Thursday, March 26, 2015

just for laughs

This was recorded in the early -70s with my good friend Jim Coates of Mt. Pleasant SC. We used to spend hours jointly composing songs and discussing all the important topics in life.
Listen to this in a generous frame of mind. I hope it's good for a few laffs. Keep in mind the part about the drunk in a midnight choir (Though I think we were probably sober.)



bird.wma

http://www38.zippyshare.com/v/M57gH0Uh/file.html

This next one is much more recent (and without any Vorhees vocals). Here's Jim's intro:

"Finally got around to combining the 2 versions of One Suit as I told you I wanted to.
Tell me if you think the vocal sounds ridiculous. I had a real hard time coming up with a vocal I like until I stumbled upon singing it this way ... I was eating some All Bran when I decided to punch in a small part of the vox track and it came out like this, so I did the whole thing that way (sans the All Bran). I'm going for a Long John Silver meets Tom Waits kind of sound but I'm afraid there's some Jimmy Durante in there. Tom Waits did this thing great on one of his albums. I wish I had him around to do the vocals but have to do the best I can.
I left off the repeat of the 1st verse because it's a pretty wordy song without a strong story line to bind all the words. Thought it better to cut it short."

One Suit for Every Season.mp3

http://www10.zippyshare.com/v/wcdePM8g/file.html

3 comments:

  1. I remember us recording Bird on a Wire (L. Cohen). We were down at Walt's house on Sullivan's Island, 100% sober!

    Did you mention that "Suit for Every Season" was a poem of yours to which I tried to put some music in the '70's? I had the basic melody way back then but I just couldn't find the right chords to harmonize part of the tune, until years later after I discovered half diminished chords and loaded the song up with them.

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  2. I wish we had collaborated on more songs. And had been able to do something with them! I remember your aunt really liked Buckeye Boys.
    I posted Francis Drake a few days ago. Do you have the music for that?

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  3. The problem for me in collaborating (besides writing good music) is trying to put music to words that don't match up metrically from one verse to the next. I can do it when I am writing the words & music simultaneously but harder for pre-existing words. I'll send you some songs where I have run out of words if you want to take a stab at finishing them.

    Music for F. Drake is on the way. It is just an instrumental -- I have to dig out the version with the singing.

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