There is an index to all our current series and some of our recent series of articles on the home page. We also have a very active Facebook page. Links to the previous songs from Dylan’s book which we have looked at in this series is given at the end.
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By Tony Attwood
This is part of a series of articles in which I take a look at the songs Bob selected for his post-doctorate volume, “The Philosophy of Modern Song.”
“If you don’t know me by now” was a single by Harold Melvin & the Blue Notes – who were originally known as The Charlemagnes; a group whose fame continued well after Harold Melvin’s passing in 1997.
The song was written by Kenny Gamble and Leon Huff and topped the charts in 1972 after the trio for whom they had written it, rejected the song – an act that probably must come near the top of the list of “All-time mistakes” in popular music. But I do think there was a musical reason for this rejection, and I will come back to that at the end of this review.
However, despite the rejection, the song was taken up by Harold Melvin & the Blue Notes with Teddy Pedegrass singing, and of course was an enormous hit, which was subsequently part of many singers’ regular performances. Simply Red had a version that went to the top of the American charts….
Patti LaBelle later made the song a regular part of her repertoire and a live version appears on her 1985 album, Patti.
The composers continued with songwriting, which often featured the issues that were faced by African American communities in the United States and issues raised by the Black Power movement. Kenny Gamble himself evolved the concept that“The only way we can clean up the physical ghetto is to first clean up the mental ghetto.”
He ensured that a lot of the profits from his work were donated to projects that helped support black American causes, including the “Clean up the Ghetto” project as well as other charities and foundations such as the AMC Cancer Research Center and Hospital. I would stress, however, that first I am not in any way an expert on the work in this area, and second, what I have written here only touches the surface of the work relating to the Philadelphia sound.
But it is often asserted that overall, the songwriters are said to have composed over 3,000 songs and gained the “Ahmet Ertegün Award” by the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, as well as gaining an Honorary Doctorate of Music from Berklee College of Music and later a similar degree from the University of Pennsylvania.
Musically the song is particularly interesting in that although it opens in A major and uses chords and notes that one would expect to find in such a key, following the standard verse and chorus model, the song also has a third element, generally noted as the “pre-chorus” in which the song suddenly jumps to C major without any warning, musically, and then edges its was the D minor, D major and E major which allows it to return to the key of A major from whence it came.
The lyrics through this passage run, “Oh, don’t get so excited when I come home a little late at night, cause we only act like children when we argue, fuss and fight,” and then return to the lines “If you don’t know me…”
This use of suddenly different chords from a different key, and of course a melody that somehow seems to fit, is not at all difficult to write, but very difficult to incorporate into a song in a way that appears natural. Here, the tension of the lyrics is reflected exactly in this unexpected musical change along with the orchestration and harmonies on the recording, which undertake the transition perfectly.
It is indeed one of the few examples in popular music of breaking away from the normal chordal structures that we find in 99% of popular songs, and although I’ve not heard this particular variation in a Dylan song, I can well understand how much he must have admired this transition in which the chord structure so accurately reflects the meaning of the lyrics. Certainly, it is a variation on a par with some of the unexpected changes Dylan has occasionally introduced within otherwise musically conventional works.
Previously in this series
- Ball of confusion
- Cheaper to Keep Her
- CIA Man – the Fugs
- Detroit City
- Don’t let me be misunderstood
- Dirty Life and Times
- Detroit City
- Dirty Life and Times
- Don’t let me be misunderstood
- I got a woman
- If you don’t know me by now
- I’ve always been crazy
- Jesse James and Po Boy
- Keep my Skillet Good and Greasy
- Mac the Knife
- Money Honey
- My Generation and Desolation Row
- Nellie was a Lady
- Old Violin by Johnny Paycheck
- On the road again (save a horse)
- Pancho and Lefty
- Please don’t let me be misunderstood
- Poor Little Fool
- Poison Love
- Pump it up
- Saturday night at the movies
- Strangers in the Night
- Take Me from This Garden of Evil
- The Pretender
- The Whiffenpoof Song
- There stands the glass
- Tutti Fruiti (A wap bop a … etc)
- Waist Deep in the Big Muddy
- When
- Where or When
- Willy the Wandering Gypsy and Me
- Without a song