Vince Guaraldi Trio -- "Cast Your Fate to the Wind" (1962)

How many times has a musician's career taken off as the result of kismet?

(You don't have to answer that question.  It's what we major-league writers call a "rhetorical question.")

In 1962, jazz pianist Vince Guaraldi recorded an album titled Jazz Impressions of Black Orpheus.  It consisted mostly of covers -- including covers of several songs from the soundtrack of Black Orpheus, a Brazilian/French/Italian co-production that won the 1960 "Best Foreign Language Film" Oscar.  

Guaraldi's record company released one of the Black Orpheus covers as a single in 1962.  But DJs were more interested in the record's B-side, "Cast Your Fate to the Wind," which was the only original Guaraldi composition on the album.  It eventually made it to #22 on the Billboard "Hot 100" in 1963, and won a Grammy for "Best Original Jazz Composition."  Both English and French lyricists subsequently wrote words for the song.

Vince Guaraldi

But kismet -- a Turkish word meaning "fate" or "destiny" -- wasn't through with Vince Guaraldi.  When the producer of the first Peanuts Christmas special heard "Cast Your Fate to the Wind" on the radio -- he was in a cab going over the Golden Gate Bridge at the time -- he hired Guaraldi to write the score for the upcoming TV special.  Guaraldi ended up writing the music for 17 Peanuts TV specials.

Here's Guaraldi's "Linus and Lucy":

Sometimes kismet isn't a good thing.  Guaraldi died on this date in 1976, when he was only 47.  The cause of death may have been an aortic aneurysm -- the rupture of the largest blood vessel in the body, which causes catastrophic internal bleeding and is almost always fatal within a matter of moments.  (My father suffered an aortic aneurysm several years ago shortly after going to the emergency room with terrible abdominal pain.  He was very fortunate that the surgeon on call immediately recognized what was happening and was able to save his life.)

"Cast Your Fate to the Wind" has been covered by a variety of artists, including Mel Tormé, Earl Klugh, George Benson, Chet Atkins and even the James Gang -- who covered it as part of a three-song medley titled "The Bomber Medley."  

Here's "Cast Your Fate to the Wind":

Click below to buy the song from Amazon:

Bar-Kays -- "Soul Finger" (1967)

Like Booker T. & the M.G.'s, the Bar-Kays were a group of studio musicians who backed a number of Stax Records artists -- including Otis Redding -- and also released records under their own name.  Several of the band's members perished in the 1967 plane crash that killed Redding.

(A number of legendary musicians have died in airplane crashes, but Redding was clearly the most talented of them.)

The surviving members (including the legendary bass player, James Alexander) rebuilt the band and continued to play on Stax recordings, including Isaac Hayes' Hot Buttered Soul.

The Bar-Kays first single was "Soul Finger," which was recorded before the Redding plane crash, and which made it to #17 on the Billboard "Hot 100" chart in 1967.  It features a chorus of neighborhood kids, who were told to shout out the song's title when directed, and were reportedly paid with bottles of Coca-Cola.

Here's "Soul Finger," which is a silly-bazilly song:

Click below to buy the song from Amazon:

Duke Ellington -- "Jeep's Blues" (1956)

David Russell -- the director of Three Kings, The Fighter, Silver Linings Playbook, and American Hustle -- is known for the care with which he chooses music cues for his movies.

Here's the trailer for American Hustle:

Russell has been a fan of Duke Ellington's "Jeep's Blues" for over 30 years, and he's been saving it to use in just the right movie.  "That’s my favorite Duke Ellington track," Russell told a reporter.  "You have a secret treasure chest of magic, and one day you say, 'Maybe this magic belongs in this movie.  I'm going to share this beautiful thing, not knowing if anyone else is going to feel about it the way I do.' That's the danger in sharing something you love."

Christian Bale, Amy Adams, and David Russell

I had never heard "Jeep's Blues" until I heard it on the soundtrack of American Hustle.  The two main characters in the movie -- two con artists (played by Christian Bale and Amy Adams, both of whom are almost sure bets to garner Academy Award nominations for their performances) -- discover that they both love the song shortly after they meet for the first time at a pool party.  They're a couple from that moment on.

Duke Ellington

Why did the director choose that particular song for those particular characters?  "I thought those two would love that song.  It says everything about them," the director explained.  "They’ve chosen lives of elegance, like Duke Ellington.”

That's an interesting point of view, because it seemed to me that they had chosen lives characterized more by deception and dishonesty than elegance.  (Any elegance in their lives is merely skin-deep, and usually involves things -- paintings, designer dresses, and the like -- that belong to other people.)

Ellington wrote "Jeep's Blues" for his long-time alto saxophone player, Johnny Hodges, whose nickname was "Jeep."  This version of "Jeep's Blues" used in American Hustle was recorded live at the 1956 Newport Jazz Festival.  Big bands were on the way out by then, and Ellington was barely able to keep his band together.  But the recording of his 1956 Newport concert gave Ellington's career a shot in the arm.  Some critics believe it was the best Ellington concert ever.

Here's "Jeep's Blues":

Click below to buy "Jeep's Blues" from Amazon:

Jeff Beck Group -- "Beck's Bolero" (1968)

You could say that the Yardbirds had some pretty good lead guitarists.  

Eric Clapton joined the band in late 1963.  Jeff Beck replaced him in May 1965.  Beck’s good friend, Jimmy Page, joined the band in 1966 – initially he played bass – and remained when the band gave Beck the boot later that year.  Rolling Stone ranked those guys as #2, #5, and #3 on their “100 Top Guitarists” list, respectively.  (Jimi Hendrix and Keith Richards round out their top five.)

Jimmy Page and Jeff Beck

After he was fired by the Yardbirds, Jeff Beck formed the Jeff Beck Group.  Rod Stewart was the group’s lead singer and Ronnie Wood (who later joined the Rolling Stones) its rhythm guitarist. 

The most interesting song on the group's 1968 debut album, Truth -- an instrumental titled "Beck's Bolero" -- had been recorded in the spring of 1966 by Beck, Keith Moon of the Who, Jimmy Page, John Paul Jones (a busy session musician who shortly thereafter joined forces with Jimmy Page to form Led Zeppelin), and Nicky Hopkins (best known for his keyboard work on several classic Rolling Stones albums).

For you guitar aficionados, Beck played a Gibson Les Paul guitar, while Page played a Fender Electric XII.

Jeff Beck playing a Gibson Les Paul guitar

Beck had hoped to record an entire album with this group, but contractual difficulties presented what might have been the ultimate supergroup album from getting off the ground.  (Damn lawyers!)

The rhythm of "Beck's Bolero" is modeled on the rhythm of Maurice Ravel's famous orchestral piece, "Boléro."  Jimmy Page ended up with the composer credit for the record, although Beck claimed that he came up with the guitar melody line and the second "hard rock" section of the song (which begins at about 1:38 with a scream and drum break by Keith Moon).  

"Beck's Bolero" was one of Jimi Hendrix's favorite tracks, and it inspired Duane Allman to learn to play slide guitar.

Here's "Beck's Bolero":

Click below to buy "Beck's Bolero" from Amazon:

Bruno Mars -- "Just the Way You Are" (2010)

And when you smile

The whole world stops and stares for a while

'Cause girl, you're amazing

Just the way you are

The star of the Super Bowl XLVIII halftime show today is the five-foot-five Bruno Mars -- who was born Peter Gene Hernandez in Honolulu in 1985.  

Mars is no overnight sensation.  He started performing on stage with his family's band, the Love Notes, when he was four years old.  His Elvis impersonation was featured in the 1992 movie, Honeymoon in Vegas:



In 2009, he signed a record deal with Atlantic after an unsuccessful stint with Motown.  He helped write Flo Rida's "Right Round," and contributed vocals to B.o.B's "Nothin' on You."  

In 2010, his debut studio album (Doo-Wops and Hooligans) spawned two #1 singles -- "Grenade" and today's featured song, "Just the Way You Are," which sold over 12 million copies and won the 2010 Grammy for Best Pop Vocal Performance.  His second album (Unorthodox Jukebox) produced two more #1 singles.

Bruno Mars is known for his many hats

To date, Mars has sold 10 million albums and 58 million singles.  But despite his success, he seems like an odd choice for a Super Bowl halftime show. 

The NFL's choice became much more interesting when it was announced that Mars will be joined by the Red Hot Chili Peppers.  They say politics make strange bedfellows, and so do Super Bowl halftime shows.

By the way, one gambling website says it is 5/1 that "Just the Way You Are" will be the first song Mars sings in today's performance.  (That's some sweet action!)

Nice chapeau!

Mars has not disclosed whether he's rooting for Seahawks or Broncos, but the Hawaii native did say that he usually cheers for "whoever's got the most Polynesians on their team."  Denver has only one player who sounds like he might be Polynesian (Duke Ihenacho), but that's one more than Seattle has -- so I'm guessing Mars is leaning towards the Broncos. 

Here's the official music video for "Just the Way You Are" -- 360 million views so far:

Click below to order the song from Amazon:

Average White Band -- "Pick Up the Pieces" (1974)

Surprised to see a 2 or 3 lines that doesn't begin with two or three lines of song lyrics?

As I explained yesterday, this February's "29 Posts in 28 Days" features instrumentals -- songs without lyrics.  You'll have to wait until March for lyrics.

"Pick Up the Pieces" was one of the rare instrumentals that made it all the way to #1 on the Billboard "Hot 100" (displacing Linda Ronstadt's "You're No Good").

(Yep . . . they're white, all right.)

It was recorded by a half-dozen Scottish musicians who called themselves the Average White Band.  (Bonnie Bramlett of Delaney & Bonnie came up with the name.)  They were a great funk band despite being not only white but also from Scotland, which will never be mistaken for Detroit or Philadelphia or New York City or Los Angeles or Memphis when it comes to being a hotbed of soul music. 

But as Soul Train host Don Cornelius said when the Average White Band (known as "AWB" for short) appeared on his show, they played music "like they were raised on cornbread and black-eyed peas."

AWB continues to perform together, more than forty years after the group was formed.  Their music has been sampled on more than a hundred hip-hop songs -- you can't deny that they got rhythm.

AWB's original drummer, Robbie McIntosh, overdosed and died at a Los Angeles party just before the album containing "Pick Up the Pieces" was released in the fall of 1974.  Another AWB member, Alan Gorrie, overdosed at the same party, but Cher kept him conscious until help arrived.  

Presumably Cher didn't have to plunge a hypodermic of adrenaline into Gorrie's heart, as John Travolta did when Uma Thurman overdosed in the Pulp Fiction.

Here's "Pick Up the Pieces":

Here's "Pick Up the Pieces, One by One," a tongue-in-cheek reply song by James Brown's backup band, who called themselves "AABB," or "Above-Average Black Band":

Click below to buy "Pick Up the Pieces" from Amazon:

Mason Williams -- "Classical Gas" (1968)

Until today, every 2 or 3 lines has begun with two or three (or more) lines of lyrics from a song.  But not today -- and not again until March.

You heard right, boys and girls: no more lyrics until next month.  My blog, my rules.  

In this February's "29 Posts in 28 Days," I'm featuring instrumentals  No words for a whole month -- just music.  (Except for Super Bowl Sunday, of course, when I'll feature a song by this year's halftime performer).

There are a lot of fabulous instrumental recordings out there, and it wasn't easy to narrow the field to just 28.  Once I did, I then had to decide which one to start with.

The single

In 1968, BMI (a performing rights organization that collects broadcast royalties on behalf of composers and recording artists) gave Mason Williams a special award for "Classical Gas," which has been played on the radio more than six million times -- an all-time record.  I figured I could do a lot worse than start off a "29 Posts in 28 Days" devoted to instrumentals with the most-played instrumental record ever.

There were a lot of comedy-variety shows on television when I was a kid -- The Dinah Shore Chevy Hour, The Red Skelton Hour, The Andy Williams Show, The Carol Burnett Show, The Glen Campbell Goodtime Hour, The Flip Wilson Show, and many others.  But one that stood out from all the rest was The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour, which ran for three seasons (1967 through 1969) on CBS.

Tommy and Dick Smothers' act mixed folk music with comedy -- pretty lame comedy, to tell the truth.  Their TV show initially looked like just about any other comedy-variety show of that era, but quickly morphed into a controversial and cutting-edge show that kept CBS and its affiliates on the edge of their seats each week.

Tommy and Dick Smothers

Mason Williams may have been as responsible as anyone for what The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour became.  Before becoming the show's Emmy-winning head writer, Williams had been a stand-up comedian.  He was best known for his Them Poems album, which featured poems such as "Them Banjo Pickers,' "Them Toad Suckers," and "Them Moose Goosers":

How about them Moose goosers

Ain't they recluse?
Up in them boondocks

Goosin' them moose
Goosin' them huge moose

Goosin' them tiny,
Goosin them meadow moose

In they heiny!
Look at them Moose goosers

Ain't they dumb?
Some use an umbrella

Some use they thumb

Williams hired an unknown comedy writer named Steve Martin, initially paying him out of his pocket.  He also created the "Pat Paulsen for President" campaign.

Mason Williams was an artist as well as a comedy writer.  His most famous art work is "Bus," a life-sized reproduction of a 1960s-vintage Greyhound bus printed in an edition of 200, each of which was folded up and packed inside a box.

Click here to read more about "Bus."  

Williams was also a musician and composer, and he wrote the theme song for the Smothers Brothers' show.  But his most famous composition is "Classical Gas," which was a #2 hit in 1968.  (The Doors' "Hello, I Love You" kept it out of the top spot.)  It later won three Grammys.  

After "Classical Gas" was released, Williams had an experimental filmmaker create a video montage of thousands of paintings that was titled 3000 Years of Art.  

Mason Williams performed "Classical Gas" many times on many different guitars.  But one of those guitars was perhaps the most unusual guitar ever played.  Here's the story of that guitar, which I've taken from Williams' online biography.  (You can click here to read the entire publication.)

[P]laying guitar, or almost any instrument on television, for that matter, wasn’t very interesting visually. . . . I decided that by changing the look of the guitar itself, I could make shots more interesting.

I came up with all kinds of ideas.  One I remember was a hammerhead shark design (there were others) but a guitar you could see though seemed to be the best idea because the hot studio lighting would give it a Steuben glass aura.

Billy Cheatwood was staying with me in LA at the time, so I asked him if he’d help me build a plexiglass guitar as a visual element to use on television.  I told him what I wanted was in essence, a real, playable guitar.  I hooked Billy up with the head prop designer for ABC , who was a true craftsman, and using a real classical guitar pattern, they made the glass guitar.  The fretting science on the neck (real frets) was accurate.  You could actually play pieces on it. 

However, since the plexiglass was 1/4” thick, it didn’t have any volume to speak of -- it was somewhat like the sound you get on an electric guitar that’s not plugged in. It was quite a bit heavier than a wooden guitar. I used it on a TV special called Just Friends that involved my friends from The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour: Tom & Dick, Pat Paulsen, John Hartford, Jennifer Warren and Bob Einstein. I used it to finger-sync my hit version of "Classical Gas." 

When I left Hollywood a couple of years later, I gave most of my stuff away to family and friends. John Hartford loved the idea of that guitar, so I gave it to him. He later told me that he had it hanging on the wall of his house in Nashville and once in a while it would get explored by some of the Nashville pickers.

I got it back from John to use for a Smother Brothers show in 1974. . . . I first suggested that we fill the guitar with honeybees, letting them make a honeycombed hive you could see into, but NBC didn’t like the idea of bees flying around the studio . . . what if they didn’t like the song and stung people in the audience? 

So I filled the guitar with water and put a couple of goldfish in it.  The camera had fun exploring the goldfish in a guitar bowl and a lot of people must have seen this spot, because to this day, people bring it up in conversation.  In 1987 I got it back from John again to use for the cover of my Classical Gas album with Mannheim Steamroller.  John Hartford died in 2001 and I don’t know who has it now.

Here's Williams performing "Classical Gas" on Ed Sullivan's show:

Click below if you'd like to order "Classical Gas" from Amazon: