The Beach Boys' "Good Vibrations: Gold Star 4/9/66" (from The SMiLE Sessions)

Lately I've been listening to The SMiLE Sessions box set.  I listened to the fifth disc this morning, and I noticed that in the second track ("Good Vibrations: Gold Star 4/9/66") at about 1:03 before the next take starts, a guitar plays part of the melody from George Gershwin's "Strike up the Band."  It's the melody to which is sung:

Let the drums roll out
Let the trumpet call
While the people shout
Strike up the band

The final note (for "band") either isn't played or isn't audible (there's some other noise that occurs at the same time that might obscure it), but I was still very excited to hear and recognize this.

Wilson's cited Gershwin as an influence, but I don't know if this quotation is anything more than just coincidence.

The Moody Blues' "House of Four Doors (Part 1)"

Yester-day I listened to the Moody Blues' In Search of the Lost Chord, and I discovered two things about "House of Four Doors (Part 1)."

I'm not sure to what degree, but it seems that the inscription on the last door bears some resemblance to the Gate of Hell in Dante's Inferno.  In "House of Four Doors (Part 1)," there are the lines "Enter in, all ye who seek to find within / As the plaque said on the last door."  It seems to be the opposite of "All hope abandon, ye who enter in!" (Canto III, line 9).

The other thing I noticed is the melody to which the middle section ("House of Four Doors / I could live there forever...") is sung.  When I first listened to this album two years ago, I wrote about a piano part later in this song that I thought took a phrase from George Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue.  This "House of Four Doors / I could live there forever..." section uses the same melody, and it has more of a resemblance to Gershwin's.  The piano part has just the three note diatonic ascent and octave fall, but the vocal melody - like the phrase in the Rhapsody in Blue - has a diatonic ascent after that octave fall.  While they're in different keys and the note values are different, the intervals are the same.  I still haven't been able to find the Rhapsody in Blue score (I've found a lot pieces that quote it but have been unable to look at the original notation to see how they all compare), but here's some notation I made for this particular section of "House of Four Doors (Part One)":

(click here for a larger image)

Mel Tormé's "A Foggy Day"

I'm still making my way through my ten-CD Gershwin set.  To-day, it's the penultimate disc, subtitled "Gershwin in Jazz."  I might have noticed something about Mel Tormé's "A Foggy Day," although I'm not quite sure about it.

At about 0:15, there's a woman's voice saying, "Cockles and mussels."  I think this is a reference to the folk song "Molly Malone," the chorus of which also involves "cockles and mussels."  Each verse of "Molly Malone" ends with some variation of "Through streets broad and narrow / Cryin', 'Cockles and mussels, alive, alive oh,'" and the chorus is comprised of the same words:

'Alive, alive, oh
'Alive, alive, oh'
Cryin’, 'Cockles and mussels
'Alive, alive oh'

Leaving it at that, it seems to make sense, but the first line of "A Foggy Day" is "A foggy day in London town" (my emphasis), where "Molly Malone" is set in Ireland.  Since it's a folk song, there are different versions, but the two I know (one by the Countdown Singers and one by Pete Seeger) both start with something like "In Dublin's fair city / Where the girls are so pretty / I first set my eyes on sweet Molly Malone."  Were it not for that discrepancy of setting, I'd be more confident about this reference.

Ben Selvin and His Orchestra's "Oh Gee! Oh Joy!"

For the last week or so, I've been making my way through a 10-CD set of George Gershwin works.  To-day, it's disc 7, subtitled "The Later Broadway Musicals."  I'm actually not sure if I'd noticed this before or not, but I recognized a melodic phrase in "Oh Gee! Oh Joy!" (performed by Ben Selvin and His Orchestra) that's also in Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue.  After the initial "Oh gee! Oh gosh! Oh joy! Oh golly!," there's "Oh gee I'm happy 'cause my baby loves me."  The melody to which it's sung is something like this:

The same phrase (a half step higher) is in the Rhapsody in Blue.  In the recording I have by the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, it's in the piano part at about 6:52.

I lookt up "Oh Gee! Oh Joy!" in the index of Edward Jablonski's Gershwin: A Biography (which I actually haven't read yet) and found that it was written for Rosalie in late 1927.  The Rhapsody in Blue is from 1924, so it seems like Gershwin re-used that melody from the Rhapsody as an introductory phrase in "Oh Gee! Oh Joy!"  Of course, there's also the possibility that this feature is unique to Selvin's version, but in either case, that melody came from the Rhapsody first.

Johnny Rivers' "Memphis"

I'm currently listening to a two-disc compilation album of Ricky Nelson.  The guitar part (doubled on harmonica) that's at the very beginning (and repeated in a few other sections) of his version of the Gershwins' "Summertime" sounded familiar to me.  I eventually placed it; I also know it from Johnny Rivers' version of Chuck Berry's "Memphis" (sometimes called "Memphis, Tennessee").

For the record, the part I'm talking about is E D B A G E.  I'm unsure, but Rivers might slide into that initial E from a D note (that's the way I've always played it, at least).

Nelson's version of "Summertime" is from 1962; Rivers' version of "Memphis" was released in May 1964, so it's possible that Rivers took the guitar part from Nelson's "Summertime."  That riff isn't in Chuck Berry's original, and I'd been wondering where it came from.  However, while the chronology works out, I'm not sure if this was the case; I don't know much about Johnny Rivers.

I feel it worth pointing out that the bass part from Nelson's "Summertime" was copied by Blues Magoos for their "(We Ain't Got) Nothin' Yet," so there's a precedent of copying from it.

Fred Astaire's "Let's Call the Whole Thing off"

I'm currently listening to the second disc of a two-disc Fred Astaire set.  In the Gershwin's "Let's Call the Whole Thing off," after the lines "It looks as if we two will never be one / Something must be done," there's an instrumental section (starting at about 2:17).  I'm not sure of the specific instruments, but lines are traded between an instrument with a higher register and one with a lower register.  It continues the back-and-forth that's present in the lyrics:  "You say either, and I say either / You say neither, and I saw neither."