How good a song is Quarter to Three?

 [[{“value”:”You know, the 1961 #1 hit by Gary U.S. Bonds?  I’ve been thinking about this question for months.  I feel a good amount is at stake.  If songs such as Quarter to Three (or done live with dancers) are still great, our assessment of early times risesconsiderably.  But if they are dispensable throw-aways, the history
The post How good a song is Quarter to Three? appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.”}]] 

You know, the 1961 #1 hit by Gary U.S. Bonds?  I’ve been thinking about this question for months.  I feel a good amount is at stake.  If songs such as Quarter to Three (or done live with dancers) are still great, our assessment of early times risesconsiderably.  But if they are dispensable throw-aways, the history of popular music (and film) in the earlier twentieth century needs to be rewritten.

What makes the song such a classic?  Claude praises “the upbeat rhythm, engaging call-and-response vocals, relatable lyrics, catchy melody, historical context, and instrumental breaks,” but none of those seem quite scarce or special enough to elevate the tune to classic status.  With a bit of prodding Claude also cited “raw, unpolished energy,” a genuine sense of fun, and “chemistry amongst the performers.”  To that you might add a creative use of repetition and small, stepwise changes, plenty of syncopation, and the hooks are iconic.  The use of echo and phase shifting looks to the future, and the shuffle-like groove drew on calypso influences and also ska.  Nonetheless the chord structure, while effective, is hardly revelatory.

So I’m still wondering — if a song has that ineffable “something” — how much is that the product of our collective imaginations?  How much is it real and objectively there?  Or does a Generation Z teen, with a very different ear, dismiss it as muddled and mediocre rather than memorable?  After all, Gary’s career was not replete with enduring creations.

A critic could allege the dance lyrics are ordinary and the production sloppy.  But was that all part of the calculation?  Wikipedia relates:

The single was recorded with very rough sound quality (compared to other records at the time). Producer Frank Guida has been quoted on subsequent CD reissues that his production sound was exactly what he wanted it to sound like.

Bob Roman wrote:

The song opens with muffled crowd noise and a bandleader counting off the beginning of a song. It’s not a live recording, but it sounds like one — and not even like a good one. It sounds like an amazing party happening down the street — wild, frenzied, mysterious, its sound obscured by what might as well be a couple of sets of walls. In any era, it’s crazy that a record this lo-fi managed to hit #1. In the pre-Beatles era where labels were pushing cleaned-up teenage dreamboats, it seems especially strange.

So we’ve got amazing hooks, controlled chaos, and extreme innovation?

The song also has a lineage.  Bill Wyman put it on one of his solo albums.  It inspired Dion’s “Runaround Sue.”  Bruce Springsteen played it regularly in his concerts, and later worked with Gary, writing songs for him and doing two albums together.  Most importantly, Paul McCartney references it in his Sgt. Pepper classic “When I’m Sixty-Four“:

If I’d been out ’til quarter to three, would you lock the door?

In essence Paul is teasing us with the notion that the 64-year-old McCartney might someday still be out there, dancing, rather than knitting tea cozies on the Isle of Wight.  And true to Straussian form, Paul released the dance song “Dance Tonight” when he was sixty-four, days before turning sixty-five.

In 1963, during a Beatles European tour, Gary U.S. Bonds was the headliner for them.

You will note that the lineage of the song runs mostly through white performers, though Gary U.S. Bonds was black (or possibly mixed race).  Perhaps one special feature of Quarter to Three is how it spans black and also white R&B, a rare feature at the time but hearkening back to the much earlier years of the blues, when black and white musical styles could be hard to distinguish.  In addition to the Caribbean vein, Gary could span Latino styles as well.

Just as we are finding it impossible to rebuild Notre Dame cathedral as it was, a mere sixty-three years later could any of us still make something akin to “Quarter to Three”?  Or have we lost those “technologies”?

I, for one, have decided to vote in favor of masterpiece status for Quarter to Three.  At least for now.  And by the way Gary U.S. Bonds is still on tour.

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