Instrumentals With Words
When I get nostalgic its not necessarily because I want to go backwards in time and relive my youth. I actually think most things are better today than they used to be. I carry around a phone that includes a camera, my music library, email, texts, language instruction, watch sports, movies, and the latest episodes of my favorite shows, read books or my a weekly magazine, open an app that shows me exactly where the four largest moons of Jupiter are at any particular moment, and check my blood sugar minute to minute so I don’t have to prick my finger all the time.
Also, I can write County Road Seven on my phone if I’m away from my computer. Is this a wonderful world or what?
All the same, I look back fondly on things like manual typewriters, candy cigarettes, three black and white channels that everyone else watched too, and the kind of things that popped up on Top Forty stations.
Top Forty programming, for those readers who may not have lived through the time, was big during my teen years in the 1960s. It didn’t matter the genre. You might hear the Beatles, or Jimi Hendrix or Simon and Garfunkel, or the Supremes, or James Brown, or Simon and Garfunkel, or Glenn Campbell. Tony Bennett, Frank Sinatra, and Iron Butterfly. Or Show Tunes. Barbra Streisand belting out something from Funny Girl.
You might hear “Winchester Cathedral,” “In-a-gadda-da-vida,” or “Feelin’ Groovy (The 59th Street Bridge Song).” Pop, Rock, Soul, Country, or weird stuff that somehow burst into the Billboard Hot One Hundred.
One of the neat things you’d hear was instrumentals. Just plain music, no words. Like Herb Albert and the Tiajuana Brass playing “The Lonely Bull.” Vince Guaraldi’s “Cast Your Fate to the Wind.” The theme from “Exodus,” or “A Summer Place.” Film Scores were big.
A good instrumental is magic. It needs no words. Instead of words your mind is filled with colors, images, vistas, and a collage of personal moments. The title of the song might give you a head start, but from there, you’re on your own.
Oddly enough, if an instrumental was a big hit, someone would want to sing it, or some executive would decide it would be better with words. Either way, a lyricist would be hired, some lines would be penned, and the song would re-emerge.
Take “Cast Your Fate to the Wind.” That instrumental is so simple, and so powerful, that when the guy tasked with producing the first Charlie Brown special heard it on his car radio while crossing the Golden Gate Bridge he immediately knew this guy would be perfect for A Charlie Brown Christmas. And soon, sure enough, a vocal version of “Cast Your Fate” emerged and ended up being sung by any number of pop groups. The words are okay, but the instrumental is better.
The same thing happened to “Exodus,” and “A Summer Place.”
This all came to mind because of a song I’d forgotten. I had a dream in which I was flying a biplane so high in the sky it became black as space. And then the theme from the movie “Midnight Cowboy” began to play. I never saw that movie, though it’s supposed to be a classic. It was not the kind of film my parents were likely to take us to! However, in my dream that song began to play, and I heard a voice singing the words to it. The words took shape, cloudlike, all around me as I flew.
Since when were there words to that song. That’s when it hit me. I did remember someone singing “Midnight Cowboy,” a beautiful tune, by the way. That’s where my phone saved the day. I went to the Youtube app, typed “Midnight Cowboy with lyrics,” and suddenly Johnny Mathis began to sing.
Let me tell you, the words weren’t great, and they had nothing to do with the film, but Mathis makes anything sound good. But – a good instrumental doesn’t need words. And I miss fun instrumentals.
And that’s my final thought on the Top Forty. Any time an old song pops in your head, and you only remember a couple words, enter them in the search engine of Youtube.
It’ll make your day.
Frank Ramirez is the Senior Pastor of the Union Center Church of the Brethren.