Monday, September 7, 2015

The Roulettes' "This Little Girl"

Back in April, I got the Roulettes' one and only album Stakes and Chips.  The first time I listened to it, I thought that the beginning keyboard part of "This Little Girl" (credited to Holland, Stevenson, and Cosby) sounded similar to the beginning keyboard part of Ray Charles' "What'd I Say."  A few months later (in June), I learned the two parts in order to compare them, and recently I finally got around to notating them:

(click the image to enlarge it)
(standard disclaimer that since I did the notation myself it's entirely possible that I have something wrong)

When I figured out the parts, I was actually surprised by how similar they are.  They both start with the same four-note figure: E, B, D, E' (although "What'd I Say" plays the B as two eighth notes, where "This Little Girl" has a single B as a quarter note).  It wasn't until notating it that I discovered that both have notes tied over a bar line too.

Like the phrase in "This Little Girl," the phrase in "What'd I Say" is two measures long, but - barring a slightly different rhythm so that an E note from the next measure intrudes a bit - it's the same notes in every measure.  As the song goes on, that same phrase is raised by intervals so that it starts on A and later on B.  The phrase in "This Little Girl" doesn't do that, but it's similar enough that I think it took some inspiration from the phrase in "What'd I Say."