Switched on Pop - Say Hey

Episode Date: March 10, 2016

Listen carefully to almost any hit song these days and you’ll hear musicians screaming “Hey!” What’s the matter with them? Do they really need our attention? We uncover the reason and history behind this phenomenon with guest host Alex Kapelman, producer of the narrative music podcast Pitch. We also listen to new music by Aoife O’Donovan in a new segment called Off The Charts. And we have the fourth and final installment of Nate’s journey back into the popular music of the 20s and 30s. Featuring Katy Perry - Roar Carly Rae Jepsen - I Really Like You Grimes - Venus Fly (ft. Janelle Monáe) Arian Grande - Break Free (ft. Zed) One Direction - Steal My Girl Scenes from the film Get On Up James Brown - Cold Sweat James Brown - Get Up Off That Thing Little Richard - Hey Hey Hey Hey The Lumineers - Hey Ho Of Monsters and Men - Little Talks Edward Sharpe and the Magnetics - Home One Direction - Perfect Kanye West - Black Skinhead Justin Bieber - Sorry Duke Ellington and Ivie Anderson - Raisin’ The Rent Harold Arlen - We’re Off To See The Wizard Ethel Waters - Stormy Weather Frank Sinatra - I’ve Got The World On A String Maxine Sullivan - Primitive Premadonna Check out Pitch at www.pitchpodcast.org Listen to the Say Hey playlist on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/user/switchedonpop/playlist/2w4BPUPQBMWhMeVefSMDvr  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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app at eater app.com. It's free for iOS users. Welcome to Switched on Pop. I'm songwriter Charlie Harding. Today on the show, we're going to start out by investigating a listener write-in. Later on, we'll hear some new music by Ifa O'Donovan, and we'll also check in with our missing co-host Nate to see how he's doing on his research about popular music from the 1920s and 30s. So every day, lots of people write into Switched on Pop to suggest songs or artists that they would like to hear on the show. And there are so many good suggestions, but this one person keeps writing us. In fact, over the past two months, he's written us, I think, like 30 times with the same idea. And so I figured we really ought to invite him on and allow him to have his piece. I have along here with me, Alex Kaplanman,

one of the producers of the Narrative Music Podcast pitch. I think there's only one way to greet you, Charlie. What's that? Hey. For the last two months, you have written us. us almost every other day with songs that say, hey. Do you want to just share a little bit about what's been bothering you that you had to have covered on Switch on Pop? Yeah, sure. So one day I was just kind of listening to a song. I think it was Roar by Katie Perry.

Yeah. And I kind of heard like a, like a, hey, you know, like this like, hey that was like washed out with reverb. And I was like, oh, that's kind of a funny sound. That's cool that like she uses that, like, percussively. And, and then I was listening to another song and I heard that, hey. And then I listened to another song. And then another song and another song.

It's like, I hear it everywhere and I want to know, like, what's going on. Like, where did it, like, how did this, how did it start? I have to say, I'm kind of honored because on your show, pitch, you do an amazing job, diving deep into narrative stories about helping us to listen more deeply. So I figured you might just take this on your own, but you've employed us to do the research for you. Yeah, we're deep in research for our next season, so I figured I'd outsource this to you. Well, with this idea, I have to be honest, when you sent it to me, I couldn't figure out the nugget of what is this hay thing. And so I kind of did like the really obnoxious journalist thing and just consulted the dictionary. I really hate when people do that.

But it's the first place I went. And I actually think that it gives us a decent clue into how hay is being used. in all these pop songs. The dictionary, huh? Yeah, I'm sorry. I went there. Okay, here's the gist. The word, hey, comes from Middle English from about 1,200.

1,200, huh? That's way longer than I would have guessed. It's been around for a long time. And uniquely, pretty much just in the U.S., it's used as a friendly greeting. Like, hey, Alex, how you doing? Obviously. The OED also tells us that hay is used to attract attention, to express surprise, interest, or they even say annoyance.

Okay, okay, good to know. So I consulted the dictionary. I listened to all 30 tracks, and I started to see this pattern emerge. In my research, I found that there are three reasons that artists are using, hey, as a musical element. And lucky you, Alex, I'm going to reveal them to you. So let's do it. Do you want to get into the first one? Yeah, yeah, let's do it.

I'm, dude, I'm so into this. Reason the first. It's hailing the listener. It's actually just saying hello, right? So a song like, Hey, Jude, is saying hello, both to the character Jude, and it also is opening with this idea of, hey, take a listen. invite you into the song. Hey, Jude, don't make it bad. That's interesting. I never thought about the second one before.

Yeah, some of the more modern examples that you were sending along was first the Carly Ray Jepson tune. I really like you. First thing you hear. Hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, exactly. Hey, with a little reverb and a little bit of delay. And this is really just, it's there to greet us into the song. You had some other examples, though. Yeah, I had like a ridiculous amount of other examples.

Okay, so the next one that I saw that is sort of doing the same thing. Similar to the Carly Ray Jepson song is Grimes, Venus, Fly. Yeah, I love this song. Exactly, exactly. It's such a good track. So similarly to the Carly Ray Jepson song, the very first thing you hear is hay.

It's saying hello. It is literally greeting us into this song. One of the things you noted in your email, though, was that a lot of these haes have this reverb tail. They're sort of washed and reverb and echo and delay, lots of effects going on. I think that Grimes is starting to use her hay for another effect. The second of the three reasons artists are using hay, percussive effect, where, in fact, the hay isn't really acting as a hello or a lyric. It's really much more acting as a drum.

Yeah, okay, I buy that. I totally buy that. I'm into that. So I sort of believe that in the world of offbeat, you have a hierarchy of different. different hits. Yeah, but so by offbeat, you mean the two and the four. The two and the four, exactly. So, you know, the primary thing that you're used to hearing is a snare, right? You're boom, boom, to elevate and get even sort of more energy. Sometimes you'll hear the rim of the snare, sort of a faster, harder hit. Also popular to build more energy are handclaps. Okay. And I kind of feel like the hay is the most energetic way of hitting that offbeat, hitting that two and four. Hey. Yeah, because it's kind of like, it's a human voice, right? And it's like, and especially if you're saying hey, and it's like, you know, like the hay, like you just said, like it commands attention.

Exactly. So there's a couple examples in modern music that I think is doing this. You sent me Ariana Grande's break free. Yeah, this is another song I love. Okay, I'm going to play it. Oh, that's a little bit of like a softer hay, right? It is a little bit of a softer hay. But here, I think it's really acting still as that, as that drum.

One way you can think about it is would they actually have a little bit? have written the hay in the liner notes. Would it actually be a lyric of the song or is it really acting more like a drum? And I think here it's acting like a drum. Yeah, totally, totally. The other example from the list of songs that you sent along was One Directions, Steal My Girl. Yeah, another song I love. I'm sorry, I like, I love all of these songs pretty much. And Steal My Girl here is going to be doing something just a little bit different. Rather than throwing the snare hit that hay on the two and the four, it's landing right on the downbeat, the first beat of the measure. And it's doing that for dramatic effect to go from this very low dynamic to a much

louder portion of the song. Let's take a listen to it. I love that track. I love that song so much, dude. It's got so much energy. I think there you're hearing a lot more of that, that hay as a way of grabbing energy. and building the song. All right, cool. Two in. So are we, is the third one, is the third one going to get to, like, where this is why everyone's doing this?

Like, did Max Martin just, like, go into a studio one day and, like, say, like, say, like, and now we will say, hey. Well, let's call this, like, 2A. And what I want to do is actually a segment that we call classical masters where we dig into the past to figure out where this hay is coming from. Whoa, classical masters. My favorite segment. Okay.

All right. We're not going to go too classical. We're going to go back into the 50s and 60s. And we're not going to necessarily find the first example of using hay in popular music, but probably the best example that influenced the most artists. If you had to guess, where would the first example come from? Do you have any idea? Hold that thought for one minute because we're going to go way back in time in just a second.

I think, though, that in terms of popular music, it really comes from the King of Soul, James Brown. Really? There's this great moment in the biopic, Get On Up, when we're we're going to be a book, one of his band members asks him, what's with all the haze? Mr. Brown, what's it mean when you lift his shoulders go, ha-a-ha! Yeah, so James Brown is famous for these vocal utterances that he keep popping up throughout all of his super funky music, and he explains later on just about a scene later in the film. What's this here?

A snare, Mr. Brown. A snare, what? Drum. Correct. What's this? A guitar. No, it's not. Pee-wey what's this?

Drum, Mr. Brown? Now we're getting it. What's my's here holding? Drum, Mr. Brown. Fellows, what's them shiny things you're holding over there? Drums. Now we all got our drums. Hit it!

Oh, my God. Oh, my God. First of all, that song is so good. But that's so interesting. Just everything is a drum. Everything's a drum. I love that. I love that.

Every element of his music has got to have an essential rhythmic core. And while James is frequently not playing an instrument, what he's doing is he's asserting his vocal utterances as a form of rhythm, emphasizing off beats, down beats, whatever needs emphasis. Oh, that's so interesting. Because I guess I kind of knew that somewhere in the back of my mind that it never really came up and is like, oh, yeah, he's like, as a vocalist, He's doing like super rhythmic stuff, like in a way that's adding to the rest of the super tight, crazy James Brown rhythm.

That's, I never thought about that before. That's really cool. And maybe going just a little bit further back, I think that he's probably pulling from one of his idols, Little Richard. Oh, snap. Yeah. Here we go. And so Little Richard and James Brown are both pulling significantly from gospel traditions. They, you know, both grew up in the church and are singing a lot of those utterances that they might,

have heard a preacher say. Wait, whoa, whoa, we're going back into, we're going back to church. I did not expect that to go there. Yeah, so Little Richard was in a Pentecostal church. He was actually at one point as a kid chastised for shouting too loudly while he was singing. Really? And I think that this is sort of at its height in his song, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, child. Oh, that is a beautiful scream.

Well, done. Thank you. I looked it up and there's, there's, I found over 30 songs just titled, hey, or hey, hey, or hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey. Okay. Little Richards was the earliest that I found. Okay, okay. Interesting.

Okay. So you also asked about, well, how far back does this go? Where is the first instance of the use of hay and music? Yeah. I think I can take us pretty far back to Shakespeare. Okay. Do you want to go there? Please. Oh my God. I did not expect that. In much ado about nothing, there's this poem. The poem goes,

sigh no more ladies, sigh nor more. Men were deceivers ever, one foot in sea and one on shore. To one thing constant never, then sigh not so, but let them go and be your Blythe and Bonnie, converting all your sounds of woe into hey, nanny-nony. First of all, this is crazy because I, like my first major acting thing was playing like Benedict in much ado about nothing. Actually, my first kiss ever was during much ado about nothing. I'm glad that this resonates, but I have to ask you, do you know what hey, nanny, nani means? The only thing that it means to me is like from Robin Hood Men in Tights or they're like, hey, nanny, nanny and a ho, ho, ho, but I have no idea what hey nanny nanny means. And does it have to do with,

is it like, is it kind of like daddy, mommy sheet monster time to quote, to quote their So frequently, yes, Hey Nani Nani was used to cover up more lewd language, but it actually is really a meaningless word that just alludes to traditional English folk music. And that Hey, Nani Nani was a refrain used frequently kind of like using fa la la la or something like that. It's something which is rhythmic, it has energy, and it gives everybody to sing along to. Okay, okay. In fact, using Hay as a rhythmic element in folk songs becomes such a trope recently that someone made a hilarious, YouTube video about a fake musician named Connor Redwood is supposedly

the artist that says hey on all of these songs. Hi, my name's Connor Redwood and I yell hey in songs. What? And yelling, hey, it's my life. Oh my God, how did you find this? You can hear my work in a number of different musicians, songs,

let's see, the loop of ears. And then he goes on and claims that he says hey for of monsters and men and also for Edward Sharp and the magnetic zeros. That was, first of all, that video is incredible. That's, this is hilarious. This is hilarious.

Second of all, I had no idea that there was a specific person that, you know, there was studio musicians who just sang, hey, like, thank you for showing me this. Thank you for showing me this and educating me. Alex, you've been dup. Yes, yes, yes. This is clearly a spoof that this guy, Harris Alterman, made a fake video of a guy named Connor Redwood, a musician profile who supposedly is the person who says, hey. And of course, it's a ridiculous.

Right. How did you find this? Some deep internet searching. I'm glad I outsourced my journalism to you. So basically, part of the reason why you're hearing hay everywhere is that it is becoming incredibly cliche. Well, yeah. So, you know what? I actually kind of noticed that. Like, in listening to these songs, I would kind of, I would kind of notice that people are starting to kind of play with it a little bit. So instead of just like the normal hey, there would be

like people switching the pitch and like doing it a little and doing weird things with it. Is that where you're about to take us? You know, I think that is a perfect transition because I think the third reason

why people use Hey is simply to grab your attention. Going back to our dictionary definition, hey can be an interjection used as an exclamation point to grab someone's attention or as the OED said to actually annoy you.

I think they hit the nail on the head there with some of these songs, I got to say. So this is a way that musicians are basically saying, check out this moment in the song. It's important. You need to pay attention. And that's how they're using hay here. So what moment exactly are you talking about? There's a couple of them.

Let's go back to one direction and listen to Perfect. So what do you notice about that hay? It transitions from one section to another. Exactly. the hay is actually landing on sort of this strange beat. It's landing on the four and one and two and three and four and exactly. And so basically, just when we're about to go into the next section of the song, they say, hey, pay attention, things are about to change. We're elevating the song, we're going to the chorus.

The other example, which probably is, falls more in the capture your attention, potentially even annoy, is... Oh, tell me that's Bieber. Tell me this is Bieber. Bieber's one of them. But I was actually thinking of Kanye West's black skinhead. Yeah, that went too. Oh, man. Yes. Yes.

I'm glad you went there. This is an amazing track, the first track off of his album, Yeez-Sys. And as he's going into the chorus, as you sort of hinted a manipulated version of hay, almost these screams, these guttural cries. So follow me, y' y'all cut his shit about to go. I'm doing five hundred and I'm out of control. But there's nowhere to go. And there's no way to slow. That's my impression.

That's a lot of like crazy manipulated haze. Exactly. And he's really just here to grab attention. Kanye likes to grab attention. It's a big part of his persona. And he does it not just in a limelight, but also within his music. Yeah. Oh man.

Yeah. Okay. Okay. I'm feeling you. Okay. So the last song that we need to go to is absolutely Justin Bieber. Yes. We have to listen to Sorry.

You got to go and get angry at all of my honesty You know I try But I don't chew to up with apologies I hope I don't run at a time Yeah that's I, okay I like that's like the calm hey That's like hey But then he has a leader

He has one leader that's like He does have one later on the song That is a little bit louder But you know that there is no innocent one In this game for two And I go And I think the reason why this hay is there is that same reason of trying to grab your attention because things are

kind of quiet but this is a dance hall song this is a song which is going to bust out and what he's trying to do is say hey pay attention it's about to drop you just got to give it another second yeah okay that's interesting okay right he wants to sustain your attention he doesn't want you to piece out basically right right and he's being like all right all right like you're getting the pay off like and here we go here we go exactly so yeah three reasons that people are using hey they're hailing the listener, pulling them in and saying hello, most prominently using it for percussive effect and also there to grab your attention and hold your attention in a moment of the song where it needs you to stick around. Yeah, man. Dude, that's awesome. That's awesome. This is,

this is like very satisfying to like get like a full analysis of this little tiny thing that I've been seeing everywhere. And now I'm like, now I will actually pay even more attention when I like hear that going on and be like, okay, okay, okay, Justin. I know it's about the I know it's about to drop. Thank you for letting me know. Now, can I ask you? Like, do you think, I don't know if I'm allowed to turn the tables on you, it is your show. Sure. But no, you, of course, please. Do you think that we've reached, like, the logical extent of where the hay can go? And, like, you know, it's getting parody videos. It's, you know, Justin Bieber is manipulating it in a way

that's kind of almost making fun of it. Like, where does hay go from here? Have we reached hay saturation? Yeah, have you reached hay saturation? It reminds me of actually your very first episode of your show pitch that you and your partner, Whitney Jones, did on the Clear Mountain Pause, this idea that in pop music there are these extended pauses and that those originated somewhere. And in it, in your interview, this woman Karen Glauber describes how oftentimes singers will put these sort of cheap things into the song to get participation, especially na-na-na-na's handclaps and other ways for artist to basically compel you to participate. If you're in the nose, you know exactly how the song goes, it's that anticipation that you know you're part of the end thing, you know the scream, you're just waiting for the climax of it.

So it's spectacularly manipulative. I kind of feel like this is the same thing. And once the magic is uncovered, it's like, I don't know if I want to say hey with you. Exactly. So I don't know. I think maybe we're meeting hey, saturation. If I were a songwriter, I might try to find another utterance to use.

Oh, like what? Womp. You gotta go and get angry at all of my promises. Womp! That's my best suggestion. Cool, cool. I'll just email Max Martin at gmail.com and see what he says. All right. Alex, so much fun having you on the show. Thank you for exploring the haze with me. Yeah, and thank you for buzz marketing my podcast, completely unsolicited. For sure.

If you want to listen to all of these songs that say, hey, we've posted a Spotify playlist on our website, switchedonpoppop.com.com.com.com. And also be sure to check out Pitch. It's really great. You can find episodes at pitchpottcast.com slash pitch. And you can follow them on Twitter at Hear Pitch and at Alex Kaplanman. Maria, you have a podcast now and you need to start acting like it. What's the first step as a podcaster? Well, you have to ask lots of questions. I'm Maria Sharpova and I'm hosting a new podcast called Pretty Tough. Every week, I'm sitting down with trailblazing women at the top of their game to discuss ambition, work ethic, and the ups and downs that come on the path to achieving greatness. I have a few pretty tough questions for you. Okay. Ready? Ready.

Do not sugarcoat something for me. No. No. No. We'll dive into their stories and get valuable insights from top executives, actors, entrepreneurs, and other individuals who have inspired me so much in my own journey. Pretty tough is your front row seat to the women who have demonstrated the past. power in being unapologetic in their pursuits. I hope you'll join us. New episodes drop Wednesdays on YouTube or in your favorite podcast app. Immigration may be Donald Trump's signature issue.

President Trump is now targeting predominantly democratic cities for ice raids and deportations. Dozens of protesters clashing with immigration and customs enforcement agents in Minneapolis Tuesday. We will begin the process of returning millions and millions of criminal aliens back to the places from which they came. But what we want to do in this space is talk about America and politics beyond the current president. So what do most Americans think

about deportation and border security, period? I think that Americans are definitely against the kind of violent displays that we've seen in the street from ICE. When it comes to the question of deportation, the answer is more complicated. My sense is that people want border at the border. They don't like the idea of having no idea

who's coming into the United States. States at any given time. The view on immigration from the bottom up instead of the top down. That's this week on America Actually. Every Saturday in your audio and video feeds. There's so much great music that Nate and I listen to every day that doesn't make the top 40, music that we just feel demands being broken down. So this week we're going to try something new and introduce a segment called Off the Charts.

For our first piece, I met up with songwriter Ifa O'Donovan backstage at Largo to talk about her album and single about my favorite time of day. It's called In The Magic Hour. The Magic Hour. It means different things to different people, though, I will say. What does it mean to you? Well, to me, I was sort of trying to capture the time of day, sort of that kind of gloaming, dusky daylight, but the moon is out and the sun is not there anymore, but it's still totally daylight. Her album is inspired by childhood summers in Ireland, where the summer nights are long and the magic hour leaves you in this ambiguous us in-between zone.

In the song, she takes us through the magic hour, moving from light to dark. In the past, the kind of clue that you're thinking of, but you don't know. So I'm going to know, like,

where are we going to go from here, right? So it's so tricky. It's like, it's going to go back to this, or is it going to go somewhere different? And that's a sort of wonderful thing about that in-between state of that time of day. Is you're in the day,

you're in the night, you know, exactly. And I think it's also, like, I don't know, it's a nostalgic song to me. And kind of the whole song is a big sort of longing for childhood and longing for that innocence and for that sort of belief in magic and belief in the unknown. This one time, it must have been like in maybe like in 1994 or 1995.

I went to Ireland and I fell asleep. You get there in the morning, you take an overnight flight, and I was probably 12 or something. And I woke up, and I had no idea what time it was or what day it was. Because I looked outside and it was like, it was kind of neither day nor night, and it was probably, you know, 9 p.m. And I had taken this long nap, and I woke up,

and I was like, is it the next day? Is it morning? Is it 7 a.m.? And I really remember feeling that and being like running downstairs, and they were having like a birthday party. It was my cousin's birthday, and it was totally nighttime. But it was still light out.

You know, it was this weird, very weird thing, vivid memories. She takes us back to those Ireland summers in the second verse, where she sings about childhood fairy tales, and the music takes a turn in harmony and tone. Where the first verse was upbeat and major, she ends her second verse firmly in a nostalgic minor chord, like she's playing that deep, dark blue far off in the night sky,

and then she continues to further work out this metaphor in the chorus. She's taken us from childhood mirth in games into the imagined end of her life, and the chorus intentionally drags here. There are extra measures actually inserted into the song, song, when she sings, weigh my body down with sticks and stones, these extra measures pull and stretch

the music as of pulling us down deep into the ocean. Thematically, I'm saying, oh, when I go, do you throw my bones to the fish? It's sort of like that, like you die, you live your whole life, it's a beautiful life, and then you die, and you're buried in a graveyard, and I've never wanted to be buried in the graveyard, and I've always wanted to be thrown into the ocean.

So, which I know is illegal. But I'm hoping somebody will sort of, you know, honor my final wish in 70 years when I die. Why not be 103? So that will be, hopefully he'll make it that long. That's a great life. Yeah. But I've always wanted to be thrown into the water.

So it's sort of, kind of you go there in that chorus. And I don't know, people, you know, death is a lonely bride. It's like you're sort of getting married to the ocean. You're kind of meeting the end that way. And then the song closes out by taking us back to the beginning, mimicking her opening lyrics, but this time with a different kind of view. And the song progresses into sort of a recap of the first idea, like in the magic hour when the moonlight gleams. And the sky's the kind of gray that you've never seen until you've seen it.

Like it's this very specific color of gray. And then just sort of being children running down to the bank, like this beautiful beach that we used to be on as kids. And then saying, like in that hour it feels hard, it's a magic hour. You know, you'll hear the voice, like the voice of this, you'll hear my granddaddy singing far away like an evening star. And then I sort of end the verses with saying, I would like, saying I wish I was young again. I wish I was younger. It's funny, somebody said to me, they're like,

why did you write that? You're still young. And I was like, well, the point is not like that I'm old. The point is that it's like you wishing that you were seven, you know, like five, eight. It's like you really wanting to be a child. Just as the magic hour

is this beautiful in-between moment with all hues of light, this song is transient and takes us from light to dark, from youth to old age. And the music mimics this passing with subtle shifts of minor and major and lyrical changes from blue sky to gray. You can find in The Magic Hour at Ifa's website, Ifaodonovan.com. That's Ifa with the Irish spelling, A-O-I-F-E.

You can also find her album pretty much anywhere where you get your music. The album is super moving. I really recommend checking it out. So now is the time that we check in with our co-host on hiatus to take our final trip in the time Machine to listen to 20s and 30s jazz. Nate, you ready to go. Heidi ho, Charlie, let's do it. Let's go back into the time machine in New York City, go up into Harlem and check out some music together. Charlie, tonight we are venturing back up to Harlem to the Cotton Club, the jewel of Harlem's nightlife. We've been there a couple times. We have. I mean, Cotton Club is a fascinating place because at once it has the hottest stars and also the

most reprehensible door policy that we talked about, they do not let any clientele of color in the door, even though, again, this is the club in the heart of Harlem featuring Star Black entertainers. Man, it's such a complicated history that you're dealing with. So take me there. What are we listening to? Well, we're here to listen to a show composed by Harold Arlen and his lyricist partner, Ted Kohler. At this time in the early 1930s, we don't know much about this character. Maybe we know that his real name is Hyman Arluck and that he was the son of a canter from Buffalo, New York. And maybe we've heard the big hit that propelled them into the Cotton Club, a little song called Get Happy. Are you familiar with Get Happy, Charlie?

I can't say I know this track. It's a really good one. Nice. It's not until the other end of this decade. decade in 1939, that Harold Arlen will finally become a household name as a result of composing the score for The Wizard of Oz. Yes, the Wizard of Oz. It's a wonderful wizard of ours. There is a wizard of a wizard. Yes, the Wizard of Oz. It's responsible for what some call the greatest song in American history Somewhere over the rainbow

Yeah Oh definitely But when we find him at the cotton club In the early 1930s We are not hearing Somewhere over the rainbow We are not hearing If I only had a brain

We are not hearing What's another song from the Wizard of Oz Charlie? Five Four Three Two All I've got is

The Yellow Brook Road one That's all I got That's a classic I'm a one trick pony No no you got You got it. The point is we're not hearing golden age Hollywood songs. Harold Arlen, in his four-year tenure at the Cotton Club, is responsible for some of the hottest, sexiest jazz songs of the early 1930s.

Songs like Stormy Weather. Don't know why. There's no sun up in the sky. And one of my personal favorite songs of all time, this is a version later sung by Frank Sinatra, I've got the world on a string. I love that track. I sing that song. Yeah, it's a good one, right?

I got the world on a string. There you go. Sitting on a rainbow. Ooh, you got, you can, you got, your old blue eyes is pretty good, Charlie. That was very, uh, that was very convincing. What a world. What a life I'm in love. In the early 1930s, Harold Arlen is the staff songwriter at the Cotton Club,

and he's writing dirty low-down hot jazz numbers. In my research, what I'm interested in, though, like with the other musicians we've profiled, Cab Calloway, Duke Ellington, I'm interested in how Arlen Arlen simultaneously projects two different visions of Harlem and as a result, two different visions of black culture and black identity. We've seen that Harlem attracts tourists

by promoting itself as the exotic, dangerous, uh, lurid nightlife capital of the world. At the same time, Harlem is this incredibly cultural, uh, political, uh, new, new forms of, of black consciousness are constantly emerging. Harlem is, uh, what, what one writer called the city of refuge. So these two competing visions of Harlem you can hear in Arles. music. Great. So what's the track? So we can start with the first vision of Harlem in a song like Primitive Prima Donna. Just in case that you don't know, I am the primadonna of this show.

But if we should make it so, I wouldn't be here. That's what it is. It's the jungle that's in my soul. I'm a primitive primadona. I'm supposed to be fired. They're clearly toying with, as you said, the sort of primitivist narrative of jazz while also asserting how sophisticated and complex it is at the same time. Yeah, this is like just a classic trope of the era. You know, the African-American female singer

is supposed to be refined, but she can't fight the jungle that's in her soul, you know. So it was understood that the like primal essence of black Americans was bound to come out sooner or later. So this song definitely reinforces those notions. And you can imagine the distaste that a singer having to perform this at the Cotton Club for an audience of entirely white patrons would feel. I mean, it's just, ugh, it's not. It's disgusting. It really is.

and yet that represents one side of Harold Arland and Ted Kohler's songwriting. And then on the other, you know, in a show just a year later at the Cotton Club, you could hear a song by them like Raisin Drette. Good luck has crossed me, bad luck has forced me, down to my last one cent. I'm right in the middle of solving that riddle known as raising the rent. Still bang a barrow, got till tomorrow, landlord's a mean ogen. It's come to a showdown, and he wants to lowdown if I'm raising my rent. Okay, this is a super modern song.

This is like gentrification in Harlem today. Yeah, I didn't make that connection, but you're absolutely right. I mean, this could not be more different than the primitive prima donna song that we just heard. I mean, this is like kind of a ripped from the headlines of Harlem Life song. Yeah. People in Harlem were having a really hard time making rent. One study showed that they might have actually paid as much as a 50% markup as the rest of the city. Oh, my gosh.

Just because, frankly, landlords could get away with it. There wasn't a lot of other options for black people to live in New York City at that time. That's criminal. They kind of had to pay. and there was a certain mystique actually that grew around this because what developed was this phenomenon known as the rent party where people would basically throw these massive like night long parties in their houses and charge money at the door and basically make their rent for the month.

Wow. But these parties were legendary. I mean, live music, great food, dancing till the early morning. I mean, you know, this is a side of Harlem that people going to the Cotton Club wouldn't necessarily be able to access. But in a way, they're still learning about it and they're still discovering it. Like, again, a really real and present slice of Harlem life in this very not real, surreal space of the Cotton Club. That's, oh, wow. So, Arlen's definitely pulling from both sides of the history of Harlem.

Yeah, exactly. I mean, it's hard to say that he and Ted Kohler were simply capitalizing on what you rightly called the sort of primitivist myth of Harlem. They were really painting the whole picture of what Harlem was like in the 20s and 30s. And what's remarkable is that these songs have had a long afterlife. Not those songs necessarily, but take a song like stormy weather. Yeah. This was one of the most popular songs of the next song. few decades. Since it was debuted in 1933 at the Cotton Club, it became not only a nationally popular song, but a song especially popular within Harlem. So a song written by a pair of white Jewish

songwriters sort of was reappropriated by jazz musicians, by blues singers, by, in one case, I found an account of a guy selling fish in the street and using the lyrics of stormy weather, except replacing it with like, I've got mackerel. So, yeah, so this is a moment that's kind of exciting to me because it's the vector of appropriation is moving in the opposite direction that you usually encounter during this time, where, you know, white musicians are appropriating black style. Here it's slightly, I guess it's, if you trace the whole thing, it would be the white songwriter Harold Arlen appropriating African-American jazz and blues to write a song, which then in turn becomes reappropriated by the African-American community and changed into all these new connotations. Fascinating. That seems like a very equal and productive site of exchange, which, you know, to happen in 1933 in Jim Crow America is not common.

No. Yeah, I'm looking at some common renditions. You have Louis Armstrong, Oster Peterson, Edda James, Billy Holiday. It's a testament to how firmly a part of like the musical firmament this song like Stormy Weather has become. Is there a particular version that we should listen to? Oh, great, great question. It couldn't hurt to go with the original Ethel Waters. I mean, if you want to hear what it was really like back then, this is it.

Might not be the best, but it's right from the source. Don't know what. There's no sun up in the sky, stormy weather. Since my man and I ain't together, raining all the time. Charlie, let me say thank you so much for accompanying me up to Harlem of the 20s and 30s, taking the time machine with me, going up to the Cotton Club, Connie's Inn, and Smalls Paradise, and listening to the astonishing music of Duke Ellington, Cab Calloway, Harold Arlen, and others. This has been really fun and just a real treat for me.

Oh, it's been astounding. I feel like I've learned a lot different sounds, different kinds of music. are always informed by place and intersections between cultures and can't be defined simply by one or two sounds or one or two ideas, that it's complex, it's complete in the whole history of a place, people, and so on. Wow. That was good. I'm glad we recorded that because I'm going to steal that, transcribe it, and make it the

epilogue of my thesis. Cheers, Charlotte. You're welcome. The most important thing I learned is that I love going out to see music with you. and we got to keep doing this. Absolutely. To be continued. Really excited to have you back on this show in a couple of weeks.

Today's episode was produced by me, Charlie Harding, and by my co-host Nate Sloan. We want to give a huge thank you and shout out to Alex Kaplanon, who produces the podcast, Pitch, which is a narrative show that goes deep into the world of music. It's really extraordinary. Check it out at pitchpodcast.org.

And if you exhaust the entire catalog of Pitch, you can find more switched on pop episodes on our website, switchdown pop.com. You can talk to us on Twitter at Switchdown Pop. And sorry to beg for it, but we really love it if you'd leave a review on iTunes. And come back in two weeks because we have, I think, one of our best episodes yet. We're talking to one of the songwriters of one of last year's biggest songs. I can't give it away, but I promise it's not to miss. Until then, thanks for listening.

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