The Byrds' sixth album, Sweetheart of the Rodeo (1968) was the first country-rock album and probably one of the most important recordings in popular music. The driving force behind its sound was the band's newest member, Gram Parsons, a twenty-one year-old Harvard theology student from central Florida, who gave up university life when he heard country music (Merle Haggard, according to the legend). After moving to Los Angeles, he formed the International Submarine Band, with whom he recorded one album, Safe at Home (1968). Then came the Byrds, who followed his influence into making the ground-breaking recording mentioned above. Parsons wrote two songs for the record (the rest were covers): "Hickory Wind" (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9VX-GdOTw9A) and "One Hundred Years from Now" (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i_9AXakWgxQ&feature=related). More on the short, brilliant career of GP tomorrow.

Duke Ellington is a musician that should be listened to for many reasons. But one aspect of his artistry that gets too little attention, in my opinion, is his piano playing. His approach to the instrument is unique - he treats it like a miniature version of his orchestra (or band, if you prefer), and plays it in a way that reflects his composing and arranging skills, as opposed to most pianists who are thinking primarily as improvisers.

Ellington's music always makes me think of the contrast between the words theory and practice. Music theory is a well-named discipline: it deals with ideas about how music works, but it results in questions more often than answers, and to put it simply, there is much more to learn than is already known. Ellington's music is based on the concept of practice - the fact that he wrote and arranged vast quantities of music over a period of six decades - and that he was always looking for the most specific and beautiful way of solving each musical challenge. There's a freedom and originality in his music that distinguishes it from virtually everything else. Here's "In a Sentimental Mood" from the essential recording Duke Ellington & John Coltrane (1962), which I think will better illustrate what I'm trying to say: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sCQfTNOC5aE

Charlie Parker is usually given most, if not all, of the credit for the development of bebop - the complex, chromatic, almost scientific approach to jazz improvisation that has been the music's center ever since. He certainly deserves his share, but the other musicians who were there at the breakthrough jam sessions at Minton's Playhouse in Harlem in 1941, especially Dizzy Gillespie and the guitarist, Charlie Christian, deserve some as well. At the very least, they seem to have been at the same place, stylistically, at the same moment. In fact, Christian may have arrived there first. Proving this contention would require more knowledge in the fields of musicology and history than I have at my disposal, but one thing is for sure: Charlie Christian is among the most important and accomplished musicians in jazz, as well as the first great electric guitarist. Some would even argue that he still hasn't been surpassed on the instrument. And we're left to wonder what he could have done had he lived past the age of twenty-five. Here's "Stompin' at the Savoy", recorded at Minton's: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x52x5hjpD5k

Yesterday was the second time that I've mentioned Wes Montgomery in passing, and it occurred to me that since he is among the most important of jazz guitarists and one of my favourite musicians I had better dedicate a post to him, pronto. To the guitar, he occupies the same sort of position that Sonny Rollins or John Coltrane does in terms of the saxophone: Although none of these names were there at the very beginning of either jazz or bebop, as was the case for Charlie Christian and Charlie Parker, they stand shoulder to shoulder with any musician in jazz.

Montgomery's playing is striking in many regards - his soloing in octaves, his seemingly infinite vocabulary, the logic of his solo constructions, his thrilling interaction with his bands - but perhaps above all is his unique way of playing and placing swing eighth notes. I use the word "placing" because of his amazing ability to play behind the beat, and to make not only his own but every member of the band's contributions sound larger, heavier and more beautiful. Perhaps the best place to hear these qualities is the album called, Smokin' at the Half Note from 1965 with the Wynton Kelly trio. To give you an idea of its importance, Pat Metheny once called it the album that taught him how to play, and he certainly wasn't alone in that experience. Montgomery has probably had a larger influence on later jazz guitarists than anyone. Here is "If You Could See Me Now", the track that contains what Metheny called his "favourite jazz guitar solo of all time": http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xvf7DWerPy4

One of the coolest things about the guitar is that there isn't only one right way to play it. It seems like anything goes: all kinds of postures, a variety of fretting hand techniques, and even more ways of striking the strings. Two of the greatest guitarists in jazz, Django Reinhardt and Wes Montgomery, for example, had inimitable styles - due to a technical limitation in the case of the former (an injury to two fingers on his fretting hand), and a technical decision in the case of the latter (Montgomery played with his thumb - apparently so that he could practice late at night without waking his children). For a small, relatively primitive instrument (a piece of wood with strings on it) it has produced an astonishing variety of music, and a big reason for that is the seemingly endless ways guitarists find to play it.

One of my favourite guitarists is Lindsey Buckingham, primarily because of his virtuosic right hand technique. And it was a highly memorable concert experience a few years back - 2007, it was - when I got to see him in the relatively intimate setting of Montreal's Metropolis. (Usually, with Fleetwood Mac, he plays in much larger venues.) And I remember wondering, after he had walked out on the stage, by himself, and played the title track from Under the Skin (2006), about how someone could do something like that. It was one of those moments that inspires late night practice sessions for other guitarists. It did for me anyway. Maybe this clip will do the same for you: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FoYMvwhMf_A&feature=related

Rhyme can be important to lyrics in all kinds of ways - everything from humour to ease of memorization to providing formal restrictions that paradoxically lead to creativity. But today I'd like to write about a song lyric that deliberately doesn't rhyme. "Moonlight in Vermont", by Karl Suessdorf and John Blackburn, had always puzzled me because of how its words flow perfectly without the use of any of the various types of rhyme (Wikipedia lists about fifteen, by the way). And so I took another look at the lyrics, and then I realized that there was indeed a form to them which I hadn't noticed before - the three verses are all haikus. Have a look:

Pennies in a stream

Falling leaves, a sycamore

Moonlight in Vermont

Icy finger-waves

Ski trails on a mountainside

Snowlight in Vermont

Telegraph cables, they sing down the highway

And travel each bend in the road

People who meet in this romantic setting

Are so hypnotized by the lovely...

Ev'ning summer breeze

Warbling of a meadowlark

Moonlight in Vermont

Telegraph cables, how they sing down the highway

And they travel each bend in the road

People who meet in this romantic setting

Are so hypnotized by the lovely...

Ev'ning summer breeze

The warbling of a meadowlark

Moonlight in Vermont

Why the haiku form is so powerful is another interesting question, but that'll be for another day. For now, here is Frank Sinatra's version from Come Fly with Me (1958), with a glistening arrangement by Billy May: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kbrPen0tqxM.

And here is an instrumental version by the great Nat King Cole trio, from which Bill Evans fans will be able to clearly hear the influence that Cole had on Evans' playing: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uKB_RpYvDNM&feature=related

Lou Reed's Ecstasy (2000) is another album that, for some reason, I didn't get around to hearing until very recently. My loss. It's a tremendous album, with some of the most trenchant lyrical content that the great New York poet has ever written. Listening to it made me wonder if any rock and roller has ever considered the experience as completely as Reed has over the course of his career - which has now achieved a height in terms of importance that can be summarized thus: No serious rock musician or fan can be ignorant of his work.

The album's title track is notable for its mood, its ambiguous lyrics, its beautiful guitar figure and the playing of the great jazz percussionist Don Alias. Have a listen: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xIg8KUMW8TA

Another song that's notable for its honesty is Leonard Cohen's "The Land of Plenty", the last track on his highly recommended Ten New Songs from 2001. The lyrics deal with the uncertainty that people may feel when they find themselves on a public stage, particularly after some years and self-knowledge have entered into the equation, and the prevailing feeling of day-to-day life is self-doubt. In this case, the message that the narrator feels he's been selected to convey transcends his reticence. It raises an interesting proposition to consider: Are human beings at their best only when they're at their most idealistic?

Here's a link to the song (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wHMxKgNbATo), a masterpiece in 6/8 time, without a note out of place.

I've mentioned several times that honesty is one of the main things that I look for in an artist, and I was reminded of that again recently when I finally got around to listening to Ian Hunter's dazzling 2009 release, Man Overboard. I guess I had been listening to so much Mott the Hoople as I followed their surprise reunion via the internet that I ended up putting off hearing his latest album. Well, I was wrong to do so - it's great, one of his best, and it'll be in heavy rotation on my CD player for the foreseeable future. OK, now back to the point about honesty. The first track is called "The Great Escape" and it tells a vivid story, about running away from a fight with a thug, that is rare in its candor - most rock singers refer to themselves as if they're comic book characters (or something) who never back down from anything. Well, that's quite simply not the the way things really are, no matter how much some might pretend otherwise, and to put it simply, violence is the lowest form of human behaviour. Hunter's truthfulness has always set him apart, and it's always been at the center of his songwriting power. Man Overboard shows that he's continuing to prove it into his seventies. Lyrics: http://lyrics.wikia.com/Ian_Hunter:The_Great_Escape. Song: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VoA2OJf5aRQ

I can't verify the following story - I heard it from a recording engineer some years back - but it does have a ring of truth to it, so here it is. Apparently when the great Montreal-born rock singer Michel Pagliaro was recording his biggest English-language hits in London in the seventies, he had to do all of the backing vocals himself. The reason was that his singing was so perfectly in tune that even the slightest variation in pitch from any other singer would have been clearly audible. As I mentioned above, I can't be sure if the story is true, but I do know that Pag is one of the great singers in rock and roll. Here's "Lovin' You Ain't Easy", from 1971: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A3BTGK6yfcw. Let me know what you think - do all the voices belong to Pag?

I don't know about you, but I'm anxiously anticipating the new Radiohead album. It could be out soon, or in several months - no one knows (probably not even them). The only thing that we do know is that they're in the studio, which is cool. So while we're waiting, I thought that I would write something about their last official release, "These Are My Twisted Words", the free download single from August of 2009. Musically, the song is an experiment in texture, overlapping rhythms, and the magnetic pulls exerted by the use of harmonic pedals (i.e. a tone repeated throughout a progression), and for me anyway, it's one of their most interesting and beautiful pieces. The lyrics are very sparse (there are only eleven lines, and they don't begin until just before the song's midway point), but they're suggestive of a larger hidden structure, somewhat similar to the leafless tree branches in the accompanying artwork by Stanley Donwood and Thom Yorke (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/These_Are_My_Twisted_Words). So give it a listen (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G0Rvz-z5Kqw) and repeat as necessary, while we wait.

I'm always amazed at what a great song was produced by the one-time-only collaboration of Queen and David Bowie. "Under Pressure" (1981) must be considered as one of the most dazzling pop music singles ever. Its lyrical content, reminiscent thematically of Nick Lowe's "(What's So Funny 'Bout) Peace, Love and Understanding", sneaks up on the listener through the use of short phrases, tenuously connected, with little or no narrative, but with a mood of high drama and urgency. And the personalities of the singers, Bowie, Mercury and later in the song, the drummer Roger Taylor (who as a vocalist is almost as technically gifted as Mercury was, and who wrote the tune, called "Feel Like", that was the seed for the one in question) come through very distinctively on their own and at other points combine to powerful effect. The song's through-composed nature reminds me, a long-time Queen fan, of some of their greatest early songs, "My Fairy King" from their self-named first album (1973) for example. And most importantly, the song's charged atmosphere seems like the result of genuine sentiment: an honest wish for some good in the world. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xtrEN-YKLBM)

"Family Affair", the number one hit from 1971 for Sly and the Family Stone, is a song that gets covered a lot, and every time I hear it done, I want to hear the original again right away. I do admire the taste shown by anyone who would do one of their tunes, but on this one Sly's lead vocal performance (as well as the second vocal by his sister, Rose) is so distinctive and informed by so much musical and life experience that I'm surprised that anyone would take it on. Lyrically, the song is a powerful discussion of where the fault lines appear in lives put under extreme pressure: the home life.

Imagine a time when a number one hit could generate this amount of feeling and empathy without resorting to sentimentality (by which I mean unoriginal and/or dishonest thinking). And if you think I'm just being nostalgic, have a look at the current Billboard charts. Anyway, here's a link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_YZpbYqOw4o&feature=related

It's easy to see now that Sly and the Family Stone was one of the most important groups of all time. In some ways, in fact, they might be at the top of the list. Their attitude was to synthesize all the disparate elements that had come before them, not only the musical ones, but also in terms of race, gender and outlook, and to provide a model of what an intelligent, inclusive, fun-loving society might look like in the future. It could be argued that philosophically speaking, no one tops them. It could also be argued that very little of today's pop music, rock and roll or r&b hasn't been influenced by them. The song that exemplifies all of this best is probably "Everyday People", from Stand!, their masterpiece from 1969 (link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-hcgoLojOVo). Tomorrow, another of their great succession of singles, but one of a considerably different tone.

I'm always amazed by how the blues, a seemingly simple form, can produce so much music of complete originality. Reduced to its basics, it contains three chords and a five-note scale. But that's not it at all, of course. The blues is a concept: a study in contrasts in terms of harmony, rhythm, tone, emotional content and attitude - all of it held together by its deceptively straightforward form. And, as I've mentioned before, the restrictions that an artist places on him or herself actually (paradoxically) lead to freedom. Robert Frost once said that writing free-verse poetry (i.e. without restrictions) was like "playing tennis without a net". And the same can be done in music.

Of all the artists that have explored the blues form, very few have gone as far as Eric Clapton. In the days ahead, I'm going to re-listen to several of his great albums from the past as well as his brand new one called, Clapton (2010), and write about the experience in this space shortly. For now, here's the opening track, a version of Melvin Jackson's "Travelin' Alone", with a melody that led to me writing the first sentence above: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7xgaWpQojMI

Steely Dan's Walter Becker is best known for his compositional skills. He has worked in tandem with Donald Fagen for over forty years in what would have to be considered one of the very greatest of songwriting teams. And just as Fagen has released sparkling solo albums (three, actually), so has Becker (with two). The first of the two albums has not received as much attention as it deserved, in my opinion, so I'll be writing about it today.

11 Tracks of Whack (1994), co-produced with Fagen, is one of my favourite records. The opening track (of twelve, despite the title), "Down in the Bottom", sets the mood and the subject matter for the rest of the record: the attempted suburban escape of drug addicts and others bearing emotional scars from earlier, faster lives. It features a powerful vocal performance by Becker, who is hugely under-rated as a vocalist. The strength of his singing comes from his deep musical experience rather than his timbre, so it requires thoughtful listening to fully appreciate - he's a bit like Wilco's Jeff Tweedy in that respect, in fact - and this song is a good place to do it: the melody is beautifully contoured and he lays it out perfectly. Becker's guitar skills are on display here as well, and they're prodigious; he's equally at home in jazz and blues, and he crosses from one to the other freely, often in the same line. The album is filled with great playing, singing, grooves, melodies and lyrics. You should hear it. Here's an interesting track ("Medical Science") that's available only on the Japanese release: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VAhh2IKdd5I

I have one other thing to say in my brief defense of the Rolling Stones: At times, it may not be clear why they are so famous. Other groups have singers who dance around, and wild-looking guitarists, and they play concerts and make recordings as well. And of course, in our time fame itself has become an art form, as the media and technology work together to make Warhol's famous prediction look like a statement of fact. But the reality is this: the Rolling Stones aren't famous for their life-styles or their clothes, or any other peripheral matters (that have been emulated countless times); the Rolling Stones are famous because they can play like this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qtnxvpIEg8w

To this day very few groups have ever done a version of a Beatles song and come out on top. In my opinion, it's been done precisely once, by the Rolling Stones with their version of Lennon and McCartney's "I Wanna Be Your Man" from 1963. I very much like the Beatles' version as well, but the Stones made it sound like the perfect fusion of their blues and r&b roots (of the twenty-four songs on their first two albums, four were originals) and their own distinctive sound. It's clear that it was an important moment in their development as songwriters, in that it gave them the confidence of knowing that their education could make songs written anywhere (even right in front of them) sound like the real deal. The following video features Lennon telling the song's story, excerpts from both versions, and Keith's Beatlesque headshake tribute: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-8QEX3_aVig

I mentioned yesterday that the Rolling Stones were fed by American music - rock and roll, r&b and the blues - and that they returned the favour by breathing life into each of them. (In fact a strong case could be made that American music was treated with more reverence and scholarship by English bands in the sixties than by their American counterparts.) But I didn't mention the relationship that the Stones had with country music, and how many of their greatest songs were from the genre. And it's not a coincidence that their classic period - from 1968 to 1972, when they released four straight masterpieces (Beggars' Banquet, Let it Bleed, Sticky Fingers, Exile on Main Street) - was also the time during which they were most involved with country, both in terms of composition and the integration of its rhythms and sounds into their rock and roll. Consider this list: "Factory Girl", "Salt of the Earth", "Dear Doctor", "Country Honk", "You Got the Silver", "Dead Flowers", "Wild Horses", "Sweet Virginia", "Torn and Frayed". And then there's my favourite Stones country song, "Faraway Eyes" from 1978's Some Girls, with its beautifully sung chorus, its unforgettable truck-driving narrator and his girl with "well, you know what kinda eyes she got": http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TDnZBvCetQM

It may sound somewhat strange, but one of the greatest things about the Rolling Stones is that their music doesn't always work. By that I mean that their musical concept, based as it is on the idea of freedom - which for them has always been embodied by an imaginative America, and particularly the sound of its blues, r&b and rock and roll - has a poly-rhythmic, open quality that is unpredictable in terms of results. But this is a good thing: at their best, their multi-faceted rhythms are awesomely compelling, and even when they aren't, the music is still very interesting. They understand that it's possible to over-rehearse rock and roll music, and that one of its most powerful qualities is that some moments will come once and never again. For an example, here is one of their greatest songs - "Gimme Shelter" - which has an intro that has never sounded exactly like the one on the recorded version (from 1969's Let it Bleed), whether played by them or anyone else, a second time: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fhBpUJcpiCg&feature=related

One of the best music critics writing today is Alex Ross, the classical music critic at the New Yorker. I've mentioned him before because of his splendid article on Radiohead ("The Searchers"), from which I learned a lot about their unique working process. I also enjoyed The Rest Is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century, his 2007 book that lives up to its title, and I continue to enjoy his blog - here's a link: http://www.therestisnoise.com/noise/. But yesterday, while having a look at NPR's excellent music site (http://www.npr.org/music/), I found an interview with Ross regarding his just-released book (Listen to This, which I will look forward to reading soon) wherein he answered a question regarding music that he doesn't care for, with this: "I respect Anton Bruckner and The Rolling Stones — to make a weird duo — but I can't say that I love either of them. I try not to dismiss things too quickly, but the 'blech' reaction is hard to ignore once it kicks in." This surprised me, and I've decided to take it as a challenge. And since I've learned a great deal from his writings, I'll try to reciprocate in writing a defense of the Stones, starting tomorrow, and after some research and listening, Bruckner in a couple of weeks. By the way, here's one last link - to the interview in question: http://www.npr.org/blogs/therecord/2010/11/08/131169818/get-to-know-a-critic-alex-ross-of-the-new-yorker.

Hoagy Carmichael was one of the most sophisticated composers of popular music. He should be ranked with people like Strayhorn, Ellington, Porter and Gershwin. And it's interesting to note that of that group, he is the only one to have made multiple recordings as a vocalist. Although there are vocal recordings of the others out there (try to hear Strayhorn singing "Lush Life", if you can - but it isn't easy to find), they were incidental to their main work. Carmichael, on the other hand, considered it a central part of his art, and it's fascinating to listen to. His version of "Skylark", for example, is probably my favourite, and that's saying something, because it has been recorded beautifully numerous times, but his unadorned, unaffected treatment seems to reveal information about the song's structure and origin, which of course only its composer could do. Unfortunately, I can't find it on YouTube, but here's a good recording of his wonderful "Memphis in June" instead: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ZnwIMw8emc

The terms "verse" and "chorus" don't have the same meaning in jazz as they do in rock. In rock, the chorus is a repeated big moment, which often makes use of the title in the lyric, and which usually contains the most memorable and energetic melody (i.e. the hook). The verse is a repeated section that leads to the chorus, and the bridge is a section that usually appears just once (but sometimes more), and is neither the verse nor the chorus. In jazz, via the broadway tradition, a verse is a written introduction with lyrics that permits a connection from a conversation to full-blown singing. The chorus is the main body of the song, often repeated many times for the purpose of improvisation. The term "refrain" is a synonym for chorus, by the way, and you can hear a reference to that term, and to the verse, in Cole Porter's "De-Lovely", where the chorus (or refrain, if you prefer) starts with the lyric, "The night is young...". Here's a link to Sarah Vaughan's version: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-PREOtMaDvI&feature=related

OK, now I'd like to return to yesterday's subject, Chet Baker: As a singer, he was among the most poignant interpreters of a lyric, and as a trumpeter, he displayed a deeper respect for the words of songs than do most improvisers. One of the ways that this is evident is in the fact that his recorded versions of standards would often include the verse, rather than a short intro and statement of the melody before repeated choruses of soloing. In this version of Gershwin's "But Not for Me", the opening trumpet melody is actually the verse of the song, which very few jazz musicians would have included. Check it out: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R_f_mMJAezM.

The deep connection between music and language is an interesting avenue of thought and study. In the past I've written a few times about the relationship between literature and music, specifically how the best rock bands are always the ones that are the most well-read. And it happens in jazz too. Chet Baker, as both trumpeter and vocalist, was an artist who allowed his work to be informed by both sides of the equation. His playing has a vocal quality, and his singing is reminiscent of his trumpet-playing. In fact, his vocal improvising is hard to distinguish from his instrumental work. You can hear it clearly on "Do It the Hard Way", where his vocal solo is every bit as sophisticated as the one that follows it - by the excellent Kenny Drew on piano. Here it is: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1VWOO4U0ABs. More on Chet tomorrow.

Leonard Feather, the jazz musician and writer, had wonderful descriptive abilities. What he wrote in regard to the great trumpeter Chet Baker's singing has always stuck with me: It's "like being sweet-talked by the void." Here is a link to Baker's performance of "I Get Along Without You Very Well (Except Sometimes)", that I think illustrates the uncanniness of both that description, and Baker's uniquely beautiful vocal style: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IgbPHTBiAVQ&feature=fvst. More on him and the song's composer (Hoagy Carmichael) in posts to come.

I was listening to one of the most underrated of Rolling Stones albums today, Black and Blue from 1976, and was struck once again by how well they play, and by how Charlie Watts is always at the center of it. The album is really varied in terms of genre - there's disco ("Hot Stuff"), reggae (Eric Donaldson's "Cherry Oh Baby"), funk ("Hey Negrita"), swing ("Melody"), rock and roll ("Hand of Fate" and "Crazy Mama") and perhaps the greatest ballad that the band ever recorded, "Memory Motel" - a song that describes the emotional effects of touring with great acuity. (It's interesting that another candidate for the honour of best Stones ballad also uses m-based alliteration, "Moonlight Mile".) And throughout all of it is Watts' brilliant sound and time-feel (the former is the result of the latter, by the way). Here's "Memory Motel": http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7so3BNXUE0I. Check out the beautiful playing of Billy Preston on keyboards, Richards' great vocal contributions, and the drum entry.

The multi-instrumentalist Toots Thielemans, one of the greatest artists in jazz, is eighty-eight years of age and continues to record and concertize. He began his career as a guitarist, and in 1959 Hamburg, the young John Lennon and George Harrison often went to hear his noon-time shows with the George Shearing Quintet, but he's perhaps better known for his harmonica playing and whistling. In fact, he is usually considered to be the greatest harmonica player in jazz. He's also a great composer, and one of his songs, "Bluesette", has reached iconic status as one of the most creative and challenging blues-based pieces in the jazz standard repertoire. Here's a really fine version of it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yKnG_9q4crA. By the way, Thielemans is performing tonight in Sint-Niklaas, in his native Belgium.

James Jamerson, the virtuosic Motown bassist, probably did more for the success of the label than anyone. There are several reasons for this, the most vital being that music is usually "polarized" in nature, by that I mean that the melody or soprano voice (on top) and the bass line (on the bottom) are the two most active parts in the majority of music. The inner voices, the alto and tenor, have their moments certainly, but for the most part their role is to fill in the middle in the most sonorous way possible. Ergo, the two most important musicians on most pop records are the singer and the bassist. Now Motown's singers have become among the most famous in history (Stevie Wonder, Diana Ross, Smokey Robinson, Michael Jackson, Marvin Gaye, etc.), but the musicians who played on the records didn't. There was an attempt at redressing the situation with the 2002 film, Standing in the Shadows of Motown (which took its title from a 1989 book about Jamerson's life and work), and it did to a large degree - it's a great movie, by the way - but it came too late for many of the musicians, and particularly the most accomplished and most important artist on the label's roster. I'll be writing more on him in the days ahead, but for now here's a good example of his brilliance: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2JmVrkRcTgo

Stevie Wonder's music is fascinating in many ways. The aspect that I'm concerned with today is the process with which he layers rhythms one on top of the other during the recording process. The best place to hear it is "Superstition", from Talking Book (1972), where he overdubbed clavinet and Moog bass parts over his original drum track. (In fact, he played everything on it but the trumpet and saxophone parts, which he wrote.) His drumming on the track, while clearly the work of a great musician (the groove is massive), is also clearly not the work of a professional drummer, in the sense that it is utterly free of memorized patterns and/or vocabulary that a studio musician relies on. The end result is one of the greatest recordings in r&b history (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U8HlHpACXyw&feature=related), and one of the most influential, because it was at this point that the music began to be centered around producers and arrangers as opposed to bands and their leaders. It's somewhat ironic, because Wonder learned much of his craft from a band - the brilliant Motown hit-makers that called themselves the Funk Brothers. But that's for another day.

I've always thought it was cool that only one Led Zeppelin song features a singer from outside the band: "The Battle of Evermore" from IV (1971) is a duet sung by Robert Plant and Sandy Denny, the great folk-rock singer who had a prolific career as a solo artist and with Fairport Convention. The song was written quickly according to Page, who said that its composition began with the first time that he tried a mandolin. Moments like this one are the reason for the thinking that some musicians follow, where the belief is that the sound will lead the player, not the other way around. It certainly worked in this case. It's a rich, dramatic cut that combines the blues with Tolkien (and other folk-tale elements), and without the use of electric guitars or drums is not out of place on an album that includes "When the Levee Breaks" (for example). A lot of the credit has to go to Plant and Denny, who create an other-worldly atmosphere with their vocals. Check it out: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uTuzVZsKAhY