Music is Music: Feeling Good

This is the ninth edition of my series, Music is Music.  In each episode,  I give a brief musical analysis of recordings, often of the same song, which I consider to be outstanding in one way or another.  This time I have chosen for discussion three recordings of “Feeling Good.”

Every Saturday morning, I take a spinning class with an excellent instructor who is also my friend, Sushil Sharma.  During our exercise sessions, Sushil plays a music CD to accompany our huffing and puffing.  Some are fast, some are faster, all programmed to reflect whether we are sprinting or “climbing a hill,” that is, pedaling against increased resistance. At the end of our session, it is time to cool down.  This we do to Michael Bublé’s version of “Feeling Good," which follows:

Well we know what he means.  The butterflies are having fun, and he wants some of the action as well.  (I wish I could have found a version without a video.  Mr. Bublé puts it on kind of thick in the video, at least from my perspective, that of an albeit rather youthful, yet a septuagenarian nevertheless. One more comment: cut the Elvis impersonation, Mr. Bublé, you can’t dance). I advise listeners to close their eyes. For the singing is much more subtler than the video.  NB: I found a vocal without an accompanying  video after all!

The sexual longing comes across well; no doubt many, or at least some, young women will see stars.  But this singer has a lot more than sexual appeal; he is first-rate.  When I heard the recording for the first time during a spinning session some time ago, I remember saying to myself, “This guy is the successor to Frank Sinatra." Like Sinatra's, Bublé's voice is pleasing to the ear; like Sinatra, his range is limited.  But the phrasing!  What a crooner, in the best sense of that word. His phrasing, like Sinatra's at his best, is well-nigh perfect.  He knows when, and for just how long, to come in after the beat in order to produce the maximum effect.  He uses what in classical music is called melisma, that is, several notes for one word that is denoted with only one note in the sheet music.  This device is used very often in African-American music.  (There must be a term other than melisma for it, of which I’m unaware.)  Much of his phrasing, like just about all popular American music, is deeply indebted to African-American music. (Note the African-American phrase, ‘don’t you know').  However, this is a very white version of this song.   It doesn’t go for the emotional jugular as many fine examples of African-American music does.  For that, we turn to a recording by Gregory Porter.

The second rendition of this song is performed a cappella by Gregory Porter:

I had only head the Bublé version previously.  This isn’t a song of a young buck on the prowl, after all; it’s a song about the attainment of freedom—as yet  incompletely realized—by a member of a much abused race.  I did some research on the song.  It first appeared in a 1964 musical, “The Smell of the Greasepaint—The Roar of the Crowd”.  It was described at the time as a “booming song of emancipation,” and it is just that.  The show, which has since been forgotten as far as I know, came to Broadway the following year.  It was first sung in England by the Guyanese-British singer, Cy Grant, and on Broadway by the classical baritone, Gilbert Price, who unfortunately died in an accident at the age of 49.  In the play, the singer of this song was referred to simply as “the Negro”—we have come a long way since 1964, and still have a long way to go. Gregory Porter sings here a Gospel version that would fit in perfectly if sung in a black church or during the Civil Rights Movement. Mr. Porter has a beautiful voice that is also heftier and that also possesses a wider range than the singer of the first arrangement. I was not surprised to learn that Mr. Porter is a renowned jazz singer as well; it shows. (I’m glad Mr. Bublé did the version he did, which is good in its own right; he would never have been able to pull off anything comparable to Mr. Porter’s version—Neither could, of course, Frank Sinatra.They are both masters of entertainment; Mr. Porter gives us entertainment that pierces the soul).  His phrasing and his ability to provide variation so that each repeated stanza is never boring, is amazing as well.  This is especially hard to do when one sings a cappella; kudos to Mr. Porter!

The third version we will discuss is by Nina Simone:

I heard this song for the first time during a recent step aerobics class.  (Where have I been?)  After the class was over, I asked the instructor who the performer was, and, as soon as I got home, I went straight to YouTube.

Notice the vampy chord progression and the sassy orchestration.  This was taken over by Bublé, along with the 'don’t you know'.  The original musical-theater accompaniment is less effective. Ms. Simone sings beautifully here; this is my favorite version.  In this rendition of a “booming song of emancipation,” I detect a good deal of sadness in her voice.  Her “feeling good” is more subtle, and, for me, more profound.  Ms. Simone appears to know that freedom is never secure, and, possibly because of her own personal difficulties, cannot pretend otherwise, even in this song. The technical  aspects of her performance impress.  Even more important, however, Ms. Simone, while not contravening it, transcends the historical aspect of the song and seems to be singing on behalf of the entire human race.  We will never break all the invisible bonds that keep us chained to greed, hate, and delusion; Ms. Simone's voice, straight from the heart, conveys this sentiment extraordinarily well.  A tempered joy is perhaps all we can expect. When listening to this recording, however, my joy is unalloyed. Such is the power of music.

Previous editions of this series, all available on my blog:

l.   Music of Transformation: An Analysis of a Spiritual*
2.  Schubert in Five Songs Part l
3.  Schubert in Five Songs, Part ll
4.  Music is Music: Gospel
5.  Music is Music: der Schmied
6.  Music is Music: Throw it Away
7.  Prometheus
8. Music is Music: Beautiful Hurts

* includes a recording of Nina Simone