I’d put “Oh Yoko” up there too. “Imagine” has a gorgeous melody, but the lyrics are like something an eighth grader would write.

Paul: “Live And Let Die”

A close second: “Maybe I’m Amazed.”

George: “I’d Have You Anytime”

Kind of a toss-up with “Isn’t It A Pity.”

Ringo: um, I dunno, maybe “Pure Gold”

Original post on Quora

Harry Truman played classical piano.

Richard Nixon played classical piano too, and even composed a bit.

Condoleeza Rice has pro-quality classical chops. Don’t miss her appearance on 30 Rock.

Former federal reserve chairman Alan Greenspan attended Juilliard and played professional alto sax and clarinet in the Woody Herman band before going into finance. Unfortunately, I can’t find a video.

Of course, there’s Bill Clinton and his famous sax solo.

Mike Huckabee plays respectable rock bass. Here he is playing with Def Leppard, don’t miss.

Finally, who could forget former Attorney General and singer-songwriter John Ashcroft? Awful though he is, the song is weirdly catchy.

Original post on Quora

The Facebook page lists about eleven billion examples of The Lick. Here are some of my favorites.

Miles Davis, “Two Bass Hit” — John Coltrane plays it at 1:15 and 1:39.

John Coltrane, “Impressions” — listen at 3:11.

Coltrane again, “On Green Dolphin Street,” at 1:32.

Freddie Hubbard playing “A Love Supreme” at a Coltrane tribute concert — 0:16.

Sonny Rollins on Miles Davis’ “It’s Only A Paper Moon” at 2:25.

Sonny Rollins, “John S” at 1:51.

Grant Green, “Nomad” — Bobby Hutcherson plays The Lick at 4:12, 4:46 and 4:53.

Charles Mingus, “Peggy’s Blue Skylight” — Joe Gardner at 1:34.

The Lick doesn’t just belong to jazz. Stravinsky uses it in “The Fire Bird” — listen at 14:43.

The Lick is a pop and rock staple too. Player uses a variant of it in “Baby Come Back” — listen at 0:13.

Santana plays yet another variant in “Oye Como Va” — listen at 0:17.

Akon sings The Lick right at the beginning of “Just A Man.”

Here’s a side-by-side comparison of four versions of The Lick, all transposed to A minor for clarity.

These few variations on The Lick only hint at the richness of explosive diversity you can find on the Facebook page. The Lick is one of those musical memes, like the Amen break or the “Egyptian” melody, that can adapt itself to a seemingly limitless variety of circumstances. There’s a lot of debate on FB about whether a given phrase counts as The Lick or not, since many of the examples stretch the time or alter the pitches, or both. These debates are a lot like the ones biologists get into around taxonomic issues, whether a given fossil is a dinosaur or a bird. The Lick mutates and evolves exactly like a gene in a population of organisms. You can think of The Lick as being like a single gene that codes for a single protein, functioning as part of a larger musical genome, a tune or a solo.

We come down hard on artists who use cliches too much, and praise others for originality. But if iconoclastic musicians on the level of Coltrane use The Lick so heavily, how bad can cliches be? Too much originality is an obstacle to creating emotionally resonant music. Coltrane’s last albums were by far his most original — you’re not going to hear too many cliches on Ascension or Sun Ship. But I find those albums challenging at best, and most people find them unbearable. Coltrane’s best art is based on familiar materials — showtunes, folk music, the blues. The best art doesn’t avoid cliches; it owns them, personalizes them and transforms them. I say, long live The Lick.

Here are my favorite basslines of the last fifty years, across genres.

John Coltrane – “My Favorite Things”

Simple, hypnotic, effective. Read more.

John Coltrane – “Equinox”

Another devastatingly simple groove.

Duke Ellington – “Half The Fun”

Paired with an incredible Sam Woodyard drum part. I love sampling it:

Nature Boy megamix by ethanhein

Duke Ellington – “Fleurette Africaine”

Charles Mingus’ strumming on the intro might be the most beautiful few bars he ever played. Hear a mashup I did of this tune and some other jazz classics:

Autumn Leaves by ethanhein

The Beatles – “Dear Prudence”

I could have chosen any of a dozen Beatles tunes here, I love those McCartney lines. But this one has the most emotional power for me. Here’s a blog post about it, and here’s a mashup I did of “Dear Prudence” with “Never Can Say Goodbye” by the Jackson 5:

Prudence Never Can Say Goodbye by ethanhein

Miles Davis – “It’s About That Time”

From my favorite of Miles’ funk albums. Read a blog post about it.

James Brown – “There Was A Time (I Got To Move)”

Pretty sure that’s Bootsy Collins playing bass, and he kills it.

Herbie Hancock – “Chameleon”

Here’s a visualization I made of this loop.

Talking Heads – “Once In A Lifetime”

Read more about this track, and check out the megamix:

Once In A Lifetime megamix by ethanhein

Michael Jackson – “Billie Jean”

Of course.

Janet Jackson – “What Have You Done For Me Lately”

The song that made the Latelybass sound famous.

Paul Simon and Ladysmith Black Mambazo – “Diamonds On The Souls Of Her Shoes”

Bakithi Kumalo on the fretless makes this tune for me.

Michael Jackson – “Remember The Time”

Love those Teddy Riley sequenced lines.

Digable Planets – “Rebirth Of Slick”

The bassline is sampled from “Searchin’” by Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers, but the Digables flipped it into something new.

Black Sheep – “The Choice Is Yours”

Another creative flip of a jazz sample, from McCoy Tyner’s recording of “Impressions.”

Morphine – “Buena”

No embedding; click the image to hear the song:

Two-string slide bass and baritone sax!

Daft Punk – “Around The World”

Never get tired of this one.

Kanye West – “Love Lockdown”

Kanye has been using tuned 808 kick drums to play his basslines lately, which is a dazzlingly hip idea. The kick and the bass are supposed to be in tight sync anyway; why not just fuse them into a single part? I know he’s a ridiculous human being in a lot of ways but the man knows how to put a track together.

Let me know if I missed anything critical, I’m sure I did.

Original post on Quora

While Girl Talk tracks have way too much information in them for my tastes, I could easily imagine having a rich musical life just unpacking their possibilities. Pop-oriented hip-hop over thrash metal! Gangsta rap over buttery piano ballads! Mixing prog and teeny bopper pop and classic rock! Teasing out the ideas suggested in these pairings could launch a thousand bands. In my own life as a musician, mashups have been the richest source of inspiration imaginable. Girl Talk lights the way with his fearless transgression of all boundaries of taste and style and copyright; it’s up to older and mellower musicians like me to pick up all the loose and tangled threads and knit them into something a little more coherent and structured.

Mashups by ethanhein

Why do some people like Girl Talk?

I learned the answer from Creative License: The Law And Culture Of Digital Sampling by Kembrew McLeod and Peter DiCola. It’s a companion book to the invaluable documentary Copyright Criminals. The story of Jay-Z and Alan Lomax isn’t quite as epic a copyright fail as the Biz Markie lawsuit or the story of “Bitter Sweet Symphony” but it’s still pretty absurd.

So here’s Jay-Z’s “Takeover.” As you might expect, it contains salty language.

For my tastes, “Takeover” isn’t one of the better Jay-Z songs, since all it does is make fun of Nas. It’s depressing when an artist of Jay’s caliber devotes his  considerable creativity to a diss track. Still, the production is pretty powerful. The main samples come from the Doors’ “Five To One.” Jay also quotes David Bowie’s “Fame,” along with various other rap songs. Finally, the sampled line “Watch out, we run New York!” comes from “Sound Of Da Police” by KRS-One.

KRS-One samples a riff from “Inside Looking Out” by Grand Funk Railroad — listen at 6:28.

Grand Funk didn’t write the song. It’s a cover of The Animals.

The Animals didn’t really write the song either. As was a common practice among their British rock peers at the time, they took a folk melody and wrote somewhat different lyrics. The tune they used is called “Rosie,” which they learned from a recording made by Alan Lomax of a chain gang at Parchman Farm.

“Rosie” can’t be said to have any particular author. But Lomax was the first person to record and publish it, so according to the peculiar norms of America’s property laws, he was able to copyright it. Not only does Lomax hold the copyright for “Rosie,” he’s also listed as a co-author of both versions of “Inside Looking Out.”

Here’s where the story gets truly silly. When KRS-One sampled Grand Funk Railroad’s cover of “Inside Looking Out,” he needed the permission of both the owner of the recording and the underlying composition. This is in spite of the fact that the sample is from an instrumental section that Grand Funk added, and that doesn’t reference the original melody at all. And even though Jay-Z sampled KRS-One’s unaccompanied vocal, he also needed to get copyright permission from everyone sampled in KRS-One’s track. Including Alan Lomax.

So that’s how a folk song collector wound up as the legal co-author of a Jay-Z diss track. I can’t think of a better illustration of the copyright system’s dysfunction than that.

The copyright maze is no obstacle to Jay-Z — he has the money, lawyers and connections to clear whatever he wants. But what about up-and-coming or unheard-of artists? What if they want to use samples? Should the most vital art form of our time be the exclusive province of forty-year-old multimillionaires? And grateful as I am to Alan Lomax for recording and disseminating so much great folk music, I remain baffled as to why he was allowed to copyright it. Our creative heritage deserves better stewardship than our current laws provide.

Update: I seem to have touched a nerve with this post. Jesse Walker posted it on the Reason Magazine blog, and since then it’s also been on Andrew Sullivan’s blog, Metafilter and Techdirt. There are some interesting discussions happening in the comments to those posts. Thanks for linking, everybody!

The good news is that while figuring out keys is complex, it’s not impossible. Before you can do it, you need to know what all the possibilities are, and you need some tools to help you in your analysis. I’m assuming here that you don’t have sheet music of the tune you’re trying to figure out, but you do have an audio recording. You’ll want a program that can loop and slow down different sections. I recommend Transcribe for this purpose. Audio editing tools like Ableton Live and Pro Tools work too.

Figuring out the root

The root is “home base” for the key. The best way to figure it out is trial and error. There are only twelve possibilities; put the passage on a loop and try them all. Often the root is the note that the melody starts or ends on, or repeats frequently. The root is also the likeliest note for the bass to be playing. Neither of these are hard and fast rules, though; you need to let your ear be the final judge. A teacher can help you develop your instinct through ear training.

Simple major and minor

In traditional western classical and folk music, figuring out keys is relatively straightforward. There are twelve major keys and twelve minor keys. If the piece or section feels happy, it’s probably major, and if it feels sad, it’s probably minor. Once you’ve figured out the root, you’re in business. The key signatures in western notation denote either major scales or their relative minor counterparts.

Jazz theory gives another handy method for identifying keys. In jazz, keys tend to change a lot, and it’s not uncommon to pass through a key without ever landing on the root. Many jazz standards have sequences of ii-V progressions that don’t resolve. For example:

| C-7 F7 | Bb-7 Eb7 | Ab-7 Db7 | G-7 C7 |

How do you make sense of something so complex? Jazz says: look at the dominant seventh chords. Whenever you see one, you’re in the key one slot counterclockwise on the circle of fifths.

So in the example, F7 indicates that the first bar is in Bb major — you can play the Bb major scale over C-7 and F7 and it will sound good. The Eb7 indicates that the second bar is in Ab major. The Db7 puts the third bar in Gb major, and the C7 puts the fourth bar in F major.

Dominant chords can indicate minor keys if they have “minor-sounding” extensions in them like b9, #9 and b13. Half-diminished ii chords suggest minor keys too. So if you see this:

| C-7b5 F7b9 | Bb-7b5 Eb7#9 | Ab-7b5 Db7b9 | G-7b5 C7#9 |

then you’re looking at the keys of Bb minor, Ab minor,  Gb minor and F minor, respectively. See a good jazz theory text for more details; I recommend The Jazz Theory Book by Mark Levine.

The blues

Blues music makes the key situation more complex, because it combines features of both major and minor. Blues mixes the major and minor third, the natural and flat seventh, and characteristically major-key and minor-key chords. Also, blues uses dominant seventh chords in non-functional ways, so you can’t really use the jazz analysis on them. I think it’s best to think of “blues keys” that are distinct from major or minor. So the key of “C blues” will use chords like this:

C7  Eb  F7  F#dim7  G7  Bb

Melodies in C blues will combine C major and the C blues scale. There’s also minor blues, but that follows traditional classical minor-key rules more closely.

Modes and other exotica

Major, minor and blues will cover you for most of the material you’ll encounter in western pop, but there are still some tunes and passages that will continue to defy analysis. Music from non-western cultures uses plenty of scales not mentioned above, and western practice has absorbed a lot of them, especially the ones that happen to map onto modes of the major scale. Western music also occasionally ventures into modes of the harmonic and melodic minor scales.

There are also the so-called synthetic scales: whole-tone and diminished. It’s vanishingly unusual to hear them in pop songs, but they do show up in jazz, classical and film score music. Hollywood leans heavily on a scale I learned as “harmonic major” — like harmonic minor but with a major third:

C D E F G Ab B

This scale is rarely discussed in music theory texts, but it’s handy if you want to create a feeling of epic mysticism, like in the Lord Of The Rings movies.

Putting it all together

This flowchart shows all of the scales you’re likely to encounter in contemporary American music, at least the more mainstream and accessible stuff. Find yourself a piece of music whose root is C. Try out different notes on top of it and follow the arrows until you hit your scale.

For example, let’s take “I Can’t Go For That (No Can Do)” by Hall and Oates.

Take a listen to the verses. The root is C. There’s G in there, whereas Gb sounds peculiar. The section is minor, so Eb fits and E doesn’t. Continuing out, Bb fits better than B, and A fits better than Ab. So the key here is C dorian. The prechorus — “I’d do anything you want me to do” — is more complicated. It has C and G, and the third is E, rather than Eb. But the different chords in that section use both B and Bb. The prechorus switches back and forth between C major and C mixolydian. See what I mean about key changes being common?

If you’re trying to figure out something and the root isn’t C, my chart won’t be much help unless you transpose everything. Someone want to commission me to do this chart in all twelve keys? Get in touch.

Music theory excites nerds like me, but it makes a lot of musicians miserable. It’s best to learn it in the context of actual tunes that you like. Each scale has its own unique emotional color; puzzling them all out and comparing their qualities can be great inspiration for writing and improvising your own stuff. Happy transcribing!

I was reminded of it walking down the street the other day, because someone in our neighborhood in Brooklyn was blasting a dancehall track from their car that sampled the “na, na na na na, na na na naaah na na na na na na” part from “Land Of A Thousand Dances.” Then I got to thinking, this cartoon is actually an inspired recipe for a mashup. So here we go:

Na Na Na Na by ethanhein

Production

I put the track together using my new favorite software in the world, Ableton Live. I’ve historically been a Reason/Recycle guy, and while I’ve had Ableton sitting on my hard drive forever, it took me until recently to motivate to check it out. I’m glad I did, it’s been wildly inspirational. Here’s how the mashup looks in Ableton’s session view.

Land Of A Thousand Dances

I used the Wilson Pickett version of “Land Of A Thousand Dances.” Here’s a live version — the hook comes at 0:46.

Hey Hey, Good Bye

The chorus of “Na Na Hey Hey Kiss Him Goodbye” is such a ubiquitous meme that it’s strange to think it was originally part of an actual song, rather than something written specifically to be chanted at sports games. It’s by an anonymous bunch of studio musicians who called themselves The Steam. Here they are in Austin Powers finery:

I also included the version by Bananarama, because who doesn’t love Bananarama?

Nas Is Like

The one song I put in that isn’t from the cartoon is “Nas Is Like” by Nas. I used it because the repeated “Nas Nas Nas is like, Nas is like” fits the sonic theme well, and because I needed a good strong beat for certain sections of my track.

Batman

The cartoon references Neal Hefti’s groovy theme song from the sixties TV Batman show. The thing is that there is no “na na na” part anywhere, it’s just the way everyone sings the guitar riff. I figured I’d just put it in rather than split hairs.

Katamari

The Japanese a capella voice with the bit of beatboxing at the end is “Sasasan Katamari” by Yu Miyake, from the classic video game Katamari Damacy.

Randall Munroe shares my love of this game and its infectious theme music:

Hey Jude

Finally, I conclude my mashup with the entire end section of The Beatles’ “Hey Jude,” a masterpiece of zen-like repetition.

Other na na songs

Songs I could have included, but didn’t:

• My Chemical Romance – “Na Na Na (Na Na Na Na Na Na Na Na Na)”
• Akon – “Right Now (Na Na Na)”
• 112 – “Na Na Na Na”
• Jim Jones – “Na Na Nana Na Na”
• Tiffany – “Na Na Na”
• A.B. Quintanilla III Y Los Kumbia Kings – “Na Na Na”

Why are all these “na na na” songs so catchy?

I think nonsense syllables are crucial to good pop music. They enable emotional expression uncluttered by narrowly literal semantic meaning. “Na na na” can mean anything, everything or nothing. It’s a blank space to project whatever feeling you want onto it. I subscribe to the belief that music is much older than language, and that it reaches much deeper into the core of the brain. Like scat singing and obligato, singing “na na na” touches something much bigger and more ancient inside us than any specific set of lyrics can. Maybe that’s why these hooks are so much more memorable than the songs they come from. Anyway, enjoy the mashup, and thanks Randall Munroe for the best comic on the internet.

To understand modes, picture a set of Scrabble tiles. Say you have seven Scrabble tiles that spell the word RESPECT. You can take the first two letters off and stick them on the end to get SPECTRE (the British spelling of specter.) In music theory terms, SPECTRE is a mode of RESPECT; conversely, RESPECT is a mode of SPECTRE.

Now imagine your Scrabble tiles spell ABCDEFG. If you treat the letters as note names, this is a scale called A natural minor. If you take the first two letters off and put them on the end, you get CDEFGAB, the C major scale. C major and A natural minor are modes of one another; learning to play one gives you the other one for free.

This post will walk you through all of the modes of C major. To find a mode, pick any red note on the diagram below and read clockwise to get the mode starting on that note.

Each mode goes with a chord, so I’ve listed those too, along with real-world examples.

C to C – Ionian mode

Ionian mode is just the regular old major scale. You only see the Greek name used in music theory textbooks.

Scale: C D E F G A B
Chord: C E G B D F A -- Cmaj7

Examples include everything from “Jingle Bells” to the William Tell Overture. See my major scale post for more.

D to D – Dorian mode

Same as the D natural minor scale, but with a natural sixth. Dorian is fabulously useful for jazz and funk.

Scale: D E F G A B C
Chord: D F A C E G B -- Dm7

“So What” by Miles Davis uses Dorian all the way through, in D on the main part and in Eb on the bridge.

The ninth, eleventh and thirteenth in D dorian are E, G and B. These notes form an E minor triad. If you play E minor and then D minor, you get the distinctive “So What” riff.

Other examples of tunes in Dorian, from Wikipedia:

• “Greensleeves”
• “Born to Be Wild“
• “Scarborough Fair”
• “Eleanor Rigby”

E to E – Phrygian mode

This mode has a distinctive flamenco vibe. It’s the same notes as E natural minor with a flat second.

Scale: E F G A B C D
Chord: E G B D F A C -- Em7(b13)

Outside of flamenco, Phrygian doesn’t get much action, but Samuel Barber uses it in his Adagio for Strings. Rightly so — with its flatted second, third, sixth and seventh, it’s pretty much the saddest of all scales.

F to F – Lydian mode

This beautiful, somewhat otherworldly scale is the F major scale with a sharp fourth.

Scale: F G A B C D E
Chord: F A C E G B D -- Fmaj7 (#11)

Lydian is great for dream and fantasy sequences. Björk uses it for “Possibly Maybe,” starting on the line “Much as I definitely enjoy solitude.”

G to G – Mixolydian mode

The same as the G major scale, but with a flat seventh.

Scale: G A B C D E F
Chord: G B D F A C E -- G7

Mixolydian is one of the defining sounds of blues and rock. Examples:

• Just about every blues tune
• “Tomorrow Never Knows,” “Day Tripper,” the “Nah nah nah nah” section of “Hey Jude” and many other songs by the Beatles
• “Sweet Home Alabama” by Lynyrd Skynyrd
• Björk again! “Big Time Sensuality”

A to A – Aeolian mode

This mode is better known as A natural minor — Aeolian is another one of those Greek names no one really uses.

Scale: A B C D E F G
Chord: A C E G B D F -- Am7

Natural minor is the basis of the whole minor-key universe and is a blog post unto itself. Use it whenever you need tragedy. Example: “Concierto de Aranjuez” by Joaquín Rodrigo (as played here by Miles Davis.)

B to B – Locrian mode

A very dark, strange scale. Like B natural minor with a flat second and fifth.

Scale: B C D E F G A
Chord: B D F A C E G -- Bm7(b5)

The flat second and fifth make Locrian very unstable, and I can’t think of any tunes based entirely on it. The main thing you need Locrian for is a minor-key chord progression that you see all the time in jazz:

Bm7(b5)  E7      Am
ii       V       i

Over Bm7(b5), you play B locrian (or A natural minor, however you prefer to think of it.) Over E7, you usually play A harmonic minor. Over Am, you can play any A minor scale of your choice.

One of my favorite jazz tunes is “Whisper Not” by Benny Golson, which is mostly made up of minor ii-V-i in various keys. Here’s the awesome Dizzy Gillespie big band arrangement:

Learning the modes

The best way to learn any music theory concept is in the context of actual music. “So What” teaches you Dorian mode better than any teacher can. That said, a good teacher can help you connect the various scales to specific pieces of music. Ideally, you should be studying songs that you already know and like.

Music theory takes a lot of memorizing, but it doesn’t need to be tedious. Even if you’re just systematically running the scales up and down, put a good drum machine beat on and try to get them to sound like music. If you’re in New York City, contact me and I’ll be happy to get you pointed in the right direction.

You might also enjoy a more general post about scales and emotions.

The song was written about Mia Farrow’s sister Prudence, who the Beatles met during their stay in India. John was concerned that she was taking her meditation practice too seriously and wanted her to hang out with the band more. This isn’t a very relatable situation; John is a canny enough songwriter to make his lyrics open-ended so they could be interpreted to refer to any shy person.

I recently got my hands on a bunch of stems ripped from Beatles Rock Band. I’m reluctant to post the link because they’ll just get taken down, but I’m sure if you Google, you’ll find them. Lately I’ve been mixing everything with Michael Jackson a capellas, and this is no exception. So here’s “Dear Prudence” combined with “Never Can Say Goodbye.”

Prudence Never Can Say Goodbye by ethanhein

“Dear Prudence” represents one of the Beatles’ first forays into eight-track recording, which helps explain the intricacy of its arrangement. It was recorded during the period when Ringo had quit the band, so Paul is playing drums. I wonder how Ringo feels to know that Paul is at least as good a drummer as he is.

A guy named Alan Pollack wrote a very nice analysis of “Dear Prudence” as part of his exhaustive music-theoretical study of the Beatles’ entire repertoire. Pollack observes that the tune shows John borrowing characteristics of George’s style — the droning pedal tone and air of melancholy. Pollack draws a parallel between “Dear Prudence,” “Rain” and “Tomorrow Never Knows.” While most Lennon tunes have an arch shape to them, “Dear Prudence” is more riff-oriented.

“Dear Prudence” has not only a static harmonic profile, but even a formally flat floorplan; a steady stream of harmonically identical verses interrupted only once at the formal mid-point by a simple bridge which, itself, is as harmonically single-minded as the rest of the song.

The impressive accomplishment is that such a satisfying build up of tension and its release is achieved in spite of all stasis… The challenge is to create a sense of build up without relying much at all on either harmony or melody. Instead, the strategy is to carefully sustain an atmosphere within which texture and dynamic crescendo are developed over the long run.

The heart of the tune is the repeating descending bassline. (For guitarists unfamiliar with slash notation, D7/C just means “play D7 with C in the bass.”)

| D | D7/C | G/B | Gm/Bb |

Alan Pollack informs us that the Beatles also used this progression in the verses of “Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds” and the chorus of “Magical Mystery Tour.” In keeping with my philosophy that there are no original ideas in music or anywhere else, I should point out that this chord progression is a well-worn blues cliche. The genius of the Beatles is to stretch it out so that each chord gets a full bar instead of just a beat or two as is common in the blues.

The most famous cover version of “Dear Prudence” is the one by Siouxsie and the Banshees. It doesn’t do much for me — it’s too stiff. I much prefer the version by the Jerry Garcia Band. Jerry plays the tune slow and contemplative, with a gospel flavor from his backup singers and organist.

Brad Mehldau recorded a pretty happening jazz version on his album Largo. The recording of Matt Chamberlain’s drums is especially nice. It was done with just two mics for a garage-y rock sound, a much less polite vibe than the jazz norm. I like the groove in Brad’s version, but he omits the B section, which is a shame.

Brad is a highly creative interpreter of other Beatles tunes too. It’s well worth checking out his versions of “She’s Leaving Home” and “Martha My Dear.”

A few other interesting covers of “Dear Prudence,” in ascending order of corniness:

• The Five Stairsteps
• Graham Central Station
• Jaco Pastorius

My own jazz band regularly performed my arrangement of “Dear Prudence,” which combines Brad Mehldau’s spacy funk vibe with Jerry’s closer adherence to the structure of the original. We had a particularly hot New Year’s gig where we did “Dear Prudence” in the third, after-midnight set. The solo section stretched way out, a Miles Davis flavored open-ended groove on a D pedal. The band members who weren’t soloing went out into the room and danced. A good time.