Richard Cheese is a Lounge Singer from Las Vegas, that has become very famous for taking iconic songs and turning them into swing, jazz, or just downright goofy interpretations of the original source. What made me think of him, was how, yesterday in class, you were showing us some examples of Thelonius Monk taking classic songs, and changing them into bepop styles.
The song begins with a typical Richard Cheese intro, where he makes it appear that he just doesn't care about it. He then proceeds to tell the band to 'swing it.' The bass starts in with a descending scale, in quick 2/4 time. The piano accompanies it soon after, swinging into it very lightly, making a play on the guitar part from the original.
After the intro, Richard starts singing, changing the lyrics a little bit for a comedic factor, and sings the first two verses. He even adds some scat in their very quickly which is a nice little touch.
Then he goes into a repeat of the style of the first phrase, so we have ABA, with an addition of a snare and cymbal, then we roll into D where he breaks it down into an almost bridge at the beginning of the song. The snare and cymbal stay with us, adding to the rising cacophony of the song's style. After this he goes right back into A again.
Then Richard requests Bobby to 'change the road.' At which point, the song pauses, and he launches into a piano solo, with the bass and drums accompanying with the same beat. Then we're back to D from earlier before, with different lyrics that Richard is singing. He repeats D three times, before going into the ending.
The ending slowly winds down, with the piano falling into it. We have one more pause, at which point Richard begins to sing the last line of the song, emphasizing, with the help of the band using staccato notes after each word, to a comical point the high notes before pausing before the last two words, "...to heaven." After this, we have a quick comical outro from the piano.
An interesting note, as short and as goofy as this song is, it is the hardest that I have tried to analyze so far. Partially because of it's speed, and partially because of the different changes in phrases and sections. I had to pause it many times and go back and make sure everything I had typed was correct.
I've never heard of this fellow. Thanks for sharing it.
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