Loudon Wainwright III's "New Street People"

I'm currently listening to Loudon Wainwright III's Social Studies.  I found a reference to Shakespeare's Hamlet in "New Street People."  Wainwright's line is "a thousand toxic, natural shocks," which adds only one word (toxic) to a sentence from Hamlet's famous "to be or not to be" soliloquy:  "To die--to sleep-- / No more; and by a sleep to say we end / The heartache, and the thousand natural shocks / That flesh is heir to" (III.i.68-71).

However, I'm not exactly sure what Wainwright is trying to say with that Hamlet quote.

Bing Crosby's "Love Is Just around the Corner"

I'm listening to a compilation album of songs from the 1930s.  One of them is Bing Crosby's "Love Is Just around the Corner," written by Lewis E. Gensler and Leo Robin.  It includes the lines:

Venus de Milo was noted for her charms
Strictly between us, you are cuter than Venus
And what's more you've got arms.

Back in July, I found a reference to Venus de Milo in Ray Charles' "Ain't That Fine" (which, as far as I can tell, was written by Betty Hall, Dorsey Burnette, and H. Robert), and I said that "Grecian art doesn’t seem to be a very common topic in popular music."  Having found this, it looks as if I was wrong.  So now I'm not so sure that, as I posited in that post from July, Ray Charles' "Ain't That Fine" is connected to Chuck Berry's "Brown-Eyed Handsome Man," which also mentions Venus de Milo.

The Tremeloes' "Shake Hands (and Come out Crying)"

Yester-day and the day before, I listened to the two discs of an anthology of the Tremeloes titled Silence Is Golden: Anthology.  I noticed that the riff in "Shake Hands (and Come out Crying)" is really similar to that in the Byrds' "I'll Feel a Whole Lot Better."  And then I remembered that the riff in that Byrds' song came out of the Searchers' "Needles and Pins."  Between the three, I think there's a difference of only one or two notes.  They're all in the same key too - A major.

Not much is said about "Shake Hands (and Come out Crying)" in the liner notes to this anthology.  Really, the only relevant detail I can find is that it's from 1967 - a few years after "Needles and Pins" and "I'll Feel a Whole Lot Better."  So while it's possible that the riff in "Shake Hands (and Come out Crying)" was taken from either "Needles and Pins" or "I'll Feel a Whole Lot Better," I'm not sure if it was.  It's also possible that it's just a coincidence, but it's too similar for me to think that it's likely.

If it was taken from "I'll Feel a Whole Lot Better," it'd be an interesting instance of inspiration hopping across the Atlantic - first the Byrds' taking that riff from the Searchers' "Needles and Pins" (an American band taking inspiration from a British band), and then the Tremeloes taking it from the Byrds (a British band re-claiming that inspiration from an American band).  But - again - I don't know where the Tremeloes got the riff.

The Beatles' "When I'm Sixty-Four"

Yester-day, I listened to the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band.  For the first time, I realized how much the instrumentation does for "When I'm Sixty-Four."  I had to look up exactly what instruments I was hearing though.  According to Mark Lewisohn's The Official Story of the Abbey Road Years 1962-1970, there are two clarinets and a bass clarinet.  I feel that those in particular help give the song it's old time-y feel.

In the time between that realization and looking up the specific instrumentation, I also realized that "When I'm Sixty-Four" has a connection to "P.S. I Love You" in that they both feature epistolary writing.  "P.S. I Love You" starts out with "As I write this letter" and continues that theme through the lines "I'll be coming home again to you, love" (indicating the separation) and - of course - "P.S. I love you."  "When I'm Sixty-Four" also uses that letter-writing language with the line "Yours sincerely, wasting away."

What I'm unsure of is whether that letter section of "When I'm Sixty-Four" pre-dates or post-dates "P.S. I Love You."  Obviously "When I'm Sixty-Four" was released after "P.S. I Love You," but as Lewisohn's book notes, "["When I'm Sixty-Four"] was not a new song, the Beatles having performed a variation of it back in their pre-fame Cavern Club days whenever the amplifiers broke down."  As Lewisohn mentions, that "pre-fame" version of "When I'm Sixty-Four" was probably different from the version that's on Sgt. Pepper, especially considering the Beatles' rapid evolution.  So I don't know whether the letter section of "When I'm Sixty-Four" was written for the Sgt. Pepper version and was a throw back to that in "P.S. I Love You" (similar to how "All You Need Is Love" would reference "She Loves You" later in the year) or whether "When I'm Sixty-Four" was always that way and the letter elements in "P.S. I Love You" were something like a later try and an expanded version.  And, of course, it could just be a coincidence that the two songs - both written mostly by Paul McCartney - use the same lyrical device.

In any case, I still think it's an interesting connection that ties the Beatles' more experimental period of recording to their earlier days.

Jerry Keller's "Here Comes Summer"

After discovering the reference to Stephen Foster's "My Old Kentucky Home" in Jerry Keller's "Here Comes Summer" (I have versions of it by Cliff Richard and by the Dave Clark Five), I got thinking about an-other part of the song - the line "I'll meet the gang at Joe's café."  (This line doesn't appear in the DC5's version, however.)  I'd previously wondered whether this was a reference to Leiber and Stoller's "Smokey Joe's Café" (I have versions of it by the Coasters [although it's credited to the Robins], by Buddy Holly, and by Loudon Wainwright III), but because of how common a name Joe is, I wasn't sure if this was an actual reference or whether it was just a coincidence.

But now, knowing that Jerry Keller included some words and part of the melody of Foster's "My Old Kentucky Home," it seems more likely that he would also include a nod to a more contemporary song.

Three Dog Night's "My Old Kentucky Home (Turpentine and Dandelion Wine)"

I just listened to Three Dog Night's Seven Separate Fools.  I knew that part of "My Old Kentucky Home (Turpentine and Dandelion Wine)" sounded familiar (the line "oh, the sun shines bright on our old Kentucky home"), but I couldn't place it.  I looked it up on the internet and discovered that "My Old Kentucky Home" (which contains a similar line - "the sun shines bright in the old Kentucky home") is a song by Stephen Foster.  I found this interesting, but that's not how I knew that line.

Eventually though, I realized that it's also in the song "Here Comes Summer," which I have by both Cliff Richard and the Dave Clark Five.  It's slightly altered though, so there's no mention of Kentucky; it's just "oh, let the sun shine bright on my happy summer home."

Listening to the two lines of both songs back-to-back, they sounded similar, not only in the words, but also in the melodies.  I found the notation for Stephen Foster's "My Old Kentucky Home," and I'm fairly confident that both "My Old Kentucky Home (Turpentine and Dandelion Wine)," written by Randy Newman, and "Here Comes Summer," written by Jerry Keller, took Foster's melody (modifying it slightly) and at least some of his words.

Rachmaninov's Morceaux de Fantaisie, Op. 3

I've discovered that Rachmaninov must have really liked "Dies Irae."  I've found it in three of his works now.  Back in May, I found it in his Symphonic Dances, Op. 45, although I never looked it up in the notation.  Last night, I found it in his Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini, Op. 43.  And then I found it in his Morceaux de Fantaisie, Op. 3 (it took me awhile to find it in the notation though).  In the second movement (Prélude in C sharp), it's in the 7th to 9th measures:

(notation found here)

He plays around with it more here than in the other two instances I've found, but it's still recognizable.

I'm sort of painfully out of my depth here, but it seems like he's taken "Dies Irae" and sort of inverted the notes and - after shortening the note values from the original - expanded his new note values in order to come up with the rhythmic motif that (with the exception of the Agitato section) he uses almost throughout the movement.

Rachmaninov's Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini, Op. 43

I listened to a lot of Rachmaninov to-day, including his Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini, Op. 43.  I noticed that he includes "Dies Irae" in Variation X and Variation XXIV.

(notation found here)

If my counting is correct, this is measure 26 of Variation X.  This phrase also appears an octave higher two measures earlier, but this one was easier to take a screen clipping of.

In Variation XXIV, it appears at measure 39, again, if my counting is correct.  (I had to take two screen clippings to show the whole phrase.)  Here, he also slows it down in note values and changes the E to an Eb.

Buffalo Springfield's "Special Care"

I just listened to Buffalo Springfield's Last Time Around for the first time.  At the very end of "Special Care," there are some spoken parts.  I can't make out all of them, but at the end there's "only some, they [are] more equal than others."

I'm not sure if it's intentional on Stephen Stills' part (although the similarities in phrasing suggest that it was a conscious quotation), but this is the same sentiment expressed in George Orwell's Animal Farm:  "All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others."

Johnny Rivers' "Memphis" and "Help Me, Rhonda"

Between yester-day and to-day, I listened to the two discs of a Johnny Rivers compilation titled Secret Agent Man: The Ultimate Johnny Rivers Anthology.  I found some interesting things about two of his covers.

The liner notes mention Rivers' "flair for interpreting and rearranging other people's material" and explain that he took the riff for his version of Chuck Berry's "Memphis" from "Tommy Tucker's recent R&B hit 'Hi Heel Sneakers.'"  Aside from Berry's original and Rivers' cover, the only other version of "Memphis" I'm really familiar with is a live version by the Searchers (slightly re-titled to "Memphis, Tennessee") that appears on the 40th Anniversary Collection.  (I have two versions by the Beatles, but I haven't listened to them that much.  They're both closer to Berry's original, so are irrelevant to my point here anyway.)  Until reading the liner notes for the Rivers anthology, I hadn't fully realized that his version and the Searchers' version have the same riff.  The liner notes for the Searchers album don't give an exact date for their version; they mention only that it's from a live appearance on Swedish radio from 1964, although based on the track listing - which is more or less chronological - it seems that it's from December 1964.  So Rivers' version, released in May 1964, is older, and the Searchers probably modeled their version after his.  (It seems unlikely that they would use the same riff - and in the same way - that Rivers did.)

It's hard for me to wrap my head around that because not only am I more familiar with the Searchers' version, but I've always thought that the Searchers were older than Johnny Rivers.  I knew that both had long careers, but I'd always placed the Searchers' pinnacle of success in the early '60s and Johnny Rivers' in the mid- to late-'60s.  The Searchers' taking inspiration from Johnny Rivers certainly illustrates that I was wrong and that they overlap more than I'd thought.

Secondly, I think Rivers' cover of the Beach Boys' "Help Me, Rhonda" is particularly interesting because it adheres more closely to the album version ("Help Me, Ronda," from Today!) rather than the single version (which was also released on the Summer Days (and Summer Nights!!) album).

Rivers' cover re-instates the harmonica that appears on the Today! version (it doesn't appear on the Beach Boys' single version), and he replaces shattered with ruined in the line "but she let another guy come between us and it shattered our plan," which - again - is what the Today! version has.  The Beach Boys changed it to "shattered our plan" for the single version.

According to the liner notes, Rivers' version of "Help Me, Rhonda" was released in 1975, which is well after the Beach Boys' versions and well after their single version became a hit.  The liner notes also mention that Brian Wilson contributed backing vocals to Rivers' version.  Rivers' basing his version on the older, album version and Wilson's appearance on the track both seem to suggest that Rivers recorded the song because he genuinely liked it and not because he was just trying to get a hit song (although it apparently did well in the charts anyway).