The Odd Couple — A musical examination

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Two men, a neat freak and a slob separated from their wives, have to live together despite their differences.” And from here, the fun begins.

[From Wiki] The Odd Couple) is an American sitcom television series broadcast from September 24, 1970, to March 7, 1975, on ABC. The show, which stars Tony Randall as Felix Unger and Jack Klugman as Oscar Madison . . . The series is based on the 1965 play, The Odd Couple, written by Neil Simon, which was also adapted into the 1968 film, The Odd Couple. The story examines two divorced men, Oscar and Felix, who share Oscar’s Manhattan apartment, and whose contrasting personalities inevitably lead to conflict and laughter.

The opening sequence sets well the Manhattan scene, undergirded by a marvellous theme song written by Neal Hefti, a tune arranged for big band and marvelously performed and filmed by the WDR Big Band, the jazz big band of German public broadcaster Westdeutscher Rundfunk (WDR) in Cologne, Germany.

The song “The Odd Couple” is probably one of Neal Hefti’s best known compositions and Hefti was nominated for two Grammys for the movie sound track. The WDR version has been fitted in a new suit in an arrangement by Jörg Achim Keller and features Jens Neufang on baritone sax, as well as a four piece “velvet-valve-section” in front of the band.

If I were still teaching music I would set this as an exam:

Analyze and describe the performance, arrangement, instrumentation, style, and creative energy of “The Odd Couple” as performed by the WDR big band.  

In marking responses I would expect to find some of the following observations (not that I am an arranger, jazz musician or critic).

• Wow, what a performance of a tune well suited for a jazz treatment;
• Thought these folks were NYC session musicians, or west coast “Cool Jazz” folks; actually from Cologne, Germany, where they clearly love their jazz;
• Opening with the crisp electric piano repeated chords accompanied by flutes is effective; edgy;
• Melody (head) on Bb Trumpet in unison with alto sax really swings; “It don’t mean a thing if it ain’t got that swing”;
• Love the way they approach notes; slur up, slide down; push and pull;
• Lots of 2-5-1 chord progressions; strong and effective; you’re on solid ground, then you move, then you drop back home again;
• Light drums and cymbals; the ubiquitous strummed guitar; every chord up and down the fretboard precisely rendered—no capos here; always there; like a heartbeat;

• Here comes the mellow brass; flugelhorns, trombones and a bass flute; smooth, real smooth; velvet;
• Lots of small embellishments to the tune; a touch of class;
• Plucked stand-up bass as with the guitar named above, constant;
• This band can play quietly; mutes in and out of trumpets;

• Great baritone-sax solo, complete range of the instrument; several choruses; mostly harmonic developments but tune fragments eventually appear;
• Beautiful comping on acoustic piano;
• Brass accompaniment changes constantly; harmonic spacing varies as counter melodies appear in the winds;
• Dexterous mellow horns; embellishments now on the off-beats;
• Bright bursts from the trumpets; melody extended in the lower instruments.
• Aha, key change; lots of flat-seventh chords; creative use of Sforzandi (sudden burst of dynamic volume) and crescendi/diminundi (getting louder or quieter);

• back to familiar territory; love the guitarist’s facial expressions;
• great close on some sort of cluster chord.

I would say the above analysis gets 100/100. What do you think? Larry Crawford; Debi Johnson; Al Crossley; Curt Bergen?

More similar arrangements here. at