A Lover’s Question

What was the “lover’s question” that Clyde McPhatter asked in the 1958 song (written by Brook Benton and Jimmy Williams)? There are several questions asked in the song, actually, but they’re all concerned with the basic insecurity and paranoia we all have felt while in the throes of young (and, yes, old) love: “Should I worry when we’re apart?” “When we’re kissing, does she feel just what I feel?”

I readily admit to countless agonizing nights spent worrying over lovers’ questions that have been asked down through the ages. It was so nice to settle into a long-term relationship and finally get beyond the doubt and suspicion, but the questions still come up occasionally.

For our list of lovers’ questions, we’ll use reporters’ questions—who, what, when, where, how, and why—as our guide.

“Who Do You Love?” Ellas Otha “Bo Diddley” McDaniel Bates got to the crux of the issue with this blues-rock classic. With its voodoo lyrics and repetitive one-chord music, Bo is casting a spell, hoping for the answer “Bo Diddley!” (Actually, it’s probably a question he was on the receiving end of quite often, since he was married four times.)

Bo was famous for his rectangular guitar and the much-imitated “bomp-bomp-bomp, bomp-bomp” beat he often got out of it. But Blues Who’s Who notes that early on he studied violin and played trombone in the Baptist Congress Band. Later in life, Mr. Diddley did a stint outside music as a deputy sheriff in New Mexico.

As influential as Bo Diddley was on rock acts that came along after him, his highest mark on the Billboard pop charts was #20, with “Say Man” in 1962. He did get into the R&B top ten four times.

“Who Do You Love?” was notably covered by Ronnie Hawkins and his band, who became The Band, and by Quicksilver Messenger Service and George Thorogood.

“What Is This Thing Called Love?” Sidney Bechet’s clarinet escapade through Cole Porter’s minor-key song “What Is This Thing Called Love?” is among the more sublime instrumental performances it’s ever been my pleasure to hear.

Ted Gioia, in The Jazz Standards, comments on how influential Cole Porter’s melody was on modern jazzers who came along after Bechet. Tadd Dameron based his song “Hot House” on the chords to “What Is This Thing Called Love?” Other take-offs, Gioia notes, include: Lee Konitz’s “Subconscious-Lee,” Fats Navarro’s “Barry’s Bop,” Bill Evans’ “These Things Called Changes,” and John Coltrane’s “Fifth House.”

The song’s questions have been asked by notable vocalists, including Billie Holiday, Nat “King” Cole, Lena Horne, and Bobby McFerrin, but Bechet’s clarinet seems to be more filled with anguished questioning than any of those voices. “Who can solve life’s mystery? And why does it make such a fool of me?”

“When Will I Be Loved?” The Everly Brothers’ hit may be a pity party lyrically, but its music isn’t at all mournful. It’s catchy and bouncy and got the Brothers to #8 in 1960, and Linda Ronstadt all the way to #2 in 1977.

“Where Did Our Love Go?” The Everlys wondered when romance would come their way, while The Supremes, four years later, wondered when it would return. This Holland/Dozier/Holland Motown classic was one of The Supremes’ incredible twelve #1 Billboard hits. (They had three number ones in 1964 alone.)

Nothing deep, just pop perfection. Dave Marsh, in The Heart of Rock and Soul, writes, “Pray you don’t hear it early in the day, because that insistent melody’s guaranteed to linger in your mind until you sleep.”

Sarah “Sassy” Vaughan

“How Long Has This Been Going On?” George and Ira Gershwin wrote this ballad for the 1927 musical Funny Face, from which it was dropped two weeks in. Fortunately, it was inserted into the 1928 show Rosalie and became a hit. A favorite version is sung by Sarah Vaughan.

Funny Face was a showcase for Fred Astaire and his sister Adele, and even without “How Long Has This Been Going On?” had classics in “My One and Only” and “’S Wonderful.” Rosalie, though it had the music power of George Gershwin and Sigmund Romberg and lyric power of Ira Gershwin and author P.G. Wodehouse, dropped all of their music for the 1936 movie version, going instead to Cole Porter.

The song’s musical question has been asked not only by Sarah, but by Ella, Carmen, and Ray, as well as many other topnotch vocalists.

“Why Don’t You Love Me Like You Used to Do?” One of my favorite songs to sing is Hank Williams’ “Why Don’t You Love Me Like You Used to Do?” It has a neat little yodel in it, on the colorful line “We don’t get nearer, fur’er, closer than a country mile.” The lyrics all the way through are a hoot, with lovers’ questions one doesn’t hear put quite the same anywhere else: “How come you treat me like a wore-out shoe?” “Why don’t you spark me like you used to do, and say the sweet nothin’s that you used to coo?”

Honorable Mentions: “Who’s Sorry Now?,” as sung by Connie Francis; “What Kind of Fool Am I?,” from the musical Stop the World—I Want to Get Off; The Three Degrees’ “When Will I See You Again?”; “Where Do I Go?,” from Hair; The Young Rascals’ “How Can I Be Sure?”; and, finally, another lover’s question that gets right to the point: “Why Don’t We Do It in the Road?”

Best Song Title: Frank Zappa, who has more wacky song titles than your average rocker, wins this one again. His album We’re Only in it for the Money includes “What’s the Ugliest Part of Your Body?” (The answer: “your mind.”)

Zappa was also responsible for asking the musical question “Why Does It Hurt When I Pee?”

40 Cups of Coffee

I have one remaining vice: coffee. It’s not that I overdo it, and the latest studies show (I know, always another “latest study”—but this one was conclusive) that coffee in moderation, about three cups a day, may have health benefits. That’s how much I drink. Not enough to make me edgy, road-ragey or weak of heart. So why is it a vice? Because I cannot make it through a single day—a single morning—without it. I gotta have it.

Coffee was always a bond between me and my dad. We didn’t have a lot of interests in common, but we both savored a good cup of coffee. During the last three years of his life, under the spell of Alzheimer’s, he was completely at sea. He usually recognized my brother and me, but he had no idea what day or year it was, how to answer his phone, or how to follow what was being said in conversation. But all I had to say was, “Hey, Dad, how about a cup of coffee?” and his eyes would light up. We still seemed to connect during these coffee klatches. It was a ritual that stirred some deep memories in him, I think.

“Black Coffee” Bruce Crowther and Mike Pinfold, in their book Singing Jazz, note that composer/historian Gunther Schuller believed Sarah Vaughan “was the greatest living singer in the world.” (She died in 1990.) The authors then quote Ms. Vaughan herself: “I’m not putting jazz down, but I’m not a jazz singer.” But, of course, she was, and is usually cited as one of the triumvirate of greatest female jazz vocalists (with Holiday and Fitzgerald). She had a big hit with this Paul Francis Webster / Sonny Burke song from 1949. It’s not a happy song. “All I do is drink black coffee since my man went away.”

Otis Redding

“Coffee and Cigarettes” Otis Redding co-wrote this song, with Jerry Butler, Eddie Thomas, and Jay Walker, for his third album, The Soul Album, in 1966. Unlike the bluesy weeper above, Otis’s record is a love song. He and his gal are up late—2:45 in the wee small hours—sharing cigarettes and coffee. He’s so sweet on her he says he doesn’t need cream or sugar.

The MGs rhythm section and the Mar-Keys’ horns give the song that solid underpinning to support Redding’s elegiac vocals, the magic that worked on so many songs from this album and the ones that followed

 

“Coffee, Cigarettes and Memories” OK, you’ve got your coffee, you’ve got your cigarettes; that means you’re eventually gonna get memories. So we’re back to a bad scene. By the end of the song, the singer’s on her fifth cup of coffee and her tenth cigarette and still alone with her memories. “Watching the door, pacing the floor, hoping that maybe you’ll call.”

“Coffee, Cigarettes and Memories” was the title song of a Jeri Southern album in 1959. Her smooth and unaffected voice gives the song just the right amount of pathos. It’s a torcher to put on late at night. (I imagine—I’m always in bed by 10:30 these days. I’ve had my last cup of coffee for the day about twelve hours before that. And I quit smoking in 1978.)

“40 Cups of Coffee” OK, now this is going a little too far. “Forty cups of coffee waiting for you to come home.” That puts Sarah and Jeri to shame. Texan Ella Mae Morse recorded between 1942 and 1957, and recorded this big-band rhythm & blues number in 1953. She was a white singer whose voice was often mistaken for that of a black vocalist. Bill Milkowski, in his Swing It! An Annotated History of Jive, describes Morse as a “romping, rambunctious piano player and exceedingly soulful singer.” I bet she was romping rambunctiously ‘long about that thirtieth cup of mud.

“Java Jive” This song by Milton Drake and Ben Oakland was my introduction to The Ink Spots, who had a hit with it way back in 1941. But I didn’t hear it until 1975, when the Manhattan Transfer covered it on their second album. The Transfer led me to The Spots. It’s a fine, playful harmony number, and both of these harmony specialty groups do it up right. It has lots of room for comedic delivery between the choral sections. “Slip me a slug from that wonderful mug / And I’ll cut a rug just as snug in a jug.” Hep talk, man. Slide me some joe, Flo!

“Let’s Have Another Cup o’ Coffee” Irving Berlin wrote this number in 1932 for the Great Depression-inspired satirical musical Face the Music. A group of formerly well-to-do society folks, now down on their luck and eating in an Automat, optimistically sing that there’s a rainbow around the corner. “Mister Herbert Hoover says that now’s the time to buy / So let’s have another cup o’ coffee and let’s have another piece o’ pie.” Of course, at the time of the show’s brief run, no one on stage or in the audience knew just how long the Depression was going to last. One bit of plot action sounds a lot like The Producers: A guy who still has money to burn backs a lousy show in order to lose his dough.

The version I listen to now and then (on my iPod as I run) is by Burl Ives.

“Moliendo Café” Trio Los Panchos recorded this song, whose title means “grinding coffee.” They formed in 1944, and there are still multiple groups touring and claiming to be the rightful successors of the originals. It’s a glorious mariachi sound—three gliding harmony vocals, chorded guitar, and another guitar doing high lead fills. This is the perfect song to accompany that first cup of the day.

Honorable Mention: Bob Dylan’s “One More Cup of Coffee,” from the Desire album, is a standout.