Page 11 | Music Tales | From Behind the Scenes

Music Period

Country

Songwriter
Caldonia: the song that spawned the term rock and roll

Caldonia is a 1945 song released by Louis Jordan, an American songwriter and saxophonist whose popularity in the 1940s…

January 20, 2021
Songwriter
Statesboro Blues: no one can sing the blues like Blind Willie McTell

Bob Dylan's track Blind Willie McTell is perhaps the best tribute to this outstanding traveling street artist who has…

January 17, 2021
Songwriter
Misty Mountain Hop: Led Zeppelin's contribution to pot legalization

Misty Mountain Hop is an iconic 1971 Led Zeppelin song the title of which is associated with the mountains described by…

January 16, 2021
Swarmandal
Kishori Amonkar reclaimed her lost voice with Ayurveda

Kishori Amonkar was one of the most respected classical vocalists of the Hindustani tradition who intensively developed…

January 14, 2021
Piano
Kinderszenen and Schumann's metronome mystery

Kinderszenen or Scenes from Childhood is a set of short piano pieces written by Robert Schumann in 1838. Although these…

January 10, 2021
Songwriter
Hushabye: folk roots of famous rock and roll lullaby

Hushabye is the first successful song recorded by the American rock band The Mystics to spend nine weeks on the…

January 8, 2021
Songwriter
Mairzy Doats lyrics inspired by 15th century nursery rhyme

Mairzy Doats is a notable nursery rhyme song written in the 1940s when parody and humor songs were in high demand. The…

January 3, 2021
Film
Dum Maro Dum: psychedelic Hindi lyrics in Western arrangement that influenced generations

Dum Maro Dum is a popular Hindi song written by Anand Bakshi and composed by Rahul Dev Burman for the 1971 Bollywood…

December 31, 2020
Songwriter
Coal Miner's Daughter was forced to remove a third of the lyrics from her autobiographical song

Coal Miner's Daughter is an autobiographical song by the influential country-genre songwriter Loretta Lynn in which she…

December 27, 2020
Orchestra
La Marcho di Rei: L'Arlesienne opening theme harks back to Provencal Christmas carol

The origin of the iconic theme in the energetic opening of Georges Bizet's L'Arlésienne is still unclear. Presumably,…

December 24, 2020
Songwriter
Incense and Peppermints: a tangled story of song production

Incense and Peppermints is an essential psychedelic rock song released in 1967 by the LA-based band Strawberry Alarm…

December 20, 2020
Songwriter
Wabash Cannonball: the ballad of the railway Flying Dutchman

Wabash Cannonball, also known as The Great Rock Island Route, is an influential American folk song the first known…

December 17, 2020
Songwriter
Last Train to Clarksville: a duo of songwriters behind the first Monkees hit

Last Train to Clarksville is the debut single released by The Monkees in 1966 which would be their most successful song…

December 13, 2020
Male Vocal
First musical steps of Bhimsen Joshi

Bhimsen Joshi was a highly regarded vocalist who organically combined all aspects of Indian classical music, be it…

December 10, 2020
Orchestra
Ombra mai fu: Handel's best-known melody of failed Serse opera

The highly acclaimed instrumental composition known as Handel's Largo comes from the opening aria of his 1738 opera…

December 6, 2020
Poetry
Guantanamera: meaning and origin of the Cuban song

Guantanamera means a woman from Guantánamo, the Cuban city that gives the song its title. The word is a demonym—a name…

December 4, 2020
Songwriter
Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy: the reveille that defined a generation

Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy is an iconic World War II tune written by Don Raye and Hughie Prince for the military musical…

December 2, 2020
Music Theory
Authentic cadence exemplified by The Beatles songs

In theory, a cadence refers to a harmonic turnaround that appears at the end of a musical phrase, and the role it plays…

November 29, 2020
Songwriter
Bennie and the Jets: the opening piano chord and disastrous recording sessions in Jamaica

Bennie and the Jets is inarguably one of Elton John's most popular songs first released on the Goodbye Yellow Brick…

November 26, 2020
Orchestra
Lully's Passacaglia of Armide revised by Bear McCreary in Outlander score

The passacaglia is a slow dance that originated in Spain at the very beginning of the Baroque era, initially performed…

November 22, 2020