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"Up on the Roof"
Manage episode 417660108 series 3540370
Sisällön tarjoaa Anthony Esolen. Anthony Esolen tai sen podcast-alustan kumppani lataa ja toimittaa kaiken podcast-sisällön, mukaan lukien jaksot, grafiikat ja podcast-kuvaukset. Jos uskot jonkun käyttävän tekijänoikeudella suojattua teostasi ilman lupaasi, voit seurata tässä https://fi.player.fm/legal kuvattua prosessia.
Today at Word & Song I have a new musical style to introduce to you. The genre was short lived, and occupied the years between Elvis Presley’s induction into the Army and the “British Invasion,” with the arrival of the Beatles in 1964. The style was called The Brill Sound, named for the Brill Building in Manhattan, where a group of song writers and composers worked and produced music that was sung by then-very-popular girl groups and teen idols. The Brill Sound was kind of reminiscent of Tin Pan Alley, only the Brill writers were introducing to rock n roll the the practice of hiring professional writers to compose for musical groups and artists rather than writing and recording only their own music. The Brill Sound was distinctive, and to some degree repetitive. Well that’s what happens when you go for a “sound,” right? Glen Miller worked on his music for a long time before he happened upon just the right sound which distinguished his music from the other big bands, but he did find it.
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Some very fine songwriters came out of the Brill Building, including names you may well recognize: Neil Sedaka, Neal Diamond, Don Kirshner (famed producer of television music, including a ridiculously popular band he invented called “The Monkeys” and head of Dimension Records), and today’s songwriting team, songwriter Carole King and her lyricist husband Gerry Coffin. Carole King as many of you know went on to have a very successful career writing music for herself, and held the record for best-selling album in the US for over 20 years with her LP, Tapestry. But when she and Gerry Coffin wrote our Song of the Week, she was barely 20 years old, married with a new baby, and working constantly with her husband to make a living by their combined talents. Carole could write lyrics, too, as she later proved. But one of their earliest songs was “Up on the Roof,” recorded in 1962 by The Drifters. Other King/Coffin hit songs may ring some bells with you: “The Loco-Motion” (for Little Eva), “Take Good Care of My Baby” (for Bobby vee), “I’m into Something Good” (Herman’s Hermits), “One Fine Day” (for the Chiffons). Sometime I would like to do more about Carole King, who was a true prodigy at piano and was among the few women who can lay claim to being among the best songwriters of the 20th century. Carol King was inducted into The Songwriters Hall of Fame. She has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame; and in 2013 The Library of Congress awarded her the Gershwin Prize for Popular Song.
Today I’m giving you two versions of “Up on the Roof.” The first is the one I love best, and have since my teens, recorded by “the tender tenor,” James Taylor, with his great guitar adaptation of the song, which he took out of the realm of Do-wop and turned into a sweet ballad about finding peace above “the rat-race noise down in the street.” James Taylor and Carole King did much collaborating and I think each enhanced the other’s career. “Up on the Roof” didn’t earn King or Taylor any Grammys, but it holds the 114 spot of Rolling Stone’s list of top 500 Rock n Roll songs, even though it’s not a rock song. I’m including here, for comparison, the original recording of the song, which The Drifters took to number 5 on the Billboard Charts in 1963; in that version, you will hear young Carole King on keyboards.
I hope you like this one!
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Word & Song by Anthony Esolen is an online magazine devoted to reclaiming the good, the beautiful, and the true. We publish six essays each week, on words, classic hymns, poems, films, and popular songs, as well a weekly podcast for paid subscribers, Poetry Aloud or Anthony Esolen Speaks. Paid subscribers also receive audio-enhanced posts and access to our full archive and to comments and discussions. We value all of our subscribers, and we thank you for reading Word and Song!
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