Friday, October 21, 2011

Vote for Chips -- Songwriter's Hall of Fame 2012 Nominee

Chips is a 2012 nominee for induction into the Songwriter's Hall of Fame -- here's a blurb from the site:

Songwriter/producer Chips Moman was a guitarist for Johnny Burnette and Gene Vincent before producing records in Memphis for the likes of Carla Thomas, and later, Elvis Presley and The Box Tops. As a songwriter, his compositions include such much-covered classics as Aretha Franklin’s “Do Right Woman, Do Right Man” and James Carr’s “The Dark End Of The Street.” After moving to Nashville he earned a Grammy for the B.J. Thomas hit “Another Somebody Done Somebody Wrong Song,” and also penned country hits like Waylon Jennings’ “Luckenbach, Texas (Back to the Basics of Love).”

Key songs in the Moman catalog include “Another Somebody Done Somebody Wrong Song,” “At The Dark End Of The Street,” “Do Right Woman, Do Right Man,” “Lukenbach, Texas” and “Wurlitzer Prize.”

http://www.songhall.org/vote/entry/1263

Sunday, October 09, 2011

Refreshing Beverage -- Reggie's Solo on 'Hooked on a Feeling'

What a name for a site! Refreshing Beverage!

http://refreshingbeverage.com/?p=485

This post is about Reggie's solo on Hooked on a Feeling:

"Young provides the melodic intro for the song over a chromatically descending chord pattern, a figure he no doubt came up with on the spot. He fills here and there through a pair of verse-bridge-chorus progressions, whence, aided by swelling strings and a ringing ride symbol, he takes flight with a 5-bar solo that’s utterly perfect and concise and bluesy, but totally of-the-tune. You can’t help feeling a little cheated as he arpeggiates the F chord that leads back into the bridge…but hold on…before you know it, the chorus comes and goes and – he basically does it all over again! (The outro solo actually extends a couple of extra bars before the fade…bonus!)

The dude knew he had a good thing, a solo so nice he played it twice. It provides exactly you want from a solo in a pop song – it takes you to another place, providing respite from the form, and it gives a lift to the tune, however brief, before the verse-bridge-chorus resumes (in this case just the latter two), sounding fresh again from their momentary absence. It provides both tension – in being a break away from the rest of the song – and release, by virtue of Young’s note choices; here, it makes a good song great. I didn’t understand the mechanics of it at 10, of course. I just thought it sounded really, really good. Looking back 40 years later, it turns out – I was right."