Of More Stardust Memories
Will Friedwald’s book Stardust Memories tells the stories behind twelve of my favorite songs. Here are the featured songs I haven’t already noted.
-
“As Time Goes By” (Herman Hupfeld), 1931 Everyone knows and loves this song because of the movie Casablanca, but the song was actually written years earlier for the show Everybody’s Welcome, and would’ve been forgotten like the show, if not for the insistence of Murray Burnett, the author of the play that Casablanca was based on, that the song be used in the movie. It was played in the movie by pianist Dooley Wilson, and was his claim to fame. There are a lot of nice versions of this classic, but my personal favorite is that of Schnozzola–Jimmy Durante (which was the version used in the movie Sleepless in Seattle–I like it anyway).
-
“Night and Day” (Cole Porter), 1932 “Night and Day” is a fine song, but it’s not one of my favorite Cole Porter numbers. Still, Porter had to make an appearance on this list. I like Sinatra’s version and Ben Webster’s instrumental version.
-
“Stormy Weather” (Harold Arlen/Ted Koehler), 1933 This song is identified with Lena Horne, and her version may be the only one I have, except for the odd-but-enjoyable doo-wop version by The Spaniels.
-
“Summertime” (George Gershwin/DuBose Heyward), 1935 Although Gershwin deserves to be on this list twice, and “Summertime” is a great, timeless song, I might’ve preferred that Duke Ellington got representation on this list. “Summertime” has been done by so many singers, known and unknown, that it’s hard to get a handle on “best versions.” I’m not crazy about Janis Joplin’s version, I’ll say that. I love the recording by Ella & Louis, and a later treatment by Brazilian singer Caetano Veloso. I like Nina Simone’s version, and the Miles Davis version from his Porgy & Bess album. Friedwald mentions a version by the African singer Angelique Kidjo, but I haven’t heard it. A sentimental-favorite version is the live rendition I heard at Stubbs’ Barbecue about 35 years ago. It was performed with great flair by Mr. Stubbs himself, whose BBQ sauce is our family favorite.
-
“My Funny Valentine” (Richard Rodgers/Lorenz Hart), 1937 This is one of the most beautiful melodies ever written, I must say, and it’s even improved by the uncoventional lyrical touch of Hart. It was featured in the musical Babes in Arms. Frank Sinatra and Tony Bennett both recorded great versions of this song, but I am always happy to hear two of my music friends when they sing it. Gabrielle West sings it sweet ‘n’ high and Tim Trosper sings it sweet ‘n’ low.
-
“Lush Life” (Billy Strayhorn), 1938 So, in a way, Duke Ellington is represented on this list, by his sidekick Mr. Strayhorn. “Lush Life” is a wonderfully odd song, with its unusually long opening verse and its night-life lyrics. I’m a big Strayhorn fan and I really like this song that Duke never got around to playing much. Strayhorn wrote it at the age of 18. The best-known version is the one with John Coltrane on sax and Johnny Hartman on vocal. The oddest version I’ve heard is one on the album The Peaceful Side, a Billy Strayhorn project. It features the “oohs” and “ahhs” of a French vocal group, the Blue Stars.
Great book. Find it!
It Takes Two
“And now, a duet for you!” That’s the way Tiny Tim introduces his duet with himself, as both Sonny and Cher on a cover of their hit “I Got You, Babe.” That’s one of my favorites. There’s a nice list of “The 25 Greatest Duets of All Time” on Retrocrush: http://retrocrush.buzznet.com/archive2008/duets/index.html
Tiny Tim
It’s got some goodies, including Ray Charles and Betty Carter’s version of “Baby, It’s Cold Outside,” Snoop and Dre’s “Nuthin But a G Thing,” and k.d. lang joining Roy Orbison on “Crying.” My favorite on the list is one I’d somehow missed: the unlikely pairing of KLF and Tammy Wynette on the song “Justified and Ancient.” Each of the 25 duets listed on Retrocrush includes the music video, and this one’s wonderful.
A few other favorite duets of mine: Mama Cass and Andy Williams (on his TV show) in a dueling duet of “Words” (Andy) and “Words of Love” (Cass); Willie Nelson teaming up with Toots Hibbert of Toots and the Maytals on the Putumayo compilation One World, Many Cultures on Willie’s song “Still is Still Moving to Me” (when I first heard Willie come in on the second verse of this reggae version he sounded like he’d wandered into the wrong party, but it grew on me); and my favorite Ray Charles duet, “The Night Time is the Right Time,” sung with Raelette Margie Hendricks and made famous in a Cosby show scene in which youngest daughter Rudy lip-synchs Margie’s part.
Most of the duets albums that pair a great singer with a variety of other singers aren’t very successful. The best ones are the happy accidents–the off-the-wall match-ups that work against all odds.
Of Stardust Melodies
Will Friedwald’s 2002 book Stardust Melodies tells the stories behind twelve great songs, “each of which,” according to Friedwald, “has enough of a history, a long enough list of recordings, and a wide enough variety of interpretations in many different styles.” The songs date from 1914 to 1938. Ain’t no glam rock here.
Here are the first six songs featured, with some comments:
-
“Star Dust” (Hoagy Carmichael/Mitchell Parish), 1927 This often-recorded classic (over 500 recordings by the mid-sixties) is known as much for Carmichael’s perambulating melody as for Parish’s dreamy lyrics. The first three words of the lyrics, “Sometimes I wonder,” were used as the title of Carmichael’s 1965 biography. Hoagy is quoted as saying, “I had no idea what the title meant, but I thought it was gorgeous.” My favorite version of the song is that of The Mills Brothers, for sentimental reasons, but there are so many great versions, including one by my favorite vocal group, The Boswell Sisters, and versions by Nat King Cole, by the Duke Ellington Orchestra, and by Frank Sinatra.
-
“St. Louis Blues” (W.C. Handy), 1914 This blues classic is actually more complex than most blues songs, with multiple sections that don’t repeat, going from major to minor. My favorite version is that of Bessie Smith, but I have many versions–I even have an LP called 14 Blue Roads to St. Louis, which is nothing but “St. Louis Blues,” by artists ranging from Benny Goodman to Dizzy Gillespie. I like Louis Armstrong’s version of the song on his Louis Armstrong Plays W.C. Handy album. I even like Nat Cole’s version from the soundtrack to the biopic in which Nat is W.C.
-
“Mack the Knife” (Kurt Weill/Bertolt Brecht, English lyrics by Marc Blitzstein), 1928 The swingy lounge hit for Bobby Darin and Louis Armstrong started out as “Moritat,” from the German musical The Threepenny Opera. Composer Kurt Weill later came to the US, where several songs from his work for musical theatre became standards, including “Speak Low” and “September Song.” The original German incarnation of the song doesn’t swing, but it has that curious cabaret feel Weill did so well. The jazzy versions (all recorded after Weill was dead) gloss over the gruesome lyrics about a knife-wielding tough guy. Ella Fitzgerald has a nice live version on Ella in Berlin in which she blanks on the lyrics and improvises her own words about forgetting the lyrics. It was of this song’s popularity that Weill’s widow Lotte Lenya said, “A taxi driver whistling Kurt’s tunes would have pleased him more than winning the Pulitzer Prize.”
-
“Ol’ Man River” (Jerome Kern/Oscar Hammerstein II), 1927 This song from the musical Showboat is closely identified with Paul Robeson and Jules Bledsoe, who both sang the song on Broadway as the character Joe. The Negro-dialect lyrics written by a white man have dated poorly, but it should be noted that Hammerstein was involved in several shows that addressed racism, including this one. Friedwald mentions quite a few versions of the song that I don’t have (including Stan Freberg’s mock-PC version called “Elderly Man River”), but a favorite I do have is by, of all people, Milton Nascimento, a Brazilian singer.
-
“Body and Soul” (Johnny Green/Edward Heyman, Robert Sour, Frank Eyton), 1930 This “most played melody in all of jazz” has one widely-acknowledged definitive version: Coleman Hawkins’ 1939 recording. That one’s my favorite. Nuff said.
-
“I Got Rhythm” (George Gershwin/Ira Gershwin), 1930 One of many great Gershwin standards (another, “Summertime” is also on Friedwald’s top 12 list), “I Got Rhythm” was introduced by Ethel Merman in the musical Girl Crazy. I have a classic Louis Armstrong version of the song, but I don’t have any other great versions of it–but there are many out there. Friedwald also notes the many jazz variations that use the “I Got Rhythm” chords and structure, including “Lester Leaps In” (one of my favorites), “Anthropolgy,” and “Cottontail.”
That’s the first six. Truly some great pre-rock songs.
John Stewart
John Stewart has died at 68. The singer-songwriter was best known for his song “Daydream Believer,” which was a big hit for The Monkees, but he put out 45 albums of his own after leaving The Kingston Trio, the popular folk group he joined in 1961.
The Kingston Trio (Stewart on right)
I was reading just the other day that Monkees singer Davy Jones wasn’t too thrilled about singing “Daydream Believer,” which he didn’t really get. The same article credited Peter Tork with the piano figure that opens the Monkees version of the song. I always kinda liked the record–one of my guilty pleasures.
Hearing about John Stewart’s death reminded me of the biggest John Stewart fan I ever met, Showbiz Moore. Showbiz and I were in a traveling band for awhile. He played guitar and banjo and had a pleasant baritone voice. I remember that he often wore an Army-green sleeveless vest over a plaid shirt, and was unfailingly kind, even though he talked of recurrent violent nightmares of his time in Viet Nam.
The band played six nights a week, and during our month-plus-long stints in Lubbock Showbiz would play the seventh night as a solo. And what did the rest of the band do? Why, we came and watched Showbiz Moore.
That’s when I discovered John Stewart, because Showbiz did lots of his songs. There are two I particularly remember: “July, You’re a Woman” and “The Last Hurrah,” which I believe was about the passing of the Kennedy era after Bobby was shot. I liked the songs, but somehow never picked up any John Stewart albums.
Maybe I’ll try to track one down at Half Price Books, and I’ll drink a toast to John Stewart and to Showbiz Moore, wherever he is. And to Suzanne Pleshette, who also just died. I was just watching an episode of The Bob Newhart Show earlier today–the one where she fixes up Carol with a blind date who winds up marrying her (Carol) days later.
Sly Riot
I’ve just finished Miles Marshall Lewis’s entry in the 33 1/3 series, There’s a Riot Goin’ On, and it’s stirred up lots of memories from the time Sly & the Family Stone’s album came out and I rushed out to buy it.
I was a freshman at SMU, a white suburban boy with a black roommate. (I’ve wondered ever since whether I got a black roomie because all the other white boys checked “no” to the question on the housing application about rooming with someone of a different race or that I just got picked randomly out of a long list of white boys who checked “yes.”) I was a huge fan of Sly and the Family Stone, a proud owner of Stand, and I often sang the “dum-dum” vocal break from their earlier song “Dance to the Music” on the street corner with my choir buddies as a high school junior. Stand was such a great album, full of poppy hits that had substance, harmonies, and rhythms. The band was the first big pop group that comprised integrated, male and female instrument-playing regular members. Their image was optimistic and civil-rights righteous, their lyrics were hopeful and the music was joyful.
And then came There’s a Riot Goin’ On. The band was mostly MIA, the lyrics were cryptic and introspective, and the music was not bright and poppy (although two of the album’s songs became big hits). No one was expecting such a switch after all that preceded it, but there were signs, most obviously Sly’s notorious habit of showing up way-late to his gigs, if he showed at all. (When I saw him in 1972, he was only 45 minutes late…)
The Lewis book got me dragging out my well-worn copy of the LP and my well-worn copy of Greil Marcus’s book Mystery Train, in which Sly Stone is one of the six artists focused upon, in an essay centered around There’s a Riot Goin’ On. Listening to the album and reading these books, I got to wondering: Why, in 1971, did I just accept this album as another great Sly & the Family Stone record? I maybe played it a little less than Stand, but not much less. I loved it!
Marcus writes, “With Riot Sly gave his audience–particularly his white audience–exactly what it didn’t want. What it wanted was an upper, not a portrait of what lay behind the big freaky black superstar grin that decorated the cover of the album.” My main complaint about the record was that the sound of the recording was muddy and occasionally distorted. And I sometimes wanted to skip “Spaced Cow Boy.” But it became one of my favorite albums instantly, right alongside its very different predecessor. All I knew then was that it was atmospheric, exotic, and you could move to it. And playing it again now, I find it as rich and strange as I found it 36 years ago.
Robert Christgau, in his Record Guide: Rock Albums of the 70s, ranks Sly & the Family Stone’s Greatest Hits the second-best album of 1970; he places Riot at #4 for 1971, over such competition as Lennon’s Imagine, The Stones’ Sticky Fingers, Led Zeppelin IV, and Joni Mitchell’s Blue. (What a great year for music!) So he liked the poppy Sly and the psycho Sly equally, too.
We all found out later what There’s a Riot Goin’ On represented: a pop genius freaking out and losing it, and it foreshadowed the fact that, except for 1973’s Fresh, Sly would be doing nothing else of great and lasting value. (At least he hasn’t yet; fellow drug burnout/pop genius Brian Wilson got his second chance decades after the crash, so maybe Sly’ll re-emerge yet.)
Greil Marcus explains how Stand and Greatest Hits led to Riot: “Emerging out of a pervasive sense, at once public and personal, that the good ideas of the sixties had gone to their limits, turned back upon themselves, and produced evil where only good was expected, the album began where ‘Everybody is a Star’ left off, and it asked: So what?”
It’s a revolutionary record, difficult and infectious at the same time. I’m thinking it oughta be on the all-time best record lists right up there with Pet Sounds and Are You Experienced? and Revolver.
Thirty-Three-and-a-Third
I’m finally getting around to 33 1/3, the series of books about pop/rock/soul records. A different writer covers each album in the series, and there’s apparently no standard for continuity of style, and the quality varies quite a bit. Here’s an Amazon list of volumes 1-40: http://www.amazon.com/33-3-Books-%23-1-40/lm/RGSF3HQ66R2MO/ref=cm_lmt_srch_f_1_rsrsrs0
The only one I have is There’s a Riot Goin’ On and I’ve just started it. This one’s fine so far; I imagine that when I love a record as much as I do Sly & the Family Stone’s There’s a Riot Goin’ On, I’ll be more tolerant of pedestrian writing, maybe even of flighty experiments. We’ll see how it goes.
James Brown’s Live at the Apollo
Here’s my list, in order of preference, of the series books I’d like to find next, starting with the two my pal MC Goober recommended (which got me going on this):
-
#13 in the series, Live at the Apollo (James Brown)
-
#44, Trout Mask Replica (Captain Beefheart)–gotta be a strange book to go with this strange album
-
#4, The Village Green Preservation Society (The Kinks)
-
#19, Pet Sounds (Beach Boys)–already heard and read alot about this record, but, eh, there’s always room for a little more
-
#8, Electric Ladyland (Jimi Hendrix)
-
#40, Court and Spark (Joni Mitchell)
-
#20, The Ramones
-
#35, Highway 61 Revisited (Bob Dylan)–although I’d prefer a volume on Blood on the Tracks
-
#10, Sign o’ the Times (Prince)
-
#46, Aja (Steely Dan)
Close runners-up (and, really, I’ll read any book in the series, but in a few cases I’ll hafta find the record before I start it): The Notorious Byrd Brothers, Exile on Main Street, Forever Changes, The Who Sell Out
More Books About Music
I have previously listed a few favorite books that were biographies or autobiographies of music folks. I also like to find well-written books about music and its effects on society, and how social situations effect music. Here are a few:
Escaping the Delta (Robert Gordon)–This well-written book has an interesting premise: the thirties blues performers rediscovered in the sixties actually performed a wide variety of music live, from tinpan alley to swing to country & western (Muddy Waters was a Gene Autry fan), but were discouraged from recording anything but blues.
Mystery Train (Greil Marcus)–A classic about rock & roll music in its many variations, featuring insights into Elvis, Sly Stone, Randy Newman, and others.
Boogaloo (Arthur Kempton)–An interesting book that traces the development of soul music from way back in the earliest days of black gospel.
The Sound of the City (Charlie Gillett)–Another classic, this is the story of the independent labels that produced the great early rock & roll music of the fifties.
Elevator Music (Joseph Lanza)–Everything you always wanted to know about Muzak!
Where Dead Voices Gather (Nick Tosches)–Quirky and twisting examination of blackface minstrelsy (always a controversial topic). How black music altered white music and vice versa.
No Such Thing as a Bad Song
My friend The Amazing Jimmy Gray always used to say, “There’s no such thing as a bad song.” I’d try a different song on him every night before the gig. “Hey, Jimmy, what about ‘Torn Between Two Lovers’?” “Aw, man, that’s a great song! I was listening to that the other night!” It was always the same reaction, and I think he was genuine about it. And I agree, in a way, that every song is or has been “a great song” to someone, if only to the person who wrote it. Well, every song except “Who Let the Dogs Out.”
Bobby Goldsboro Donna Fargo
Dave Barry’s gotten a lot of mileage out of his bad song surveys–consistently the subject of his most popular columns. He’s a funny guy and he and his readers get laughs while getting it right most of the time. “She’s Having My Baby,” “Billy, Don’t Be a Hero,” “Disco Duck”–anyone would agree that those are some bad songs, except Jimmy Gray, and the millions of people who made those songs big hits. That’s the beauty of Dave Barry’s lists: he doesn’t accept nominations of obscure attempts by unknowns. His honor roll is Neil Diamond, Bobby Goldsboro, Barry Manilow. Artists who sold millions of records to actual people. (And although Donna Fargo doesn’t make his list, she’s right at the top of mine.)
A truly awful song like the answer song to Randy Newman’s “Short People” called (ungrammatically) “Short People, Your Beautiful” doesn’t qualify. Only ten or so people ever heard it, and they won’t admit it.
There are a few songs that tend to get mentioned, whenever folks are discussing worst songs ever, that I do like. And I don’t mind admitting it. So here’s my list of ten songs I like that most people think suck.
-
“MacArthur Park”-The Richard Harris version, which tops Dave Barry’s list of worst songs ever. I love what others hate: Harris’s melodramatic, quivering vocal, the over-the-top orchestration. Great! And the songwriter ain’t no slouch: Jimmy Webb. In his Book of Bad Songs, Barry writes that “there is a small but vocal group of people who like, even LOVE, MacArthur Park.” I’m one o’ them.
-
“Alone Again, Naturally”-OK, I admit Gilbert O’Sullivan sounds wimpy and sings a lot of frou-frou forced rhymes. But I thought it was a pretty song when it first came out, and I still like to hear it. Just not that often.
-
“At Seventeen”-Ditto for Janis Ian’s mopey hit. Loved it then, like it now.
-
“Brandy”-I’m not sure how often this song makes Dave’s lists, but it’s my wife’s second-least-favorite song (after Minnie Riperton’s “Loving You”), so it makes the list. I love the lead singer’s loungy delivery and the little background “doo-doot-n-do-d-doo” parts.
-
“Cat’s in the Cradle”-I don’t love this Harry Chapin song, but it’s too well written to be a perennial bad song nominee. And I don’t care what anyone says, I love Chapin’s little interjection in “Taxi”: “He said, ‘Harry, keep the change.”
-
“Tiptoe Through the Tulips”-Tiny Tim is a cultural and musical oddity, but I liked his shtick, and he really did know his stuff. It’s another one, though, where a little goes a long way.
-
“Let ‘Em In”-Yes, it’s one of Paul McCartney’s really dumb songs, but it has a mood about it that I like. When it comes on the radio, I won’t let my wife change trhe station.
-
“It Must Be Him”–Vikki Carr’s rendition of this oft-listed number is right up there with Richard Harris’s in the melodrama department. So bad it’s good!
-
“Is That All There Is?”–Peggy Lee had an unlikely hit with this song, which was written by Lieber and Stoller and arranged by then-unknown Randy Newman. Many hate it–a co-worker and I used to play it repeatedly in the back room where we worked and receive death threats from all the other employees–but I truly love it.
-
“Wives and Lovers”-I can understand why this makes Barry’s lists, particularly with the female voters, because its lyrics really are outdatedly misogynistic. But it’s bouncy and corny–and oudated–in the same way that Doris Day is in Send Me No Flowers. So it’s OK, right?
Second Act Trouble
I’m reading a book I just picked up at Half Price Books called Second Act Trouble, by Steven Suskin. Its subtitle is Behind the Scenes at Broadway’s Big Musical Bombs. It’s actually a compilation of mostly contemporaneous accounts by people associated with the shows, with commentary by Suskin. I have three other books about musicals that were written by Steven Suskin, including Opening Night on Broadway and More Opening Nights on Broadway, which collect excerpts from four or five top reviews for each musical, written for New York papers on opening night. Suskin starts with Oklahoma and ends in the mid-nineties when the second of these volumes was published. He adds anecdotes, stats, and opinions. All three of these books are great reading. Yes, I am proud to admit it: I am a straight, married, middle-aged white guy and I really love musicals–some musicals.
I tend to always enjoy seeing live productions, even community theatre, unless it’s really bad, just like I enjoy seeing other kinds of live music. Because it’s live, unique. I don’t enjoy listening to musicals on albums much, though. There are usually a few great songs that make good listening without the visuals, but they’re surrounded by not-so-great expository songs, often sung in stagy voices.
There’s a handful of musicals covered in Second Act Trouble that I’d like to hear, though. I’m not likely to ever see them live, because they won’t be produced. But among these bombs are shows that failed for reasons other than the music; maybe the show was stuck with an SOB star, maybe the book was weak, maybe it just didn’t come together. One I especially want to hear, and its original cast album is on CD, is Kwamina, by Richard Adler. His first two shows were The Pajama Game (great) and Damn Yankees (pretty gosh darn good, too). His partner Jerry Ross died young, but then Adler had a wild idea for a third theatre piece–a love story between a white woman and a black ruler. Didn’t go over so great on The Great White Way in 1961. But apparently the music is beautiful and inventive.
Another one I’d like to hear, also available on CD is Dude, the second show from Gerome Ragni and Galt MacDermot, who had a huge success with hair. The failure of Dude is evidently Ragni’s fault, and his lyrics are, I guess, a bit strange, but the music is supposed to be pretty nice. And Nell Carter sings on the album, made several years after the show opened and closed in 1972.
And now, a list of the ten original cast albums I actually occasionally listen to (along with the number of stars The Theatre Mania Guide to Musical Theatre Recordings gives each of them):
-
Ain’t Misbehavin’ (1978), Fats Waller A whole show of fantastic Fats Waller songs, well-sung. I listen to this one more than any other. (3 stars)
-
Company (1970) , Sondheim. Great stuff, very much of its time, but I guess that’s one thing I like about it. (4 stars)
-
Guys and Dolls (1950) , Frank Loesser I’m not crazy about some of the vocal performances, but the songs are all great, and Stubby Kaye and Vivian Blaine are perfect. (4 stars)
-
Candide (1956), Bernstein Dense and beautiful. (5 stars)
-
Johnny Johnson (1955 studio cast album), Kurt Weill/Paul Green Beautiful stuff from Mr. Weill, an early anti-war show with some really haunting melodies. (5 stars)
-
The Pajama Game (1954), Adler/Ross The movie soundtrack is actually better, but, again, a great collection of songs, beginning to end. (3 stars)
-
The Robber Bridegroom (1976), Uhry/Waldman A country-ish musical based on Eudora Welty’s eccentric Deep South novel. I’m not sure why I like this one so much… (4 stars)
-
Urinetown (2001), Hollman/Kotis With a name like “Urinetown,” it’s got to be good! It is great stuff: the music is Weill-ish and the lyrics are madcap. (4 stars)
-
Rent (1996), Jonathan Larson A sentimental favorite: I saw one roadshow production with my wife and another with my daughter. Great live, and the songs hold up on disc. (5 stars)
-
Pacific Overtures (1976), Sondheim I went through a period of listening to this quite a bit, and though I don’t listen to it alot now, its music always is somewhere around me. (5 stars)
Honorable mention: all of the great showtunes from the Brothers Gershwin and Cole Porter, Hair, Promenade, The Fantasticks
Related articles
- Kurt Weill: That’s How You Tell an American (bettysbrownies.wordpress.com)
The Sound of Surprise
A couple of recent posts got me thinking about those wonderful, unexpected musical moments that transform a nice song into something memorable, and haunting, elevating, or just surprising. There are many of these in every field of music, and I am sure that they’re more often than not the reason I like a song, or even a songwriter.
Jazz critic Whitney Balliett titled one of his collections of jazz criticism The Sound of Surprise, referring to all of the unexpected, wonderful moments the great jazz performers and composers hit us with. And jazz certainly has some of my favorite transforming musical moments: the opening passages of Mingus’s “Goodbye, Pork-Pie Hat,” always so jarringly beautiful, like the first trumpet/sax phrase of Ornette Coleman’s “Lonely Woman.” The propulsive and rhythmic chorus of Don Byron’s “Leopold…Leopold” coming out of the frantically chaotic verse. Cannonball Adderley’s turns on the haunting melody of Gordon Jenkins’s “Goodbye.”
Brian Wilson
There are great moments like these in pop music, too. The arching six-note phrase of the verse of “More Than This” by Roxy Music is among the first that come to mind. (And this is a rare case of the musical surprise being in the verse, and not in the chorus, which in this song is prosaic). A similar stimulating leap is in the first phrase of the chorus of “Brick” by Ben Folds Five. Neil Young, for an addle-pated folkie-rocker, has quite a few of these unexpected chords that are like catnip to me, in “The Bridge,” “Philadelphia,” “A Man Needs a Maid,” “Expecting to Fly,” “Powderfinger”–the list goes on. Brian Wilson managed to get some into the most poppy hit songs with the most mundane lyrics: “When I Grow Up,” “I Get Around,” “The Warmth of the Sun,” “Caroline, No,” and many more. Not to mention the non-hits, like “Wonderful,” “Don’t Talk,” “There’s So Many” (from his first solo album).
Duke Ellington & Billy Strayhorn
Other masters of the sound of surprise include Randy Newman (especially in his string arrangements, which provide the perfect counterpoint to his drawling vocals and rolling piano–and increase the tingly effect); Billy Strayhorn, with his melodramatic chord changes; his cohort Duke Ellington (the “hook” to “In a Sentimental Mood,” the central passage in his obscure “Mystery Song”); and, most of all, Kurt Weill.
Weill, best known for “Mac the Knife”–but for the Vegas-y Bobby Darin version of the dark German cabaret number, inserted these unexpected tinglers into many of his songs for theatre: the bridge of “Speak Low,” the main theme from Johnny Johnson, the chord pattern of “Lonely House,” the chorus of “Le Train du ceil.”
There are a few of these moments in country and folk music and in soul and R&B, but not many. These types of music generally have other elements that surprise and delight: lyrics, rhythms, the beat. Their three or four chords don’t allow too much in the way of nuance or surprise.
Give me the thick, careening chords of Strayhorn and Weill, the harmonies of Brian Wilson, the tension of the string arrangements of Randy Newman.
Some other moments to mention:
“Everybody is a Star” (Sly Stone)–the vocal tag
“Parachute Woman” (Jagger-Richards)–the discordant guitar/harmonica rides
“Is That All There Is?” (Lieber-Stoller)–it’s Randy Newman’s string arrangement behind the third verse–listen to it again!
“Shake ’em on Down” (Bukka White)–his inimitable note-bending on the first lines of every verse
“Yesterdays” (Jerome Kern)–the ascending line
“What I Am” (Edie Brickell)–the verses, sung in a different key from the instruments–but it works
“What’s Goin’ On?” (Marvin Gaye)–the key change for the sax solo
Running/Breathing 
