Review
Genre and Mood
Buddy Rich Big Band’s The Beat Goes On - Live At The Chez Club, Hollywood/1967 is jazz from a big band covering a pop hit, and The Find Mag called the result “a big-band groove you just can’t get out of your head”. It is energetic and groovy, and playful too, because the voice at its centre belongs to a child.
Song Summary
Sonny Bono wrote The Beat Goes On for Sonny & Cher, whose single entered the Billboard Hot 100 in January 1967 and peaked at number six. Within weeks Buddy Rich’s band was playing it at the Chez Club in Hollywood, in an arrangement by Shorty Rogers, and taping it for the live album Big Swing Face. Rich ramps up the tempo, and the vocal belongs to his daughter Cathy, whose part was overdubbed afterwards at United Recording in Hollywood.
Musical Breakdown
No source walks through this recording section by section, so the parts below follow what the sources do describe.
The Arrangement
Rogers wrote the chart for the band the album credits: two altos, two tenors and a baritone saxophone, with flutes among them, four trumpets, three trombones, and guitar, piano and double bass.
The Vocal
Cathy Rich takes the lead, and The Find Mag hears her youthful energy matching a lyric about modernity and the clash of old and new.
The Drums
Behind it all sits Rich, a drummer known for virtuoso technique, power and speed, driving the faster tempo from the kit.
Concepts in Focus
This is a cover version that changes the genre, not just the singer: a duo’s pop single becomes a big-band chart for brass and saxophones, with a faster tempo to carry them.
It is also a live recording, with a catch. The band was taped at the Chez Club between February and March 1967, but the vocal was recorded later in a studio and laid into the live take. What sounds like one night is two places joined together.
Thirty years on, the track became material for sampling. The All Seeing I built their 1997 version of The Beat Goes On on Cathy Rich’s vocal from this recording, and it reached number eleven in the UK on its 1998 re-release. That same year Blue Note put the track on Blue Break Beats Vol. 4. Compare how Swing Republic, The Mills Brothers – Moanin’ for You sets old jazz voices inside new electronic music.
Artistic Context
Buddy Rich, born in Brooklyn in 1917 and billed as a child drum prodigy in his parents’ vaudeville act, is considered one of the most influential drummers of all time, though he never learned to read music. He formed his big band in 1966 and recorded a string of albums for Pacific Jazz, Big Swing Face among them, produced by Richard Bock and released in June 1967.
Impact and Reception
The Penguin Guide to Jazz Recordings gave Big Swing Face three stars, but this track travelled furthest: from a Hollywood club to break-beat compilations and a UK top-twenty hit built on its vocal. Turn it up and follow the drums.
