautiful, with assists from the vocal group The Paris Blue Notes and a string quartet. But we miss Johnny Hodges. Incredibly, on this, his only album as leader, Strayhorn is not given writing credits for these songs! “Passion Flower” is shown as being by E. Coates and G. Wiskin, and “A Flower is a Lovesome Thing” is credited to Duke Ellington. A shame. According to David Hajdu, in his Billy bio Lush Life, Strayhorn wrote in his name on copies he gave to friends.

I think the John Phillips Summer of Love song “San Francisco (Be Sure to Wear Flowers in Your Hair)” is a bit drippy and bland. If Phillips’ aim was to promote flower power in California, it wouldn’t have enticed me to go, even if I’d been old enough to drive or bold enough to hitch. Maybe it’s singer Scott McKenzie’s voice, but the song just doesn’t represent coolness, enlightenment, or reckless abandon. It’s right up there with Rod McKuen Takes a San Francisco Hippie Trip. Not groovy. Not groovy at all!

Rod McKuen Takes a San Francisco Hippie Trip

Rod McKuen Takes a San Francisco Hippie Trip

A song that’s much more fun, from ’68, is Frank Zappa’s “Flower Punk.” The tune is a take-off of “Hey Joe,” revved up, in complicated alternating time signatures, with playful wah-wah guitars answering each line. “Hey punk, where you goin’ with that flower in your hand? / I’m goin’ up to Frisco to join a psychedelic band.” Flower Punk also says that he plans to hit “the love-in to sit and play my bongos in the dirt.” That’s a scene I’d’ve wanted to be a part of! The song is part of the Mothers’ classic album We’re Only in It for the Money,whose cover parodies The Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper album. But note in the photo that where The Beatles’ name was spelled out in flowers, The Mothers’ is in hacked-up watermelon and other fruits and veggies.

We're Only in It for the Money

We’re Only in It for the Money

Occasional Zappa compatriot Captain Beefheart came up with one of the countless “rose” songs out there in the pop world. “Ice Rose” is a jagged, up-tempo instrumental, so we don’t know whether the song refers to a frozen sculpture or a frigid female. Or maybe it’s a declarative subject-verb combination, an observation. Or maybe it’s a sinister imperative?

My other arbitrary “rose” selection is Fats Waller’s “Honeysuckle Rose,” since it has two flowers in its name, and since I really like Fats Waller. Its tune was among the many Fats came up with on short order, on a whim or a last-minute demand. (Who knows how many floated off without being corralled and turned into a hit? Fats just never seemed too concerned about that.) It was created with his often-frustrated, relatively fastidious lyricist Andy Razaf for the show Load of Coal, the last of three songs needed, all completed in one afternoon. As often is the case with show tunes, the song was not intended for greatness. Fats’ manager Ed Kirkeby, in his 1966 bio of Fats Waller, Ain’t Misbehavin’, writes that “Honeysuckle Rose” was at the time “looked upon merely as an unimportant soft-shoe number backing for the chorus.”

Honorable Mentions: The Rolling Stones came up with a couple of good flower songs, “Dead Flowers” and “Dandelion,” but neither is on the American compilation album Flowers, on the cover of which each Stone is a flower.

Great Song Titles: “Tulip or Turnip?” On the recording I have of this Duke Ellington song, trumpeter/violinist Ray Nance gets vocal duties and camps it up. “Tulip or turnip—tell me, tell me, Dream Face, what am I to you?” (That would be another great song title: “Dream Face.”) Duke also gave us “Blossom” and “Azalea.”

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True Love

Posted on September 9, 2014 by themesongsteve
True Love

Throughout American pop music history, most songs have been love-themed, so choosing favorite love songs is a nearly impossible task. If you asked ten random people to name ten favorite love songs, there would probably be one hundred different songs named. I would find it difficult to narrow down a Top Love Songs list to 100 songs, or even 250. The ‘30s alone would cover that. So, I’m going to go decade by decade with some love song choices, starting with the thirties.

Fats

Some of America’s best songwriters hit their peaks in the thirties—the Gershwin Brothers, Duke Ellington, Irving Berlin. I’m going to go with Fats Waller, who had dozens of hits in the thirties, and then, sadly, died young in 1943. Sure, Fats was known for novelty numbers like “Your Feet’s Too Big” and “All That Meat and No Potatoes,” but he was a romantic (a fun-loving romantic), and wrote many hits of love. My favorite is “Ain’t Misbehavin’” (recorded at the end of ’29, but a huge hit in 1930). There were also “Honeysuckle Rose” (a hit for Fats in 1935 and 1937), “I’ve Got a Feeling I’m Falling,” “I’m Crazy ‘bout My Baby (And My Baby’s Crazy ‘bout Me),” and “Concentratin’ on You.”

To represent the forties I choose Edith Piaf, who wrote and performed two of the most passionate love songs ever. “Hymne a l’amour” (Hymn to Love) is my top pick, a beautiful song (music by Marguerite Monnot) with lyrics written by Piaf to her great love, boxer Marcel Cerdan. As you know if you saw the biopic about Edith Piaf, there is tragedy surrounding this wonderful love song. Shortly after Piaf first sang it, in autumn 1949, Cerdan was killed in a plane crash on his way to see her. She recorded the song the following year.

piaf

It caught on over here in an English-language version, “If You Love Me (Really Love Me).” It was a hit for Vera Lynn, Kay Starr, and, in the UK, Shirley Bassey. For some strange reason, though, the melody of the title phrase—the most beautiful part of the song—was altered by some who covered it. That melodic line, however, didn’t escape Neil Young, who used it for the third lines of the verses to his haunting song, “Philadelphia.”

Another great Edith Piaf love song, of course, is her signature number, “La vie en rose,” which she wrote in 1946. I once got to sing it in a show as a serenade to a glamorous showgirl. I came in a little draggy before the performance, and a guy in the cast recommended I try a 5-Hour energy drink. I hadn’t had one before and was hesitant, but he said it was no big deal. “I drink ‘em all the time—just gives me a little nudge.” Well, I guess I can’t hold my energy drink, because I got quite a bit more than a nudge, and as I sang “La vie en rose,” my heart was pounding louder than the band. When I hit the big, high finish at the end, I thought I was about to explode. Not the best way to present a tender love song, but somehow it worked.

Jane and the Girls

Jane and the Girls

Cole Porter was a master of clever lyrics and sinuous melodies, writing a great number of smart and sophisticated popular songs from the teens through the mid-fifties. But it was a straightforward love song, one of his last compositions, that is, to me, an exceptional love song. “True Love” was written in 1955 for the movie High Society. Grace Kelly got her one and only gold record for it in 1956, and her duet partner Bing Crosby got his 21st. It was a big hit that same year for Jane Powell, and has been covered many times since.

“You’re a no-good heartbreaker, a liar and a cheat.” Do those sound like the opening words of a top-pick love song?

When I think of the great songs of the Summer of Love in San Francisco, I don’t come up with very many outstanding love songs. Instead, for the ‘60s I’ll go with Aretha Franklin’s first big hit, “I Never Loved a Man (The Way I Love You),” from her album of the same name. Franklin had recorded ten albums for Columbia, but it was her first for Atlantic that finally, in 1967, made her a star.

“I Never Loved a Man…” was the first song recorded for this first Atlantic Aretha album—a historic moment in recording history. In his book on the making of the album, Matt Dobkin quotes Atlantic honcho Jerry Wexler: “That’s the moment for me. The moment it’s happening in the studio. Not the playback, not the gold record, not the charts. The moment when that good take is happening—that’s my euphoria.”

aretha book

In the song, Aretha sings, “Ain’t never had a man hurt me so bad,” but, well, you’ve heard the title—she’s hooked. The song was written by a man, produced by a man, and played by men (except for Aretha’s piano), but Aretha Franklin delivers it, and somehow convinces you that she’s the one who’s in control. Power!

The #9 single was backed by a less dysfunctional love song, “Do Right Woman, Do Right Man,” written by Chips Moman and Dan Penn.

Of all the romantic crooners and warblers of the seventies, Al Green, I think, is The Love God (with apologies to Don Knotts). His love turned up to the heavens after that decade, but for a while there, he had a string of hits that outloved the many others who were making hits then, and before and after that. Of the ten songs on his Greatest Hits, Volume 1, the eight songs written by Al & pals are either happy songs of romantic fulfillment or songs that are sales pitches for Al’s brand of love. It’s the whole love story: “Look What You Done for Me”…“I’m Still in Love with You”…“Let’s Stay Together”…“Let’s Get Married.” Any of those could be “best love song of the ’70s.” The two non-originals on the collection are the weepers. (Al always liked to change up the mood of his albums with a couple of downer covers, often C&W tunes.)

"Love and Happiness" 12"

“Love and Happiness” 12″

Teenie Hodges, who played guitar on all of Green’s hit albums—that’s his intro on “Love and Happiness” and his dissonant descending line on “You Ought to Be With Me”—died in May. He co-wrote some of the best songs: “Love and Happiness,” “Take Me to the River,” “Here I Am.” Two other Hodges brothers played organ/piano, and bass, and helped give the songs their distinctive sound. Al Green lucked out by his fortunate associations.

It was Willie Mitchell who masterminded the production and engineering of the albums, and also co-wrote many of the songs. He was a frustrated horn player who found his calling and success in Al Green. Of course, Al had one of the best voices in pop music history and would’ve probably been some kind of star without Mr. Mitchell (although he’d had only minor success during the previous ten years), but the combination of the two creative wizards, supported by the talents of the Brothers Hodges, drummers Al Jackson and Howard Grimes, and others, made Al Green’s string of sixteen hits between 1970 and 1975, seven of them top ten, a consistent, exceptional treasure trove. And they were all great love songs.

platters 2

Honorable Mention: In choosing Cole Porter to represent the fifties, I’m slighting the ultra-romantic vocal groups of the era, including The Flamingos and The Platters, who gave us so many timeless love songs. The Platters’ “Only You” is right at the top.

Which pop love songs are you passionate about?

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