Showing posts with label Little Red Rooster. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Little Red Rooster. Show all posts

Wednesday, August 20, 2014

Sam Cooke's "Little Red Rooster"

I'm listening to a compilation album of Sam Cooke titled Portrait of a Legend 1951-1964.  I'm fairly familiar with most of these songs, yet - until now - I'd failed to noticed the program music aspects in "Little Red Rooster."  The various organ parts in the song illustrate the animals that are mentioned in the lyrics.  For example, the song starts out with (what I think is) an octave jump in the organ part (it's also present in the first and final verses), which represents the crowing of the rooster.  Later, there are swipes up the keyboard to represent the lyric "dogs begin to bark," and there's an-other organ sound I don't even know how to describe to reflect the line "the hounds begin to howl."