Week 4

Frank Sinatra’s ballad of Nancy is so different than the ballads we listened to last week.  Sinatra’s voice and phrasing are so unique to him and a style of his own.  The band baking him up isn’t a big band like the big bands of the 40s were from last week’s listening.  Although Miller and Basie certainly employed strings, with Sinatra, the strings are big, warm, and part of the overall tonal weight.  Even in previous ballads that employed them, the strings in last week’s big bands weren’t so full; the brass and saxes were the tonal picture with the strings adding color.  Sinatra weaves around with very little popular form to this ballad.  The only hook is “Nancy with the laughing face,” and that occurs sparingly.  There is not really a chorus section, the verses move from one to another. 

In listening to Louis Jordan’s Choo-Choo Boogie right after, the contrast from the two charts is so stark.  The style of Jordan’s chart is really a bridge between big bands (with large elements) and 50s rock’n’roll.  There are big brass and sax hits, instrumental solos, and no big strings.  I’d argue that this has much more in common with In the Mood than Nancy does, yet Nancy is jazz, and the Choo-Choo Boogie really borders on proto-Elvis rock’n’roll.  I head more in common with this and Crazy Little Thing Called Love from my Song Share than I do with the Sinatra chart.  Jordan’s chart is very structured and formal, with verses and chorus predictably interwoven. 

As much as my parents loved Chuck Berry, I’m pretty sure that Maybelline uses the rhythmic underpinning of a quick-step march with rock’n’roll imposed on the top.  This chart is just as different as the previous ones this week.  When you throw some swing on the ride to help the “boom chucks” on the set, Charlie Brown is quite similar, with the other exception being the brief pauses for the “why is everyone always pickin’ on me?” hooks and the slight tempo changes in the verses.  The chorus cooks along with a nice “boom chuck” pattern, similar to the Chuck Berry chart.  A third chart this week, Long Tall Sally is quite similar to these charts in form and structure, although Little Richard does much more with harmonies in the piano.  I am of the mind that his hook is “ooooo-oooo-uuuuh!”  Although I am of the mind that it’s his personal hook, rather than just one for the song.

Elvis gives us something completely different, yet totally rooted in everything we’ve listened to this week.  Gone is the big brass from Choo-Choo Boogie.  The big, big strings from Sinatra are gone too.  Elvis strips the big band sounds and the Sinatra additions down to an electric bass, a piano doubling the bass more than anything, yet with deemphasized comping, and then all the brass hits that we’re used to hearing in big band charts of similar structure covered by voices on bops, oos, and ahs.  A mediocre arranger could take Don’t Be Cruel and arrange it out for full big band (such as Miller or Basie) or even Sinatra orchestra and have a very viable chart in those styles.  Elvis uses a guitar as well, but mainly it stays out of the harmonic picture and just reinforces the rhythms.  Drum set is largely out of the way with a simple swing pattern on, I believe, the hi-hat, rather than the ride cymbal, which, although it’s still a swing pattern, is a rock-style departure from the driving ride of jazz.  There are other Elvis charts on the optional listening list for this week, and they all use this same minimalism of the big band instrumentation.