Unfairly Forgotten Songs

One of the lesser-publicized deaths of 2016 was that of Jean-Baptiste Frédéric Isidore “Toots” Thielemans, who passed away at the age of 94. (In fact, his death was so little publicized that it was at least a month afterward before I ever heard of it.) Though he had been well-known for his harmonica skills, I found myself unsure of where I had heard them until recently.  As it turns out, I had heard what is probably his most often heard piece a lot during my life.

Continue reading “Leave a Tender Moment Alone by Billy Joel”

2016 took far too many of our favorite artists from us.  2017 continued that trend, unfortunately, with the death of Al Jarreau last month at the age of 76.  The Washington Post’s obituary fondly remembered him as the “acrobat of scat”, a man who had a wide following but who never quite made it in the way so many of his contemporaries did.

Continue reading “Boogie Down by Al Jarreau”

Let’s face it: 2016 has been a lousy year for classic hits.  First we lost David Bowie, and then soon afterward, we lost Glenn Frey.

Of course, just as with Mr. Bowie, Glenn Frey had too long and successful of a career for me to try to do it justice in one paragraph, so I won’t.  The levels of success he enjoyed are obvious based on the number of Eagles songs still receiving airplay on both classic hits and classic rock stations, and a few classic hits stations still play one or two of his solo hits (mostly #2 hits “The Heat Is On” and “You Belong to the City”, I would imagine).

Continue reading “The One You Love by Glenn Frey”

It seems like an unlikely start for a band, but Quarterflash got its start when a couple of teaching students met and fell in love.  Marv and Rindy Ross were a good foundation for the bands in which they played; Marv played guitar, and Rindy sang and, for good measure, also played saxophone.  And so they formed a band and gave it a name few people would forget:  Seafood Mama.

Continue reading “Find Another Fool by Quarterflash”

Let’s be honest here:  I don’t listen to a lot of modern top 40, and I haven’t since the late 1990s.  But when I think of classic songs from since then, one of the most prominent would have to be “Bed Intruder Song”. Created by the Gregory Brothers, creators of “Auto-Tune the News” (now known as Songify the News) and using a news interview featuring Antoine and Kelly Dodson after a not-so-great experience that Kelly had, “Bed Intruder Song” was a true internet phenomenon.

The song, as most of the Gregory Brothers videos do, features a whole lot of autotuning, which was necessary given that the Dodsons were obviously not singing in their interview. The song, as of this writing, has gotten over 126 million views on YouTube, so obviously it was a rather popular little ditty.

(Image of Antoine Dodson courtesy WAFF-TV.  Image ©2010 Raycom Media/WAFF License Subsidiary, LLC.)

Riding the wave of popularity the YouTube video had at the time, the Gregory Brothers remixed the song into an “iTunes Version”, which, solely on the strength of its sales on iTunes, entered the Billboard Hot 100 at #89 for the week ending August 28, 2010. Unfortunately, that was its only week on the chart.

Amazingly enough, this song really didn’t get much radio airplay in its heyday, and it certainly doesn’t get any now. As to whether I think that is something to be remedied…well…check the post date.