One of the tortures of putting together On Second Listen is what we don’t have time to share. Sometimes it’s a surprising connection between two recordings. Sometimes it’s an artist doing something entirely unexpected. And sometimes it’s a piece of musical history that makes me wonder how I managed not to know it already.

Episode 7 provided plenty of all three.

Jim Morrison walks into a German cabaret…

What do The Doors and a German theatrical production from the 1920s have in common?

“Alabama Song (Whisky Bar),” for starters.

Long before Jim Morrison was asking someone to show him the way to the next whisky bar, Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill had incorporated the song into their theatrical world. It appeared in their 1927 Little Mahagonny songspiel and subsequently in the opera Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny.

The really peculiar part? Despite its German theatrical origins, the song was written in English. Brecht’s original text predates Weill’s musical setting.

We paired The Doors with Lotte Lenya, whose association with Weill and Brecht goes back to the beginning. It’s a remarkable journey from Weimar-era musical theater to psychedelic rock.

And it was a listener (John... Professor K) who suggested we take it.

That was the premise of our first segment, Second Listens from Listeners, which also took us from Manfred Mann’s Earth Band back to Gustav Holst’s Jupiter, and from Suzanne Vega’s unaccompanied “Tom’s Diner” to the dance remix that helped turn it into an international hit.

The DNA remix of “Tom’s Diner” is an especially interesting case. Rather than recording a new vocal, the producers built an entirely different musical environment around Vega’s existing performance. Same voice, same melody, same words—and suddenly a different record.

It’s a reminder that a second listen doesn’t always require a second singer.

Gregory Porter: A voice that travels

I’ve been a fan of Gregory Porter’s extraordinary voice, and this episode gave me an excuse to explore its versatility.

We heard him reinterpret “Feeling Good,” associated so memorably with Nina Simone, and “Skylark,” which we introduced through Dinah Shore.

Then we reversed the process.

Instead of Porter interpreting somebody else’s music, we heard somebody else reimagine Porter’s: Claptone’s remix of “Liquid Spirit.”

What interests me about this progression is how much a recording’s identity depends on everything around the singer. Arrangement, instrumentation, rhythm, production—even the implied audience—can change while the vocal performance remains recognizably itself.

Porter sounds entirely at home in both a jazz club and a dance club. I suspect not many singers could pull that off.

Funny people, funny records—and one surprisingly serious song

Remember when comedians made records?

Not just comedy albums, but actual songs, sometimes accompanied by elaborate music videos?

Eddie Murphy, Rodney Dangerfield, Howie Mandel, and Steve Martin all made the transition, with varying degrees of musical ambition and success.

The 1980s were particularly fertile ground for this sort of thing. MTV offered comedians another way to reach an audience, and the distinction between a novelty record and a pop hit could become rather blurry.

Eddie Murphy’s “Party All the Time,” for example, was produced by Rick James and reached number two on the Billboard Hot 100. Whatever else you think of it, that’s a bona fide hit.

Steve Martin’s “King Tut,” meanwhile, reminds us that a comedian could have a hit record without pretending for a moment to be a serious pop singer. Martin was, however, a serious banjo player—something that would become an increasingly important part of his career.

But the biggest surprise for me was Steven Wright.

Wright’s comedy is built on deadpan delivery, surreal observations, and a kind of philosophical bewilderment. One of my favorite lines of his concerns buying batteries, only to discover they weren’t included.

His song “Maybe Why” initially sounds like an extension of that persona. It wonders why we’re here, what it all means, and whether there’s any answer to be found.

But by the end, Wright arrives at something unexpectedly tender: perhaps the people we know and love are reason enough.

It’s a small, sincere conclusion to a song about very large questions.

Who knew that Steven Wright might leave us with one of the most touching moments of the episode?

Autumn leaves, October skies, and two Francises

Our final segment was devoted to October and autumn, which turns out to be an excellent excuse to explore music across languages and generations.

Consider “Autumn Leaves.”

Most English-speaking listeners know the Johnny Mercer lyrics, perhaps through recordings by Frank Sinatra, Nat King Cole, or Eva Cassidy. But the song began as “Les Feuilles mortes,” with French lyrics by poet Jacques Prévert and music by Joseph Kosma.

The English version isn’t simply a word-for-word translation. Mercer retained the autumnal imagery and the sense of romantic loss, but created a lyric with its own structure and emotional emphasis.

That’s part of what makes comparing Eva Cassidy with Yves Montand so rewarding. They’re not merely singing the same song in different languages. They’re inhabiting two related, but distinct, lyrical worlds.

We also heard Francis Cabrel’s “Octobre” alongside a Spanish-language adaptation, “Octubre.” It’s a lovely opportunity to hear what happens when a song moves between two closely related languages.

And then there was another Francis.

Francis Albert Sinatra, to be precise.

Our autumn excursion took us from Francis Cabrel to Frank Sinatra’s “Autumn in New York,” followed by Harry Connick Jr.’s piano interpretation.

Two Francises, separated by an ocean, a generation, and rather different musical traditions.

I can’t claim that was a profound musical discovery. But I enjoyed it.

We closed with Barry Manilow’s “When October Goes,” with lyrics by Johnny Mercer and music composed by Manilow after Mercer’s death.

Which brings us, rather neatly, back to Mercer and “Autumn Leaves.”

Sometimes the connections practically write themselves.

A few things worth exploring

For anyone who enjoys following the words as well as the music, here are a few opportunities for a second listen of your own:

• “Les Feuilles mortes” / “Autumn Leaves” — Compare Jacques Prévert’s French original with Johnny Mercer’s English adaptation. https://genius.com/Yves-montand-les-feuilles-mortes-lyrics https://genius.com/Eva-cassidy-autumn-leaves-lyrics

• “Octobre” / “Octubre” — Follow Francis Cabrel’s song from French into Spanish. https://genius.com/Francis-cabrel-octobre-lyrics https://genius.com/Francis-cabrel-octubre-lyrics

And if you have a pair of recordings that deserves a second listen, please send it along. This week’s listener-contributed segment was a reminder that some of the most interesting connections come from outside my own record collection.

You can find previous episodes, previews, and more at OnSecondListen.com.

Thanks for listening—and for listening again.

Episode 7 | Wednesday, 10 a.m.–noon | WMUH 91.7 FM

What do Jim Morrison, Gustav Holst, Eddie Murphy, and Barry Manilow have in common?

Not much, as far as we know. But they’re all part of this week’s On Second Listen.

First, we’re turning the playlist over to our listeners. Their suggestions take us from the Doors to the German theater of Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill, from a 1970s rock adaptation to a rather grand piece of orchestral music, and from a familiar a cappella song to some decidedly unexpected variations. Keep those suggestions coming!

Then, Gregory Porter takes the spotlight. One of contemporary jazz’s most distinctive voices, Porter has a remarkable ability to make a familiar song sound newly discovered. We’ll hear him interpret a couple of classics before exploring what happens when a DJ gets hold of one of his own compositions.

Our third half-hour asks a slightly ridiculous question: What happens when comedians decide to become recording artists? Eddie Murphy, Rodney Dangerfield, Howie Mandel, Steve Martin, and Steven Wright provide some surprising answers. Some are genuinely musical, some are deliberately absurd, and one might even leave you feeling unexpectedly philosophical.

Finally, we settle into October. Eva Cassidy and Yves Montand kick off the last segment with two very different interpretations of an autumn standard. And we’ll continue to mark the season with artists that are worth a second listen, including two whose first name is Francis!

It’s an episode that travels from the ridiculous to the reflective, with plenty of discoveries along the way.

Join us Wednesday from 10 a.m. to noon on WMUH 91.7 FM, Allentown, or listen online. And visit OnSecondListen.com after the broadcast for On Second Thought, our companion notes with additional musical discoveries and links.

On Second Listen — familiar music, heard differently.

We’ll hear earlier Spanish-language and Latin recordings behind songs that became fixtures of American popular music. Ritchie Valens made “La Bamba” a rock-and-roll standard, but the song had a life long before 1958. And Santana’s “Oye Como Va” may be inseparable from Abraxas for a lot of listeners, but his “ritmo” came from Tito Puente. We’ll follow a few more familiar melodies backward and sideways from there.

Then we turn to Louis Armstrong. Everybody knows the voice. Everybody knows the trumpet. But Armstrong spent decades putting his unmistakable stamp on songs that belonged to other people before they belonged to him. We’ll put some of those recordings back alongside earlier—or simply very different—versions and listen for what happens when Louis gets hold of a song.

Our third half-hour asks a more dangerous question: when does musical borrowing become copyright infringement? We’ll hear from Olivia Dean and Bill Withers, the pair currently in the news, and then we’ll listen to some disputes that have been resolved. How much similarity is too much? And, perhaps more interestingly for On Second Listen, what exactly are we hearing when two songs sound unmistakably related?

Finally, we head to Nashville for some country second takes on songs that began well outside country music. Tracy Chapman, Fleetwood Mac and... Nine Inch Nails have all countributed to country music. Those songs are our jumping-off points for a set about what happens when country artists inherit songs we thought we already knew.

Four sets. Familiar songs, unfamiliar histories, a few lawyers, and plenty of reasons to listen again.

On Second Listen
Wednesday, 10 a.m.–noon

https://wmuh.org/listen-live/
WMUH 91.7 FM, Allentown
The only station that matters.

A few things we didn’t get around to mentioning on Wednesday’s On Second Listen—and one correction worth making.

First, a trip to Australia that we didn’t know we were taking.

During our exploration of English football songs, we played a magnificent stadium rendition of Liverpool’s anthem, “You’ll Never Walk Alone.” I identified it as a performance at Liverpool’s home ground, Anfield. But listen to the announcer at the beginning: unmistakably Australian!

The recording appears to come from Liverpool’s July 2013 visit to Melbourne, where more than 95,000 spectators at the Melbourne Cricket Ground sang the anthem before a match against Melbourne Victory.

There’s something rather wonderful about that. A song written for a 1945 American musical, adopted by an English football club, and sung by an enormous crowd in Australia. Music travels. Sometimes farther than we realize.

Two different “9 to 5” hits.

Sheena Easton’s “9 to 5” had to become “Morning Train (Nine to Five)” for its American release to avoid confusion with Dolly Parton’s “9 to 5.” Here’s the remarkable coincidence: both songs reached number one on the American pop chart in 1981, just weeks apart.

And both appeared in our opening segment, although we took a detour through France between them.

A little more about our heavy metal experiment.

Part of the fun assembling our final segment was discovering how faithfully a heavy metal arrangement can preserve the original composition. DragonForce’s treatment of Céline Dion’s “My Heart Will Go On” is a particularly entertaining example. The melody survives remarkably intact. What changes is almost everything surrounding it: the speed, the instrumental virtuosity, and the sheer amount of energy.

It raises an interesting question: how much can you change about a song before it becomes a different song? We’ve got several examples to consider in next week’s episode!

Thanks for listening—and for listening again.

On Second Listen airs Wednesdays, 10 a.m.–noon, on WMUH 91.7 FM, Allentown.

We start with pop songs making the trip from English into French—and discovering that crossing the Channel can involve considerably more than changing the words. We’ll follow a few familiar melodies through their French second lives before Dolly Parton arrives to make sure everyone gets to work on time.

The NFL played at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium yesterday morning, but on Wednesday we’ll be considering the musical allegiances of a different kind of football. English supporters have spent decades adopting songs from some unlikely sources and making them their own. Tottenham found “When the Saints Go Marching In.” Manchester City claimed “Blue Moon.” Liverpool, West Ham, Sheffield United and Nottingham Forest have their own musical traditions—and some of their source material traveled a very long way to get there.

Then it’s Broadway and the West End, with a few detours through continental Europe. We’ll use some very familiar theater music to consider a distinction we’ve been circling since the first episode: when a song moves between languages, what separates a translation from an adaptation? And how much can change before we’re dealing with a transformation instead?

Finally, we turn up the amplifiers.

Heavy metal turns out to be surprisingly good at crossing musical borders in both directions. With Britney Spears at one end and Metallica at the other, we’ll listen for what happens to melody, rhythm, mood and meaning when songs are translated into—or out of—the language of metal.

Four more 30-minute opportunities to hear familiar music differently!

On Second Listen
Wednesday, 10 a.m.–noon
91.7 FM Allentown WMUH— the only station that matters

And online at https://wmuh.org/listen-live/

team learned, remembered, or didn’t have time to mention relative to Wednesday’s On Second Listen.

September, one more time

We opened with Earth, Wind & Fire’s “September,” but here’s the connection I wish we’d lingered over: Gilbert Bécaud’s “C’est en septembre” and Neil Diamond’s “September Morn” aren’t merely French and English versions that happened to cross paths. Bécaud and Diamond actually collaborated on the song—and it wasn’t a one-off. They went on to write several songs together for Diamond’s The Jazz Singer, including the No. 2 hit “Love on the Rocks.”

And perhaps one more September footnote. In “Silver Seas,” an early version of Billy Joel’s “Nocturne,” Joel sings of someone who “died in September.” Coming not long after Green Day’s “Wake Me Up When September Ends,” it’s another tiny example of how often September in popular music seems to become a month of memory and loss. I’m not sure that constitutes a musical tradition. But once you start listening for these things, they have a way of turning up.

Songs that acquired words

Our second half-hour began with Dave Brubeck’s “Take Five”—or, more precisely, Paul Desmond’s “Take Five.” Desmond wrote the composition and played that unmistakable alto saxophone solo; Joe Morello was on drums, Eugene Wright on bass and Brubeck, of course, on piano. I was privileged to attend a master class given by Morello in the 1980s, as a member of New Jersey’s All-State High School Jazz Band. He does amazing work on that recording and so many others.

If the television themes amused you, there are more rabbit holes available. The vocal demo of Neal Hefti’s Odd Couple theme really does carry a songwriting credit for the great Sammy Cahn—the lyricist behind, among many others, “Come Fly with Me” and “Let It Snow! Let It Snow! Let It Snow!”

And OSL listener Cameron from Allentown reminds us that there’s another Jeannie worth letting out of the bottle. “Jeannie’s Diner,” created by Mark Jonathan Davis, combines the I Dream of Jeannie theme with Suzanne Vega’s “Tom’s Diner.” Better still, it appears on Vega’s 1991 Tom’s Album—an entire collection built around different reinterpretations of “Tom’s Diner.” Now that’s an album made for On Second Listen.

Bach, Bach-ish, and not Bach at all

Our third segment began with Paul Simon’s “American Tune,” whose musical ancestry goes back much farther than Simon—or Bach. The melody was originally a secular song by Hans Leo Hassler, later became the chorale usually known as “O Sacred Head, Now Wounded,” and was used repeatedly by Bach in the St. Matthew Passion before Simon gave it another life in 1973.

And a personal postscript to all those Bach chorales. I own a piano book by Cory Hall called Sight-Reading & Harmony, which takes Bach’s four-part chorales and progressively reorganizes them as sight-reading exercises. So apparently pulling apart Bach harmonies has both entertainment—and instructional—value! Hall’s method works through them in progressively more difficult levels, all the way to advanced sight-reading and harmony.

When one song becomes two

We finished with songs that come in pairs, beginning with Journey’s “Feeling That Way” and “Anytime.” One thing that’s easy to miss if Steve Perry is the voice you associate with Journey: “Anytime” features Gregg Rolie on vocals and keyboards alongside Perry.

Thanks, as always, for listening—and for the kind words I heard after Wednesday’s show. No listener corrections this week, which either means we got everything right or that everyone was being very polite.

On Second Listen returns Wednesday from 10 to noon on WMUH 91.7 FM.

September gets one last listen before we turn the calendar.

Wednesday’s show begins with a handful of very different ways musicians have sounded the month — from Earth, Wind & Fire to Green Day, with stops along the way that take us from off-Broadway to the south of France. You know most of the songs. But at least one of them may not sound quite the way you remember it.

Then: songs you didn’t know had words.

A jazz standard you’ve almost certainly heard. A television theme you may have heard hundreds of times. Even three notes that have been part of American television for nearly a century. They all have lyrics. Who knew?

In our third half-hour, we ask a question that seems almost deliberately vague: Is that… Bach?

Paul Simon helps us investigate, and he has company.

And finally, some songs apparently couldn’t contain themselves in a single track. Journey, Boston and Genesis take us into the curious world of musical sequels, companion pieces and songs that come in pairs. Sometimes the second listen is built right into the album.

Four ideas. A lot of familiar music. And, we hope, several moments when you say, “Wait — really?”

On Second Listen
Wednesday, September 30, 10 a.m.–noon
WMUH 91.7 FM — “the only station that matters

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Part of the fun putting On Second Listen together is that the listening doesn’t stop when the show does. One song sends us looking for something, which leads to something else, and pretty soon Wednesday’s two hours have acquired a few footnotes too good to keep to ourselves.

So, a few second thoughts after Episode 3.

The Chiffons get the last word

We spent part of Wednesday’s show listening to songs that sounded perhaps a little too much like something that came before them—including George Harrison’s “My Sweet Lord” and the Chiffons’ 1963 hit “He’s So Fine.”

And we let the Chiffons have the last word: we ended the segment with their own 1975 recording of “My Sweet Lord.”

What we didn’t explain was just how pointed that choice was. The recording appeared while the copyright case was still making its way toward court, and one history of the group describes it as an act of “sarcastic retribution.” The group whose recording Harrison had inadvertently echoed turned around and recorded the song that echoed it.

And yes, they could legally do that. Once Harrison had released “My Sweet Lord,” U.S. copyright law allowed other performers to make their own cover recordings through the mechanical-licensing system. They didn’t need Harrison to approve the joke.

There may be not be a more On Second Listen way for a copyright dispute to end!

About those bleeps...

Listeners to our Radiohead pairing may have noticed that the OSL production department made absolutely no attempt to conceal its handiwork. The offending words in “Creep” were replaced with good old-fashioned BEEPS.

But does the FCC actually have a list of forbidden words—something like George Carlin’s famous “Seven Words You Can Never Say on Television”?

Not exactly. The FCC’s treatment of indecency is contextual rather than a simple blacklist of naughty words. Indecent and profane material is restricted on broadcast radio between 6 a.m. and 10 p.m.; our Wednesday morning broadcast falls rather decisively inside that window.

So perhaps our bleeps were prudent even if not executed with subtlety. Radiohead, now featuring percussion by the FCC.

Who put the French in “Psycho Killer”?

Why is there French in Talking Heads’ “Psycho Killer”? The answer, it turns out, is not David Byrne.

Bassist Tina Weymouth’s mother was French, and French was spoken in her home. Her husband and Talking Heads drummer Chris Frantz recalled that Byrne wanted the middle section of the song to switch into another language, so Weymouth supplied the French. When Talking Heads later went to France, French listeners told them that nobody actually talked that way—it sounded comically old-fashioned, almost Napoleonic.

Which somehow makes “Psycho Killer / Qu’est-ce que c’est?” even better.

And James Taylor’s “Ananas” wasn’t his last excursion into French. His 2006 Christmas collection includes “Mon Beau Sapin,” a French rendition of “O Christmas Tree.”

We may have to remember that one in December.

An American in Paris

Josephine Baker’s French connection went considerably deeper.

Born in St. Louis, Baker became a sensation in Paris in the 1920s and ultimately made France her home. During World War II she worked with French intelligence and the Resistance; in 2021, France honored her with induction into the Panthéon.

So when we heard Baker singing Cole Porter in French on Wednesday, this wasn’t simply an American singer trying out another language. France became an enormous part of Baker’s life and identity.

The drummer behind the gold teeth

One thing we’d like to make a habit of in Second Thoughts is giving a little attention to musicians we hear on the program but never name.

This week, that leads us to Jeff Porcaro, later the drummer for Toto, who was behind the kit on Steely Dan’s “Your Gold Teeth II.”

And apparently it was no easy day at the office. The song jumps among unusual meters, and Porcaro struggled to find the feel Steely Dan wanted. Donald Fagen sent him home with a Charles Mingus record featuring drummer Dannie Richmond. Porcaro listened for a couple of days, came back—and got it.

By Katy Lied, Steely Dan had become the kind of studio project in which an extraordinary young drummer could be sent home to listen to Mingus before everyone tried again.

That’s a pretty good second listen.

And then there was Fleetwood Mac

Our “Part I/Part II” segment included Fleetwood Mac’s extraordinary “Oh Well”—and for listeners who principally know the Stevie Nicks/Lindsey Buckingham incarnation, it may have sounded as though we had accidentally played an entirely different band.

Fleetwood Mac itself may be a good example of something On Second Listen keeps finding: the name can stay the same while almost everything underneath it changes.

This was Peter Green’s Fleetwood Mac, still rooted in British blues. And even within “Oh Well,” Green was showing two very different sides of himself: the hard electric attack of Part I and the strange, largely instrumental, semi-classical Part II. Green later described them as his two musical extremes.

Part II is unusual right down to the personnel: Green plays not only guitar but bass, cello and percussion; Jeremy Spencer plays piano, with Sandra Elsdon adding recorder. Too bad Christopher Walken wasn’t on hand to call for “more cowbell.”

And one personal second thought: I first encountered “Oh Well” through Joe Jackson, who covered it on his 1991 album Laughter & Lust. If Peter Green’s original was new to you on Wednesday, give Jackson’s version a listen too. Sometimes a second listen actually comes first.

We’ll be back Monday with a preview of Wednesday’s show. Stay tuned.

Coming Wednesday on On Second Listen

This week, we start with songs that have outlived the era that produced them. The Great American Songbook gives us standards that singers have been reinventing for decades—including “Mack The Knife,” a song whose history turns out to be almost as interesting as its many interpretations.

Then we move from borrowing (from “The Songbook”) to the point where borrowing gets expensive. Some musical similarities have inspired admiration. Others have inspired lawsuits. We’ll listen to a few cases where the line between influence, imitation and infringement became more than an academic question—and hear just how close some of those lines can sound.

In our third half-hour, things get bilingual. Sometimes a songwriter translates a verse. Sometimes the languages coexist inside it. And sometimes an artist attempts French, looks back years later, and gives his own performance a review considerably harsher than anything we would have written. Billy Joel, we’re looking at you--as we sit here in Allentown.

Finally: what happens when a song gets a sequel?

Steely Dan returned to a set of gold teeth that had been thrown away. The Police returned to Synchronicity asynchronously. And a few other artists decided that one song simply wasn’t enough to finish the thought. Are the “Part IIs” continuations, transformations—or entirely different songs borrowing a familiar name?

We’ll listen and decide together.

On Second Listen
Wednesday, September 23 · 10 AM–Noon
WMUH 91.7 FM

Streaming live at https://wmuh.org/listen-live/

We’ll hear what happens when musicians borrow—not just a melody or a lyric, but sometimes a tiny piece of another recording that becomes the foundation for something entirely new. Along the way, we’ll encounter connections involving Steely Dan, Lou Reed, and others we’re going to leave undisclosed for now.

We’ll also do some traveling. A familiar song crosses from English into French; another takes us to Germany by a rather unexpected route; and a French classic makes the journey to America and comes back sounding remarkably different.

And we’ve been doing a little virtual traveling in the production lounge. (On Second Listen staff prefer the term “lounge” to “studio.”) This week includes an exclusive OSL edit of a song that has been multilingual before—but never, as far as we know, quite this multilingual. We’ll leave it at that.

In the second hour, we’ll give one legendary musician three very different pieces of familiar material and hear what he finds in each of them. Then we’ll finish with transformations: songs that end up a very long way from where they started.

That’s enough advance information. The fun is in hearing the connections emerge.

On Second Listen
Wednesdays, 10 a.m.–noon
WMUH 91.7 FM • Allentown

wmuh.org/listen-live/

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