Standards and "Standards" - Larry Kart's experiment

[The Magnificent Goldberg]

I finished reading Larry Kart’s book, “Jazz in search of itself” yesterday. One thing that especially interested me was his piece on Standards. A very telling point he made was that, if you speak the lines of a standard from the Great American Songbook, the words you accent are the same as those that are accented in the song. He goes on to say that this is not true of Rock music.

Well, I couldn’t resist trying it out. No doubt there are exceptions in the Great American Songbook, but I didn’t find any on my quick tour. I don’t know the words of too many Rock songs, so I didn’t try that out, but will take Larry’s word for it.

But I also went a bit further than Larry did. And strangely enough, I found that when you try this on a Blues, you get the same result as on a “Standard” – the accents you speak, fall in the same places in the music. Try it with “Got my mojo workin’” or “Hoochie coochie man” – two songs that are sufficiently well known for most people to be able to try them out. But it works with all the blues songs I tried.

It works with R&B songs too. I’m pretty clear, after trying a good few, that any Percy Mayfield song will have its spoken accents in the same places as its sung accents. The same is true for songs like “Merry Christmas baby”, “Driftin’ blues” and most other R&B songs.

It also works with Soul music. Try Otis Redding’s “I’ve been loving you too long” or “Respect”. The sleeve notes to Mable John’s album “Stay out of the kitchen” document this process at the Stax studios with Isaac Hayes and Dave Porter.

As I would talk, Isaac would just play the piano, not ask me one thing, and find the key that I should be in. David would sing the lines [that I was saying]. Maybe he would turn the line around to make it sing easier than it is to speak. He’d say, “That’s a good line” or “you can say that but say it this way”. They knew how to take what came out of my mouth and turn it into a story.

It works on Funk songs too – try “Say it loud, I’m black and I’m proud” or other JB songs. It also works with Gospel songs and Reggae – try it on a few Bob Marley songs.

I’d say Larry has taken too small a sample – in fact, a biased sample – and come up with what he thought was a statement of the uniqueness of “Standards” but which seems to me, when looked at in the wider context, to be a statement of the uniqueness of Rock (and in particular, its distance from real life and real people).

Any comments? (Particularly from Larry)

MG

[Larry Kart]

Thanks, MG. The point I was trying to make in that piece IIRC was not that "standards" (i.e. songs of the "standard" era) are unique in that "speech accents are the same as sung accents" respect but that a lot of Rock music doesn't work that way. Though we might disagree about a few specific examples, your evidence that a lot of blues, R&B, Soul, etc. lines up with the "speech accents are the same as sung accents" approach seems to me to bolster my point -- which I believe then led me to ask (or if it didn't, it should have) what the benefits and/or the necessities of the other approach are. Don't believe, if I asked that question, that I came up with a comprehensive answer -- probably would take a lot of scholarship and whole different book to do that. Whatever, without the "other" approach, you would, for one, have almost no Bob Dylan.

[The Magnificent Goldberg]

Not sure there are specific benefits in the other approach. Not sure that, in the case of Rock music, that it's a definite approach that anyone's conscious of, in the way Hayes and Porter obviously were. Perhaps it's just a natural limitation that gives rise to a specific result and the people involved like it that way, or don't think that there might be an alterntive.

I don't imagine that it's "natural" to speak the words of a song to see whether the accents fall the same way or differently, even for a songwriter. I remember Henry Mancini saying that it was essential to write the music before his collaborators got involved because, if you left it to them to start, they'd produce doggerel. I can well imagine other composers of popular songs using the same method. So, which might regard himself as responsible for "quality control" in this context?

I've got the feeling that most people probably couldn't help doing what they did the way they did it, whichever way that was. Looking at the process in this way, and finding (with exceptions, of course) a correspondence between different types of music and methods does indicate something is going on here, but I'm not clear what. I would like to say, since I always found Rock (as opposed to R&R) pretentious, that the songs were constrained to the idea of themselves that those people wanted to put over - but I'm sure that would be the result of my own prejudice.

MG

[Nate Dorward]

Some linguists weighing in (follow the link too):

Rock syncopation: stress shifts or polyrhythms?

& a related post.

[Tom Storer]

I'm surprised to hear that, outside of some obvious eccentrics like Dylan, rock lyrics' phrasing clashes with natural spoken rhythms. I would have thought rock lyrics would take after blues lyrics in that respect. But I haven't done much research, I admit.

However, one thing one notices when listening to rock music in French is that the French language really doesn't fit rock phrasing. I think English lends itself to an iambic pentameter kind of deal, with every other syllable accented, more or less, the same way that 4/4 popular music accents every other beat. When French musicians sing rock, they use the same beats and it's usually glaringly obvious that they're mangling their own language, singing with stresses that just sound wrong, in order to make it fit the rhythm. Not every song, but often enough to make it really obvious. So when you hear Francis Cabrel, who sings romantic rock that makes teenage girls dewy-eyed, it sounds (in comparison) really good because he manages to use elegant French with its native rhythms. Or maybe it's because it uses its native rhythms that it sounds comparatively elegant.

Edited February 2, 2008 by Tom Storer

[Larry Kart]

Here's the piece from the book:

STANDARDS AND ‘STANDARDS’

[1985]

The greatest gap in American popular music may be the one that divides rock ‘n’ roll from the so-called “standard” tradition of songwriting and singing--the tunes of George Gershwin, Jerome Kern, Richard Rodgers, and Cole Porter and the vocal styles of Frank Sinatra, Tony Bennett, Judy Garland, and Fred Astaire (to name just a few of the major figures). Arising after World War I, and artistically and commercially vigorous until the end of World War II and a bit beyond, this was the music that several generations of Americans grew up on. And as the “standard” tag suggests, it was a music that seemed likely to remain in the forefront for some time. But rock ‘n’ roll changed all that, with the crucial dates probably being 1956 (when Elvis Presley's “Don't Be Cruel”/”Hound Dog” single climbed to the top of the pop, country, and rhythm-and-blues charts) and 1964 (when any doubts about the staying power of rock were erased by the advent of the Beatles). Rock in its various forms is undeniably the popular music of our time, while the standard tradition is close to being a museum piece--a development that many find regrettable but one that certainly can't be denied.

Obvious, too, although time has healed some of the wounds, is the fundamental opposition between rock and the music that came before it. In fact, rock can be seen as a reaction to and a rejection of almost everything that the standard tradition represents--an attitude that a knowledgeable rock-devotee summed up when she referred to the music of Gershwin, Porter, and the rest as “all those songs about women getting in and out of taxicabs.” It was merely a sly dig in the ribs on her part, and at the time it made me laugh. But that remark has lingered in my mind; and the more I think about it, the more it seems to mean.

For one thing, that remark had a point to it only because its perpetrator and I both knew that the songs of the standard tradition are supposed to be “sophisticated”-- a body of music about people who live in big cities, have a fair amount of cash, and work out their bittersweet romantic problems with a certain world-weary flair. But all that, my friend implied, is a crock--a set of attitudes that had nothing to do with the way she and most of the people she knew lived their lives, and that probably had little to do with the way most people lived their lives at the time those songs were written. And if there ever was a group of women who kept “getting in and out of taxicabs,” my friend’s first impulse would be to give them a swift kick in the shins.

What that boils down to, I think, is a belief that when most standard-tradition songs are measured against the way things happen in real life, they turn out to be false. And by the same token, a good many rock fans and rock musicians seem to believe that their music is good not only because of its visceral kick but also because it is somehow more genuine--more realistic and natural--than the music that came before it. Now there is something to be said for that way of looking at things. Place a typical Cole Porter or Lorenz Hart lyric alongside something from Bruce Springsteen or Bob Dylan, and most people would say that “Born in the U.S.A.” and “It's Alright, Ma” are less artificial than “I Get a Kick Out of You” or “There's a Small Hotel.” But such a judgement probably would rest on the verbal content of songs, on the kinds of stories they try to tell--which is far from the only way to measure the realism and naturalness of a piece of music.

Consider, for instance, one of the most basic questions that arises in the mind of every singer and songwriter: How do I make the words and music fit together? One way to do this, and the way that became the norm during the standard era, was to come up with a melody and a rhythmic scheme that allowed the words of the song to emerge as conversationally as possible--in the patterns of everyday, person-to-person speech. (This was, of course, a practical necessity as well as a stylistic choice, because so many standard-era songs were written for the musical stage and had to flow easily out of spoken dialogue.) So if one simply speaks the lyric of any good standard song (say, Porter's “What Is This Thing Called Love?”) while trying to forget the melody and the rhythms that go along with it, there are two likely outcomes. First, the lyric can be spoken in a conversational tone of voice. And second, the words one would emphasize in normal speech are the same words that are emphasized when the song is sung. Natural, no? And while one wouldn't claim that this is true of every Cole Porter lyric, the story of “What Is This Thing Called Love?” doesn't seem very artificial either--measured against the world of 1930 (the year the song was written) or the world of today.

But when songs of the rock era are looked at in this way, one comes up with some unexpected results. Not only do the lyrics tend to be more “poetic” than speechlike, they often don’t fit the music that goes along with them--that is, the words that would be emphasized if the lyrics were spoken are not the words that are emphasized when the songs are sung. For instance, in Dylan's “It's Alright, Ma,” the word “return” is sung by Dylan as “re-turn,” while in Springsteen's “Backstreets” “became” is sung as “be-came”--choices of emphasis that the rhythms of those songs demand but ones that run counter to the normal rhythms of speech. If you think that these are off-the-wall examples, look at the lyric sheet of your favorite rock album--first trying to speak the words in a conversational tone of voice and then listening to how they are sung. Quite often there will be a vast difference between the words you emphasized and the words the singer did. And when was the last time you heard anybody say anything the way the Beatles sing the title phrase of “Strawberry Fields Forever”?

So what is going on here? While a cranky Rodgers and Hart fan might say that lack of craft is all that is involved, that's not quite the case, despite the amateurishness of much rock--if only because the same devices crop up in the work of such undeniably slick songwriters as Burt Bacharach and Barry Manilow. No, the problem is that we're stuck with two different notions of naturalness--one that takes off from human behavior as we commonly experience it and one that believes there is a deeper, “truer” nature that is at odds with the patterns of everyday life. Follow the first path and you have songs that stick close to the texture of normal speech and singers who interpret them that way. (One of Frank Sinatra's chief virtues is his ability to make almost any lyric sound intimate and conversational.) But when the second path is followed, you have songs and singers who not only feel free to shout, mutter, swoon, and groan but also tend to twist words this way and that to fit a pre-existing rhythm or melodic design. (On “Strawberry Fields Forever,” for instance, the non-speech-like word emphases of the title phrase arise because at that point composer John Lennon was interested in superimposing a patch of six-eight rhythm on the song’s prevailing four-four beat.)

As a child of the “standards” era, I have my preferences. But I also know that this is not a matter of right or wrong. In fact, a glance at the history of music suggests that the kind of “natural” wordsetting that prevailed during the era of the standard song is less common than one might think. Seemingly built into the very idea of music is the belief that it is a language in itself, a sensuously ecstatic flow of meaning whose power to move us far exceeds that of common speech, and that it also does so in a deeper, more “poetic” way. Music’s desire to overide the patterns of discernable speech has been constrained at times (once, in the sixteenth century, by the Roman Catholic church, which decreed at the Council of Trent that the liturgical use of polyphonic music was permitted only if the texts of such pieces were not obscured), but that desire has never been suppressed, for in the long run both composers and listeners will resist. So perhaps no one should be surprised that we no longer live in an era when our pop songs were a kind of humane heightened conversation. What is surprising, perhaps, is that any of us grew up in a world where words and music were one thing.

P.S. No doubt I'd want to think again about some of this, 22 plus years later. But not right now.

[The Magnificent Goldberg]

Some linguists weighing in (follow the link too):

Rock syncopation: stress shifts or polyrhythms?

& a related post.

Very interesting. I understod almost all of that Thanks Nate.

MG

[The Magnificent Goldberg]

I'm surprised to hear that, outside of some obvious eccentrics like Dylan, rock lyrics' phrasing clashes with natural spoken rhythms. I would have thought rock lyrics would take after blues lyrics in that respect. But I haven't done much research, I admit.

However, one thing one notices when listening to rock music in French is that the French language really doesn't fit rock phrasing. I think English lends itself to an iambic pentameter kind of deal, with every other syllable accented, more or less, the same way that 4/4 popular music accents every other beat. When French musicians sing rock, they use the same beats and it's usually glaringly obvious that they're mangling their own language, singing with stresses that just sound wrong, in order to make it fit the rhythm. Not every song, but often enough to make it really obvious. So when you hear Francis Cabrel, who sings romantic rock that makes teenage girls dewy-eyed, it sounds (in comparison) really good because he manages to use elegant French with its native rhythms. Or maybe its because it uses its native rhythms that it sounds comparatively elegant.

Yes. Back in the day, I used to find Johnny Halliday laughable - even more laughable than rock or pop sung with an English accent, which is funny enough. Course, Punk changed all that.

MG

[The Magnificent Goldberg]

I'm surprised to hear that, outside of some obvious eccentrics like Dylan, rock lyrics' phrasing clashes with natural spoken rhythms. I would have thought rock lyrics would take after blues lyrics in that respect. But I haven't done much research, I admit.

If you compare the Rolling Stones' version of "Satisfaction" with Otis Redding's, Otis really has to work at it to make it work, whereas Jagger's version sounds natural. There's clearly a different tradition at work in these two versions. But there's no Rock band more influenced by the Blues, R&B and Soul than the Stones. Indeed, "Satisfaction" was based on Stax patterns - or at least, appeared to be. And yet it doesn't transfer back to Stax without some hard graft.

I'm nowhere near competent to say what the differences actually are, but you can certainly feel them.

MG

[Tom Storer]

And when was the last time you heard anybody say anything the way the Beatles sing the title phrase of “Strawberry Fields Forever”?

I see what your passage quoted from the book means, and agree with it, but this example confuses me. They put the emphasis on the first syllable of "strawberry" and the second syllable of "forever"--just as one pronounces them in conversation. The only "unnatural" thing is stretching "fields" over two beats. No?

Edited February 2, 2008 by Tom Storer

[Teasing the Korean]

I have noticed the issue with stressed syllables over particular notes over the years. Part of the issue is the fact that, well, most pop songwriters beginning in the rock era did not approach writing lyrics with the level of care that, say, Noel Coward or Larry Hart did (That's Larry Hart, not Kart). I know this is a gross generalization, but even some of my favorite lyricists of the rock era, like Ray Davies, are capable of sloppiness or tossing off a throwaway line between two brilliant ones.

That said, I think Andy Partridge of XTC is a brilliant songwriter, and I think he deliberately offsets the stressed syllables and stressed notes to create tension in some of his songs.

[Larry Kart]

I hear it as "Straw-ber-ry Fi-elds For-e-ver," with the accented syllables being hit pretty hard. In speech it would be more like "Straw-berry Fields For-e-ver," with the accented syllables being hit rather lightly. One could even argue that the way the song is sung, it consists mostly of stressed syllables that are stressed heavily, paired with syllables that also feel stressed but a bit less heavily, with only a few syllables unstressed, like this: "One-two-and-three-four-and-five-six. In that case, it might the units of paired stresses (heavy-medium) that were among the song's germ ideas.

[danasgoodstuff]

OK,assuming Larry thesis to be more or less true (I know lots of 'rock' lyrics but don't have that much time oe patience, and have a hard time imagining many of them as conversation or any way other than how they are sung), what does it prove? Maybe just the toothpaste theory of art, i.e. if you squeeze the naturalness toobe at one end it's gonna pop out the other...

Oh, and I don't think Dylan can be taken as representative of anything other than himself, in phrasing or anything else...

And one other thought, perhaps the writers of standards expected to be taken seriously or at least heard if they merely conversed and others may have felt the need to shout or otherwise make an extraordinary effort just to be heard, that is rather speculative but if it's just a formal difference that doesn't mean something like this, who cares?

Edited February 2, 2008 by danasgoodstuff

[danasgoodstuff]

jeez, did I kill this thread too?

MG here's a counterexample for you -

Smokey robinson's "Yesterlove"

YES ter IS the PRE fix that WE fix

to THINGS that have GONE by, forEVer they say

etc.

Not the sort of thing that one's likey to say in evryday conversation, but not the way you'd say it if you did...lovely just the same.

[Larry Kart]

Thanks, Danasgoodstuff, for that example, because I had some doubts about how uniform the evidence was to back up The MG's original statement. That is, without checking, I thought that what he said probably was true of most blues, less so of Soul and R&B (because of their roots in Gospel, where melismatic "distortions" and the like are common). And I wondered about Reggae too, which based on my limited experience is at once very conversational and given to sudden lunges or lurches of accent in response to underlying, lilting-insistent rhythmic patterns.