The Andrews Sisters' "Where Have We Met Before?"

This morning I listened to a compilation album of the Andrews Sisters, and I think I found some allusions in "Where Have We Met Before?"

The second verse begins with the lines: "It might have been way back in Nagasaki / Where women wicky wacky 'round your door."  I think this is a reference to the song "Nagasaki."  Apparently this is a jazz standard, but I have only Django Reinhardt's version, which has the lines "Back in Nagasaki where the fellas chew tobaccy / And the women wicky wacky woo."

The third verse of "Where Have We Met Before?" begins with "It might have been in Paris in the springtime," which I think is a reference to "April in Paris."  It's not as direct as the allusion to "Nagasaki," but April is in spring, so the temporal elements do match.

I lookt up the dates for these songs, and I think the chronology allows for the allusions.  The dates I found say that "Nagasaki" is from 1928; "April in Paris" is from 1932; and the Andrews Sisters' "Where Have We Met Before?" is from 1938.

I can't fully articulate it, but there's something fitting about referencing other songs in a song that asks, "Where have we met before?"

Wilco's "Born Alone"

Yester-day I listened to Wilco's Roadcase 002 - 2012-07-08 Geneva, IL.  It's a live recording of a Wilco concert I attended some years ago.  Anyway, I noticed the phrase "Mine eyes have seen" in "Born Alone" (from The Whole Love), and I realized that this same phrase is in the first line of "The Battle Hymn of the Republic" - "Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord."  I lookt up the lyrics of "Born Alone" on Wilco's website, and I found "Mine eyes deceiving glory," which also bears some resemblance to that line in "The Battle Hymn of the Republic."

I'd previously noticed the phrase "The finger, divine extremity," which I always thought was a reference to Michelangelo's "The Creation of Adam."  I still find the song enigmatic, but I'm pretty sure these are meant as religious-inspired images.

The Yardbirds' "He's Always There"

This morning I listened to the Yardbirds' Roger the Engineer, and I noticed something about the melody in "He's Always There."  The first two lines of the "I'd like to get to know you, sure..." section have the same melody except for the last note.  They're both E G B A G A B, but the first (and third) line ends with an E note where the second line ends with a D.  For the second line, the melody goes higher, which musically represents the "one step more" mentioned in the line itself ("And take this thing just one step more").

The other instruments sort of underline this representation too.  For that section, the bass plays the same notes that are sung, and the guitar part plays the last three, adding further emphasis.  For the first (and third) line, it's A B E, but for the second, it's A B D.

Argent's "Celebration"

This morning I listened to Argent's Ring of Hands, and I noticed something about "Celebration," the first track.  The first couple lines ("Celebration / An invitation") are sung by just one voice, but then more voices join in for the next lines ("To come and join in / The ring of hands together"), so there's a musical representation of that "join[ing] in."

Purcell: Dido and Aeneas

This morning I listened to Purcell's Dido and Aeneas, and I noticed something about "Come away, fellow sailors" at the beginning of Act 3.  The text is:

Come away, fellow sailors, come away
Your anchors be weighing
Time and tide will admit no delaying
Take a bowsey short leave of your nymphs on the shore
And silence their mourning
With vows of returning
But never intending to visit them more

This continues with some variation on "But never intending to visit them more," but otherwise that's the entirety of the text.  I guessed at the line breaks, judging by what words receive capital letters in the notation I have (found here).

"Mourning" and "returning" don't rhyme perfectly.  At best, it's a slant rhyme.  That imperfection in rhyming seems to betray the sailors' "never intending to visit them more."  If there were a perfect rhyme there, it would imply the sailors' faithfulness to their "nymphs on the shore."

Bobby Darin's "Mighty Mighty Man"

Last night I listened to the first disc of a two-CD set of Bobby Darin titled Purely... Bobby Darin.  Last time I did Collection Audit, I postulated that "Mighty Mighty Man" took some lyrical inspiration from "Good Rockin' Tonight."  This time, I noticed that "Mighty Mighty Man" also has the exact same line that starts Little Richard's "Rip It Up."  The second line in the third verse is "It's Saturday night, and I just got paid."  I lookt up the release dates, and chronologically, this influence is possible.  Little Richard's "Rip It Up" is from 1956 (and apparently many other artists recorded it in the following years), and "Mighty Mighty Man" is from 1958.

Because I found that these two lines match more or less exactly (there might be a "well" or an "a-" differentiating them), I'm more confident in what I said in my post from two years ago.  It seems more likely that Darin took some lyrical phrases from "Good Rockin' Tonight" and "Rip It Up" rather than both of these similarities in the lyrics of "Mighty Mighty Man" being just coincidences.

The Decemberists' "Of Angels and Angles"

I just listened to the Decemberists' Picaresque and noticed a small thing about "Of Angels and Angles."  The "aways"s in the lines "Down we go away / Away" have melismas.  The first is just F# G F#, but the second is F# G F# E D G.  Both - but especially the second - give a sense of the movement (downward movement in particular, since the phrase descends) that's mentioned in the previous line: "And, darlin', we go a-drownin'."

Sam Cooke's "Chain Gang"

This morning I listened to a compilation album of Sam Cooke titled Portrait of a Legend 1951-1964, and I noticed something small about "Chain Gang."  There's a melisma for "down" in the line "Till the sun is goin' down" in the bridge.  Instead of a single syllable, it's sung to two (the notes are A and G), so there's a musical representation of the sun's descent.

Electric Light Orchestra's Out of the Blue

This morning I listened to Electric Light Orchestra's Out of the Blue.  Last March I started a project where I look into ELO's music specifically (which I started because of this project, actually), and I've already written a fair amount about Out of the Blue there, but I noticed some more things this morning.

"Starlight"

I've had this album for years (it was actually the first original ELO album I got), but it wasn't until this morning that I deciphered the line "You've gotta stop" in "Starlight."  Had I noticed that sooner, I probably would have understood long ago that there's a musical/lyrical connection there.  After "You've gotta stop," the music stops before the lyric continues with "Foolin' around."

"Big Wheels"

There's a musical connection between "Big Wheels" and "Steppin' Out."  After some measures of tied whole notes, the bass part in "Steppin' Out" has this figure:

(click here for a larger image)

I use the MIDI component of my digital audio workstation to make these examples of notation, and where I would have tied a half note and a dotted quarter note, it put two dots on a half note.  I guess it ends up with the same value, but I haven't seen double-dotted notes anywhere else.

When the bass part finally starts in "Big Wheels," every other measure has the same rhythm as that in the bass part in "Steppin' Out."  The phrase also alternates between fourths, although here it's a semi-tone higher:

(click here for a larger image)

"Birmingham Blues"

Near the beginning, there's the line "Yeah, I've been rollin' like a stone," which recalls "Like a rollin' stone" in "Steppin' Out."

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Both of those last two things make the album more coherent.

Simon & Garfunkel's "A Most Peculiar Man"

From August 11th to the 13th, I listened to Simon & Garfunkel's three-disc Old Friends set (I listened to a disc a day).  Yester-day I was thinking about "A Most Peculiar Man," and I realized something about the melody.  It ascends for the first part of the line "She lived upstairs from him."  The live version on Old Friends is in a different key (D major, although it sounds a bit out-of-tune) from the studio version on Sounds of Silence (Db major), so in the live version, "She lived upstairs" is sung to the phrase E F# G A where it's Eb F Gb Ab in the studio version (those are Paul Simon's parts at least; I think Garfunkel's harmony is a third lower, so C# D E F# in D major and C Db Eb F in Db major).  At first, I assumed that the live version on Old Friends is the same recording from Live from New York City, 1967, but closer listening reveals that they're different recordings, although the Live from New York City, 1967 version is in D major too.  In any case (and in any key), that melody ascends as if to show Mrs. Reardon (the spelling of which I'm guessing on) going up the stairs, while the titular man (the "from him," sung to F notes in Db major or F# notes in D major) remains below.