Pop and Rock Music
The German pianist Fritz Schulz-Reichel had considerable success c. 1955–57 on the hit parade with his tack piano recordings, released under the name "Schräger Otto" ("Crazy Otto" or "Slanted Otto" in English). During the craze, ragtime and blues pianist Johnny Maddox also recorded "The Crazy Otto Medley" with a tack piano, starting a "honky-tonk piano" fad. Both purportedly used thumbtacks in the felt hammers.
Paul Revere and The Raiders used a tack piano on their hit single "Him Or Me, What's It Gonna Be".
The 5th Dimension hits "Sweet Blindness" and "Wedding Bell Blues" both start with a tack piano intro.
The Zombies use a tack piano on "Care of Cell 44", the opening track of Odessey and Oracle.
A tack piano was used on The Beach Boys hit "Good Vibrations."
A tack piano was used briefly in the studio version of Cheap Trick's "I Want You To Want Me".
The instrument is prominently featured in Biz Markie's 1989 hit "Just a Friend".
The Fiery Furnaces also make extensive use of the tack piano to produce a "Vaudevillian" sound.
Patrick Warren plays the tack piano on many of the tracks of Bruce Springsteen's Magic album.
A honky-tonk tack piano is prominent in Emerson, Lake and Palmer's "Jeremy Bender", on their Tarkus album. "The Sheriff" from "Trilogy" used a tack piano extensively.
Benmont Tench of Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers plays a tack piano solo on "To Find A Friend", featured on Petty's Wildflowers album.
Elvis Costello used a tack piano on two songs on the album Mighty Like a Rose: "The Other Side of Summer" and "So Like Candy", which was co-written with Sir Paul McCartney.
On his album Sleeps with Angels, Neil Young used a tack piano on the tracks "My Heart" and "A Dream That Can Last".
Hanne Hukkelberg plays a tack piano in several of the tracks of her album Rykestrasse 68.
Ben Folds first experimented with the sound in the 1999 album The Unauthorized Biography of Reinhold Messner. The piano can easily be heard on the third track "Mess". He made more extensive use of the modification in 2001's Rockin' the Suburbs.
Elliott Smith uses a tack piano on his album XO, notably in the opening song "Sweet Adeline" and the track "In The Lost And Found (Honky Bach)".
The credits of the Dave Matthews Band album Crash include bassist Stefan Lessard on the tack piano; it is assumed to be in use for the single "Crash Into Me"
A makeshift tack piano is used in the song "Lovers in Japan" by Coldplay on their 2008 album Viva la Vida or Death and All His Friends – with a remix on their EP Prospekt's March.
James Blunt use a tack piano on his song Billy from his album Back to bedlam.
Ray Manzarek of The Doors made frequent use of a tack piano in Doors studio recordings, most notably on the songs "People Are Strange" and "L.A. Woman".
Burt Bacharach used a tack piano on several tracks he composed in the sixties, such as "What's New Pussycat?" and "Odds and Ends".
The Monkees used a tack piano on several tracks on their album The Birds, The Bees & The Monkees, most notably on the songs P.O. Box 9847 and Magnolia Simms.
A tack piano is used in The Beatles song "Rocky Raccoon", to fit with the western theme of the it.
Read more about this topic: Tack Piano, Use As A Musical Instrument
Famous quotes containing the words pop and, pop, rock and/or music:
“Compare the history of the novel to that of rock ‘n’ roll. Both started out a minority taste, became a mass taste, and then splintered into several subgenres. Both have been the typical cultural expressions of classes and epochs. Both started out aggressively fighting for their share of attention, novels attacking the drama, the tract, and the poem, rock attacking jazz and pop and rolling over classical music.”
—W. T. Lhamon, U.S. educator, critic. “Material Differences,” Deliberate Speed: The Origins of a Cultural Style in the American 1950s, Smithsonian (1990)
“Every man has been brought up with the idea that decent women don’t pop in and out of bed; he has always been told by his mother that “nice girls don’t.” He finds, of course, when he gets older that this may be untrue—but only in a certain section of society.”
—Barbara Cartland (b. 1901)
“So there he is at last. Man on the moon. The poor magnificent bungler! He can’t even get to the office without undergoing the agonies of the damned, but give him a little metal, a few chemicals, some wire and twenty or thirty billion dollars and, vroom! there he is, up on a rock a quarter of a million miles up in the sky.”
—Russell Baker (b. 1925)
“As I define it, rock & roll is dead. The attitude isn’t dead, but the music is no longer vital. It doesn’t have the same meaning. The attitude, though, is still very much alive—and it still informs other kinds of music.”
—David Byrne (b. 1952)