The Singer & The Song

This week’s case study -- the final episode of our first season -- began life as a soulful ballad entitled “One Step Ahead” by the one and only Aretha Franklin.  Released on the Columbia label in 1965, the record scarcely made a splash.  In 1999, more than 30 years after its initial release, the rapper known as Mos Def wrote a sexy and thoughtful little composition he called “Ms. Fat Booty” to some funky music that sampled a significant taste of Aretha’s “One Step Ahead.”  The dozens of new versions since then include one that links Mos Def’s rhymes to the music of Marvin Gaye (not Ms. Franklin) to cover versions of Aretha’s original recording by Lauryn Hill and Ledisi, to rocksteady, dub, and drum’n’bass remakes, and finally to a very recent hardcore rap version by Atlanta’s J.I.D. that’s inspired tens of thousands of TikTokers to make 20-second dance videos pegged to a single bootylicious line spit by J.I.D. 

Episode five is devoted to “Watermelon Man,” the first song on the first album by the pianist Herbie Hancock, released when he was just 22 years old.  In 1963, less than a year later, the adventurous Cuban bandleader and conga player Mongo Santamaria cut an irresistible Latin-esque version of it, which became a gigantic pop hit in 1963 and has spawned over 200 cover versions in the decades since.  Ten years later, Herb recorded a jazz-rock remake of “Watermelon Man,” and, ten years after that, nearly a hundred rappers began to sample the jazz-rock version. 

Its musical appeal aside, this upbeat little song by a Black composer in tribute to a watermelon man casually overturned 150 years of the racist lampooning of Black folks for their love of watermelon…which may help to explain why a number of singers -- including Jon Hendricks, Gloria Lynne, and Big Mama Thornton – were inspired to write lyrics to a composition that was born as an instrumental.  It’s a rich story.

Episode four of “The Singer and the Song” is devoted to “Tequila.”  Released into the world as catchy little rock instrumental in 1958, that song’s astonishing elasticity over the last six decades has generated flavorful jazz, r&b, rap, ska, cumbia, movie soundtrack, and marching band versions by notable performers including Pee Wee Herman, Joeski Love, and Wes Montgomery and by lesser known devotees including Perez Prado, Los Bitchos, Ska Cubano, the Reverend Horton Heat, and the University of Washington’s Husky Marching Band.  Drink up!

Episode three of “The Singer and the Song” is a two-fer, devoted not only to “I’m in the Mood for Love,” which debuted in 1935, but to “Moody’s Mood for Love,” King Pleasure’s 1952 vocalese version of James Moody’s ground-changing 1949 instrumental interpretation of the original song.  “I’m in the Mood for Love” was quickly embraced by Alfalfa and Darla in an early “Our Gang” comedy, then by Louis Armstrong, Fats Domino, and the reggae artist Lord Tanamo during the succeeding decades.  “Moody’s Mood” was covered by Esther Phillips and Amy Winehouse even as it rolled into the hip-hop era with Slick Rick, MC Lyte, and Digital Underground all building tastes of it into their recordings.  And there's more!  It’s a rich history.

A singer or instrumentalist performing a song is like an actor bringing a script to life or a cook working from a recipe – every interpretation is going to have its own flavor.  And the vast and unpredictable range of those interpretations is of enduring interest to Bill Adler, the host of this podcast. 

Episode one tracks the twists and turns to which a great song entitled “The Three Bells” has been subjected over the course of the last 80 years.  We start w/ Ray Charles in 1971, travel back to the treatment accorded it by a country music trio known as The Browns in 1958, then blast back to the song's birth in French under the name “Les Trois Cloches” as performed by Edith Piaf in 1946.   Reversing our steps, we shoot forward to a jaunty reggae version by the Jamaican singer Ken Parker in 1972, then to a post-disco dance version in French by Tina Arena in the year 2000, and ultimately to a present-day hip-hop version inspired by the rejiggering on YouTube of the soundtrack accompanying the scene of a murder depicted on the “The Sopranos” tv show.

We invite you to sit back and enjoy the trip.  And if you’d like to listen to all of the episode’s songs in their entirety, kindly check out our playlist on Spotify.