An Album/Song A Week: "A Whiter Shade Of Pale" - Procol Harum

 Gary Brooker was certainly the most soulful of all the Prog Rock singers.  And "A Whiter Shade of Pale" is the most R&B Prog song ever recorded.  Brooker nicked a bit of Bach's "Air On The G String", and along with Matthew Fisher came up with the otherworldly sounding music. Keith Reid's lyrics are another story.  Some would say indecipherable.  But Reid has said it's a simple breakup song.  Others think there's more to it.  But Brooker's singing, to me, leaves no doubt about the lyrics' origins.  He sings it like an R&B singer would any other love gone wrong song.  Very passionately and soulful.

One day, when I was in my teens, "A Whiter Shade of Pale" came on the car radio.  I was driving with my Mom.  I would usually play some kind of music whenever we went somewhere.  She never said much about what was on the radio.  But that day she surprised me by saying how much she always liked that song.  Years later when I was older, and it was me driving, the song came on an oldies station and she said the same thing.  I spent a lot of time trying to figure out what about the song could have caught her ear.  I ruled out the lyrics right away and focused on the music.  It wasn't I found out that Bach was a German composer that it all fit.  The melody that Brooker nicked for "Whiter Shade" must of have caught my Mom's ear because it sounded familiar to a Bach song she must have heard growing up in Germany.  My Mom was born in Munich, 1929.  

Years after my Mom has passed away, whenever I hear "A Whiter Shade of Pale", my thoughts go back to happier days with her.  The power of music.  Never to be underestimated.