This week, On Second Listen starts south of the border—or, more accurately, starts by questioning which side of the border some very familiar music came from in the first place.
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
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