When David Bowie invit­ed Chic gui­tarist and all-around funk/disco gui­tar genius Nile Rodgers to make an album of “hits” in Switzer­land, Rogers remem­bers think­ing, “okay, ‘hits’ with David Bowie, that’s an awe­some project.” The way he dead­pans might make us think he wasn’t super stoked about it, but the fact is, it’s hard to impress Nile Rodgers. He has pro­duced, writ­ten, and played guitar—the very Stra­to­cast­er he’s hold­ing in the video above—on “hun­dreds, maybe thou­sands” of records, he says. What’s one more, with one more super­star?

The album, it turned out, would become Let’s Dance, run­ner-up to Thriller for album of the year in 1984, con­tain­ing such dance­able hits as the title track, “Mod­ern Love,” and “Chi­na Girl.” It was to be Bowie’s best-sell­ing album—as he described it, “a redis­cov­ery of white-Eng­lish-ex-art-school-stu­dent-meets-black-Amer­i­can-funk.” He cer­tain­ly brought the first part of that equa­tion, a tune he strummed for Rogers on his 12-string acoustic that “sound­ed like folk music to me,” the gui­tarist says.

“Since I knew David loved jazz and he under­stood the ver­nac­u­lar, I said to him, ‘David, can I do an arrange­ment of this song?’” (What he has remem­bered say­ing else­where is much fun­nier: “I come from dance music. You can’t call that thing you just played ‘Let’s Dance.’”) Rodgers shows how he sub­sti­tut­ed and moved Bowie’s chords, giv­ing the song its dis­tinc­tive voic­ing. “Run­ning away from funk because of the whole dis­co sucks thing,” Rodgers says, he sim­pli­fied his strum­ming, let­ting a delay effect “make the groove.”

While he may not have gone into the expe­ri­ence expect­ing much more than the usu­al hit-mak­ing col­lab­o­ra­tion, the expe­ri­ence, “changed my life,” he says, “it changed David’s life, and we wound up work­ing togeth­er on anoth­er five projects over the next five years.” In an NPR inter­view last year, Rogers debuted the first demo of “Let’s Dance” with Bowie singing over his new arrange­ment. You can hear just above.

The video at the top is part of Fend­er Gui­tars’ edu­ca­tion­al series, so Rodgers wraps up with an essen­tial take­away for gui­tarists about the impor­tance of “good the­o­ret­i­cal knowl­edge,” the basis of his “Let’s Dance” trans­for­ma­tion from folk to jazz to New Wave post-funk. Sad­ly, we can­not hear from Bowie him­self or from his oth­er famous gui­tarist-col­lab­o­ra­tor on “Let’s Dance,” Ste­vie Ray Vaugh­an. But Bowie also cred­it­ed the Texas leg­end for help­ing him access his inner Amer­i­can to cre­ate music, as he once observed, with a “Euro­pean sen­si­bil­i­ty, but owed its impact to the blues.”

via Boing Boing

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Stream David Bowie’s Com­plete Discog­ra­phy in a 19-Hour Playlist: From His Very First Record­ings to His Last

David Bowie Became Zig­gy Star­dust 48 Years Ago This Week: Watch Orig­i­nal Footage

David Bowie Picks His 12 Favorite David Bowie Songs: Lis­ten to Them Online

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

“Ring of Fire” has been cov­ered many times and in many ways since John­ny Cash released it in 1963. But for all its recog­ni­tion as one of his sig­na­ture songs, Cash’s “Ring of Fire” is itself a cov­er — or anoth­er inter­pre­ta­tion, in any case, of a tune orig­i­nal­ly writ­ten by Cash’s wife June Carter and song­writer Mer­le Kil­go­re for June’s sis­ter, Ani­ta Carter. Though it made noth­ing like the mark Cash’s record­ing did, the orig­i­nal “Ring of Fire” has its appre­ci­a­tors, a group that may well include Bri­an Eno. Or at least one feels an affin­i­ty between Ani­ta Carter’s take on the song and Eno’s own, the lat­ter of which you can lis­ten to above.

Unlike­ly enough to begin with, in an artis­tic sense, the record­ing’s avail­abil­i­ty on the inter­net has saved it from near-com­plete obscu­ri­ty. “In 1990, Bri­an Eno and John Cale made a won­der­ful exper­i­men­tal pop/art rock record called Wrong Way Up, released by Warn­er Bros. Records,” writes Boing Boing’s David Pescovitz.

“At the time, the label would send out 7” records to alt.rock/college radio sta­tions to pro­mote their new releas­es. The pro­mo series, called Soil Sam­ples, fea­tured dif­fer­ent artists on each side of the record per­form­ing songs that weren’t includ­ed on their new albums.” Cale’s con­tri­bu­tion to the sam­ple was an instru­men­tal called “Shuf­fle Down to Wood­bridge,” and the flip side of this translu­cent-vinyl rar­i­ty fea­tured “Mer­ry Christ­mas” by the two-man Amer­i­cana group House of Freaks.

As the leg­end goes — for every sto­ry con­nect­ed with John­ny Cash becomes a leg­end — the idea for how to do “Ring of Fire” came to the Man in Black in a dream. The “Mex­i­can horns” that had risen up from his sub­con­scious “sound like they’ve stum­bled in from some­where else on the radio dial and are try­ing des­per­ate­ly not to fall over Cash’s stan­dard shave-and-a-hair­cut clomp­ing beat,” writes The Atlantic’s Noah Berlatsky. “Cash, for his part, turns in one of the most awk­ward vocals of his career.” And yet “all those ele­ments knock­ing against each oth­er,” he con­tin­ues “fit the song’s lyrics per­fect­ly.” Eno’s flow­ing, lan­guid, Mex­i­can-horn-free record­ing may sound more like the orig­i­nal “Ring of Fire” than any oth­er cov­er, but it also befits its artist, the man who pop­u­lar­ized ambi­ent music. Nei­ther Cash nor Eno sing like men espe­cial­ly sub­ject to “wild desire,” but what song isn’t enriched by a bit of coun­ter­point?

via Boing Boing

Relat­ed Con­tent:

John­ny Cash Sings “Man in Black” for the First Time, 1971

John­ny Cash & Joe Strum­mer Sing Bob Marley’s “Redemp­tion Song” (2002)

Inside the 1969 Bob Dylan-John­ny Cash Ses­sions

Watch John­ny Cash’s Poignant Final Inter­view & His Last Per­for­mance: “Death, Where Is Thy Sting?” (2003)

Bri­an Eno Lists the Ben­e­fits of Singing: A Long Life, Increased Intel­li­gence, and a Sound Civ­i­liza­tion

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall, on Face­book, or on Insta­gram.

Now, if this leaves you want­i­ng to hear Dave Grohl sing “Nev­er Gonna Give You Up,” all you have to do is click here. Enjoy…

via Boing Boing

Relat­ed Con­tent:

1,000 Musi­cians Per­form Foo Fight­ers’ “Learn to Fly” in Uni­son in Italy; Dave Grohl Responds in Ital­ian

Stu­dent Rick­rolls Teacher By Sneak­ing Rick Ast­ley Lyrics into Quan­tum Physics Paper

Neil Finn Sings a Love­ly Ver­sion of David Bowie’s “Heroes,” Live from Home

Poet and Grate­ful Dead lyri­cist Robert Hunter penned some of the band’s best-known songs. Even if you’re only casu­al­ly famil­iar with the Dead’s vast cat­a­logue and even vaster labyrinth of live record­ings, you can prob­a­bly sing along to clas­sics like “Casey Jones” or “Box of Rain.” Both came about dur­ing the most pro­lif­ic phase of Hunter and Jer­ry Garcia’s col­lab­o­ra­tion on the coun­try-folk mas­ter­pieces Workingman’s Dead and Amer­i­can Beau­ty, released one after the oth­er in 1970.

Among these col­lec­tions of time­less tunes, one stands above the rest: “Rip­ple” is “per­haps the quin­tes­sence of both the band’s del­i­cate stu­dio mag­ic and the Garcia/Hunter part­ner­ship,” writes Jim Beviglia at Amer­i­can Song­writer. Hunter him­self, when asked about his favorite lyric, answered, “’Let it be known there is a foun­tain / That was not made by the hands of men.’ That’s pret­ty much my favorite line I ever wrote, that’s ever popped into my head. And I believe it, you know?”

The line popped into his head in Lon­don in 1970. Jer­ry Garcia’s melody arrived short­ly there­after. “We were in Cana­da,” says Hunter, “on that train trip [the Fes­ti­val Express, 1970] and one morn­ing the train stopped and Jer­ry was sit­ting out on the tracks not too far off, in the sun­rise, set­ting ‘Rip­ple’ to music. That’s a good mem­o­ry.” They debuted it right away, “in an acoustic set at the Fill­more West on August 19, 1970,” notes David Dodd at the offi­cial Dead site, “along with first per­for­mances of ‘Broke­down Palace,’ ‘Oper­a­tor,’ and ‘Truckin’.’”

What’s so great about “Rip­ple”? Where to start. “The Dead had damn near per­fect­ed the har­monies they used heav­i­ly on Workingman’s Dead,” Beviglia writes. “The ensem­ble voic­es on ‘Rip­ple’ pro­vide com­fort when the words evoke hard­ship.” Such is the bal­ance struck by the most beau­ti­ful­ly bit­ter­sweet of Amer­i­can folk songs, from “You Are My Sun­shine” to “Will the Cir­cle Be Unbro­ken.” The lyrics them­selves “evoke cos­mic wis­dom and seren­i­ty with­out ignor­ing the dark­ness on the fringes of even the most blessed lives.”

C’mon, the cho­rus is a freakin’ haiku…

“Each of us has our own indi­vid­ual path, for our steps alone,” Dodd writes of the song. “That might seem like a fright­en­ing thought, but I find the uni­ver­sal­i­ty of it a com­fort: we’re all in the same boat.” This truth is inescapable, whether we approach it philo­soph­i­cal­ly, con­tem­pla­tive­ly, or Bib­li­cal­ly, as the song’s vers­es seem to do (with allu­sions to William But­ler Yeats). What bet­ter illus­tra­tion of this theme than a col­lec­tion of musi­cians from around the world—some famous some obscure—playing the song alone togeth­er in Play­ing for Change’s excel­lent col­lab­o­ra­tion video above?

Among the famous names we have Jim­my Buf­fett, David Cros­by, David Hidal­go of Los Lobos, and Bill Kreutz­mann him­self. The joy this song evokes is unmis­tak­able on the faces of the musi­cians: no mat­ter who sings it, “Rip­ple” is a song that brings peo­ple togeth­er by remind­ing us that exis­tence is much vaster than our indi­vid­ual lives. Play­ing for Change has pre­vi­ous­ly brought togeth­er inter­na­tion­al musi­cians for oth­er clas­sic sing-along songs from the Amer­i­can (and Jamaican and Cana­di­an) pop­u­lar song­book. See more in the links below.

Relat­ed Con­tent:  

Icon­ic Songs Played by Musi­cians Around the World: “Stand by Me,” “Redemp­tion Song,” & More

Musi­cians Around the World Play The Band’s Clas­sic Song, “The Weight,” with Help from Rob­bie Robert­son and Ringo Starr

Musi­cians Around the World Play “Lean on Me,” the Uplift­ing Song by Bill With­ers (RIP)

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness