louis prima & keely smith - that old black magic

i was introduced to this one through kevin smith & scott mosier's podcast that i used to listen to until i grew sick of hearing kevin smith talking about that he was an unmotivated fat stoner all the time. this track was a backing track when they riffed/discussed the harry potter books and i noticed it when i heard that drum fill.

i hadn't heard "that old black magic" before, nor any other versions of the song but with some close listening and some googling i found it and my heart lept with joy. i've mentioned before that i get excited by drums and especially with funky and weird rhythms. love those drumbreaks and i saw this track first a cool track but also a source of sampling.

after chopping it up a few times and using the drums and cymbals for a couple of beats and found that i could do much with it, an idea came into my head. i had sometimes in my sets played funk, disco, soul and danceable jazz with the house and other things (i.e. i wanted to be mr. scruff and gilles peterson). the idea was to do a subtle edit since the track moved around the 130 bpm region (sort of, it fluctuates a lot).

i had the edit mapped out in my head and first it was to time stretch the whole thing and work it like that, but after a while with ableton and audition, i gave up since i was just destroying the track. then i came up with another idea which was basically dropping a beat that filtered in the looped drum fill and running the track almost as per usual but with some additional looping at choice sections.

this idea is what i would do if i ever should finish it, i've just been lazy with it and haven't done it but after a while there was also another idea that i thought of. it came to me since there was a couple of tracks that used samples of these kind of tracks and worked them in a special manner, i'm of course talking about "we don't speak americano".

the problem was this idea really scared me since i knew exactly what to do and which parts to use effectively (it would be the drums, the piano bits and some of louis prima's louder moments). it scared me since since i thought that it was too disrespectful.

but i never made any edit and the times i have played it, i just dropped it like that since it works it's awesome as it is. i really like the vocal counteraction with smith and prima and the tight orchestration and how punchy the rhythm section is. what a lovely song.

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