Okay music fans – complete the song lyric in the title – go ahead, I will wait. \u00a0If you had \u2018in perfect harmony\u2019 pop in your head (where it is probably now stuck)(sorry), you win the grand prize. \u00a0Now the bonus round: \u00a0Who wrote it? \u00a0This FTV isn\u2019t actually about that commercial (yes, it was written for a commercial and eventually became a pop hit), but it is about \u2018harmony\u2019. \u00a0Not the \u2018getting along\u2019 type of harmony, but the musical type.<\/p>\n
John Fischer and I had been e-mailing back and forth as I picked his brain for an article I was working on about Bob Colclasure. \u00a0One of the things he mentioned about singing with Bob C was: \u00a0\u00a0\u201cI always credit my harmonizing ability to paying with Bob C. \u00a0When he did songs he always sang the melody, or what he thought the melody was. \u00a0I just learned to change parts as he did taking whatever sounded good. \u00a0I figured out that when we did a new song, I was often singing the melody first as he would jump to a harmony part for no reason. \u00a0I finally figured it out that that was the way he sang, filling in parts he felt needed to be there, even when they were countermelodies, so I learned how to change parts on dime\u201d.<\/p>\n
That got me thinking about how I learned to sing harmony. \u00a0I always say we used ‘accidental harmonies’ a lot with my first band, The Twig. \u00a0I know exactly what John means when he talks about \u2018jumping around\u2019 and \u2018filling in parts\u2019 because that is exactly what we did. \u00a0I had a pretty high range compared to Mike and Gene, so I went high when it was needed but we weren\u2019t exactly singing harmonies. \u00a0We may have hit a few \u2018accidentally\u2019 and when it sounded good, we kept doing it and if it didn\u2019t, we experimented until we found something that sounded better than just singing in unison.<\/p>\n
When I joined the Air Force guys who played as Cloudy and Cool, I was a fill in so I didn’t sing that much at first. \u00a0When we auditioned a new keyboard player, we were running through Proud Mary<\/i> and Ray the guitar player stopped us and said, ‘we aren’t going to have everybody singing the same parts – do the harmony’ and I said ‘okay – what is that?’ \u00a0We got a brief lesson in ‘harmony’ from him on the spot and afterwards found out that not only did I like it, it wasn’t all that hard if you had a strong lead vocal to follow. \u00a0Ray insisted that we were starting out with a new name (Knockdown) and we were going to fix the things that he didn\u2019t like about Cloudy and Cool – \u00a0singing in unison being one of them.<\/p>\n
Ray and I would sometimes switch parts mid song as I had the higher range. \u00a0There were times that I couldn\u2019t tell if I was on the right part because Ray was so adept at finding harmonies, he always made what we sang sound better. \u00a0Joy to the World <\/i>(Three Dog Night) is a perfect example of a song that found us flip-flopping our parts between the verses and the chorus. \u00a0When we were learning new songs, I could tell if I was singing the right harmony part because Ray would get a big grin on his face. \u00a0If it wasn\u2019t correct, he would just say \u2018Hmm, let\u2019s try that one again\u2019.<\/p>\n
By the time Barry Seymour and I formed Sledgehammer, I had been singing lead and harmony vocals for a good six years. \u00a0Barry had also been singing lead and as he was majoring in voice, he also brought his keen ear for arranging vocal parts to the band. \u00a0We had a great time dividing up the vocal duties between the four band members and occasionally found ourselves doing four part harmonies. \u00a0Mike designed and built our PA and he made sure we had vocal monitors. \u00a0Being able to hear our individual and collective vocal parts was a big plus playing gigs in venues ranging in size from a bar to Lakeview Arena. \u00a0Harmonies are always easier to find when one can hear all the vocalists!<\/p>\n
We thought we could harmonize on any song, until we tried to learn Wishing You Were Here <\/i>by Chicago. \u00a0The original recording features the vocal blending talents of The Beach Boys who make it seem so easy, but I assure you it is not! \u00a0To paraphrase the old Dirty Harry movie line \u2018A band has got to know its\u2019 limitations\u2019 and we found ours with Wishing You Were Here<\/i>. \u00a0The vinyl album we were using to learn the song had a dandy scratch in it and we all broke up when Mike started strumming his bass in a perfect imitation of the scratch which marred the recorded track. Our final burst of laughter had us howling like coyotes (in pretty good wild animal harmony, I might add) before we decided that this was one song we were not going to spend any more time trying to learn.<\/p>\n
When I shared my thoughts about this article with Barry he added two additional comments:<\/p>\n
\u201cWe also had a terrible time trying to learn the Rock and Roll Medley<\/i> from Uriah Heep\u2019s live album. \u00a0There were layered vocals that gave us fits (more howling). \u00a0We did, however, do a great job on Steely Dan\u2019s Pretzel Logic<\/i>\u201d. \u00a0I also loved a lot of the Doobie Brothers stuff we did. \u00a0In light of our \u2018howling\u2019, I suggested that perhaps we should have changed our name to \u2018Barry and the Coyotes\u2019.<\/p>\n
\u00a0In answer to my earlier question ( \u2018who wrote \u00a0the lyric used in the title?\u2019), our friends at Wikipedia explain it as follows: \u00a0\u201cThe idea originally came to an advertising executive named Bill Backer, who was working for McCann – Erickson\u00a0\u2014 the agency responsible for Coca-Cola. \u00a0Backer, Roger Cook\u00a0and Bill Davis\u00a0were delayed at Shannon Airpiort\u00a0in Ireland. After a forced layover caused \u00a0tempers to flare, they noticed the next morning that their fellow travelers were talking and joking while drinking Coca-Cola. \u00a0Backer wrote the line “I’d like to buy the world a Coke” on a napkin and shared it with British hit songwriters Cook and Roger Greenaway. The melody was derived from a jingle by Cook and Greenaway\u00a0originally called “True Love and Apple Pie”. \u00a0A version of the song was recorded by Susan Shirley and released in 1971. Cook, Greenaway, Backer, and Billy Davis reworked the song and recorded it as a Coca-Cola radio commercial.\u201d \u00a0\u00a0It was later reworked into a hit pop record by both The New Seekers and The Hilltop Singers. \u00a0It promotes harmony using great harmonies. \u00a0\u201cI\u2019d like to teach the world to sing\u201d \u00a0is kind of fun to sing along with because it has a nice harmony part that kicks in with the \u201cin perfect harmony\u201d line, which makes perfect sense to me now.<\/span>