Bobby Darin's "That Lucky Old Sun"

When I listened to a two-CD Bobby Darin compilation about a month ago, I also noticed something about his version of "That Lucky Old Sun."  Each verse ends with some variation on "That lucky old sun has nothin' to do / But roll around heaven all day," and in the second and third verses, Darin sings the "around" with melismas.  For the second verse, it's Bb G F Eb, and for the third, Bb G Eb.

This articulation has two features.  First, there's a musical sense of the "roll[ing] around" because of these extra syllables at various pitches.  Second, those extra syllables provide a sense of freedom.  Earlier lines in the song that mention work ("Up in the morning, out on the job / Work like the devil for my pay" and "Fuss with my woman, toil for my kids / Sweat till I'm wrinkled and gray") are sung with the same number of syllables they're pronounced with (save for "pay" and "gray," which each have an extra syllable).  "That lucky old sun" doesn't have these concerns, so it can "roll around heaven all day" with "nothin' to do," and that freedom is represented by this flexibility with regard to standard syllabic counts.

Listening to the Isley Brothers' version of "Lucky Old Sun" a few years ago, it occurred to me that the lines "Up in the morning, out on the job" and "Fuss with my woman, toil for my kids" exhibit structural parallelism.  "Up in the morning" and "out on the job" are parallel, as are "Fuss with my woman" and "toil for my kids."  (Even the plea to God to "Show me that river, take me across" has some parallelism.)  This parallelism also illustrates the schedule that the speaker/singer operates under.  In the same way that these lines are broken into phrases with the same structure, his time is organized according to his labor.

Bobby Darin's "Down with Love"

I recently listened to a compilation album of Bobby Darin titled Mighty, Mighty Man, and I noticed something about "Down with Love" (from the album This Is Darin, which happens to be the only original Bobby Darin album I have).

Darin articulates a number of phrases in ways that draw attention to "down."  The "Down" that starts the second verse is sung with a descending glissando (I think it's from C to Eb, but I found it a bit difficult to pinpoint).  "Down with Cupid" in the bridge is sung to a descending phrase both times.  It's even chromatic, which seems to emphasize the descent:  Eb, D, Db, C.  The "Down with love" that starts the third verse (a repetition of the second verse) is sung to the descending phrase Eb C Bb.  Finally, the "Down" in the last "Down with love" is sung with a melisma, starting with a Bb and moving through various notes down to Eb.

For what it's worth, a few years ago, I noticed that the line "Down with songs that moan about night and day" refers to the song "Night and Day" and wrote a short post about it.

Unit 4+2's Singles As & Bs

For Christmas a few years ago, I got Unit 4+2's Singles As & Bs.  At the time, I knew only "Concrete and Clay" (I knew "You Ain't Going Nowhere" via the Byrds' version, but I hadn't heard Unit 4+2's), but the album quickly became one of my favorites over the course of the following year.  I started drafting a post about a year after I got it, but then I sort of forgot about it (the post).  I figured I'd finally finish it.

"When I Fall in Love"

The "fall in love" in the titular line is sung to a descending phrase (E D# B, I think), so there's a musical representation of the falling, even if it is only metaphorical.

When I originally transcribed the song, I rendered a pair of lines as "And too many moonlight kisses / Seem to cool in the warmth of the sun," but when I looked over my transcription a few weeks later, I realized that it could also be "And too many moonlight kisses / Seem too cool in the warmth of the sun."  In the first rendering, "to cool" is an infinitive; in the second, "too cool" is an adverb/adjective combination modifying the "kisses" from the previous line.  That second rendering is probably what's intended because then there's a parallelism between "too many" and "too cool."  Still, it's one of those great features that's ambiguous when heard but has to fall one way or the other when it's written out.

I also noticed something about the first two lines of the last verse:  "And the moment I can feel that / You feel that way too."  There's a caesura after the "that" in the second line, so even though the two "that"s function differently (the first is an indicator of an indirect statement and the second is a demonstrative adjective modifying "way"), because of that pause there, it briefly sounds like there's a parallelism between "I can feel that" and "You feel that."  There's a pairing there, which is appropriate for a song about falling in love.

"You've Got to Be Cruel to Be Kind"

The titular phrase - slightly altered - comes from Shakespeare's Hamlet.  In Act 3, Scene 4, Hamlet says, "I must be cruel, only to be kind" (III.iv.199).  The song doesn't really have anything to do with Hamlet, but that's the origin of that phrase.

"I Won't Let You Down"

The line "Hurtin' in my body and the sweat on my brow now" in the first and third verse (it's the same verse repeated) references Genesis 3, if only indirectly.  Because of the fall into sin, Adam has to work in the fields in order to eat, and in verse nineteen, God tells him, "By the sweat of your brow you will eat your food."  It's basically the same as the phrase in the song, but since it's become a common phrase, I don't think it's really intended as a Biblical reference.

"3.30"

One of the verses has the lines "And again I try / Not to reason why."  Like the allusions I found in the other songs, I don't think this is intended as anything more than just the borrowing of a phrase, this time from Tennyson's "The Charge of the Light Brigade."  In the third stanza, one of the lines is "Theirs not to reason why."

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For my Collection Audit project, I've also written about "I Will" (which quotes a Bach violin partita) and "A Place to Go" (which has a lyrically significant key change).

The Isley Brothers' "Respectable" [single version]

I recently listened to a two-CD set of the Isley Brothers, and the bass part for the single version of "Respectable" sounded really easy, so I figured it out and notated it:

I considered writing in the chords, but since they last for only one measure each, I thought it would make the notation look too cluttered.  The bass part just arpeggiates the chords played above it:  F major, D minor, Bb major, and C major.

The F major/D minor arpeggiations continue until the fade out, so I put four measures of them within repeat signs, but the fade out actually doesn't last much longer than that.

The Moody Blues' "Lovely to See You"

A few weeks ago, the Moody Blues' "Lovely to See You" was in my head when I woke up (although, at the time, I hadn't listened to On the Threshold of the Dream [the album it's on] for about three months).  The bridge is what was in my head:

Tell us what you've seen in faraway forgotten lands
Where empires have turned back to sand

That's how it's rendered in the liner notes, although - appropriate to their having been forgotten - the word "lands" is cut off:

In any case, this image of "empires... turn[ing] back to sand" reminded me of Percy Bysshe Shelley's poem "Ozymandias."  It has the same image of a once-vast domain that has since "decay[ed]" so that only "lone and level sands" and fragments of a statue remain.

There really isn't anything else in "Lovely to See You" that seems connected to "Ozymandias," but between the same image of "empires... turn[ing] back to sand" and the land(s)/sand rhyme (which is also in "Ozymandias"), I think Shelley's poem might have influenced "Lovely to See You," if only slightly.