After a short summer hiatus, The CPR Trio is back, this time with a tune that — let’s face it — three old white guys really have no business recording: “Treat Her Like a Lady.” Such a simple tune, and yet I am going to write a novel here.
The original version of this song, by the band Cornelius Brothers & Sister Rose, was released in 1971 and reached #3 on the Billboard Hot 100. It was written by Eddie Cornelius who also sang the lead vocal. Sister Rose Cornelius arranged the backing vocals which she sang with Eddie and brother Carter.
Gotta love a band that opts to use an ampersand in their name.
One may ask, Why this song? The backstory is pretty boring. I was working in my yard one afternoon this summer, listening to the 70s channel on SiriusXM, and this song came on. I’d probably heard it a million times before, but on that day I found I was really digging the groove; I was totally into it. I decided right then that I was going to make this my next (solo) project.
A few days later, I worked out an updated arrangement that accommodated a 16-bar guitar solo that does not exist in the original. I threw together a quick demo based on this arrangement using nothing but the GarageBand internal instruments for the backing tracks, and then I added the lead and backing vocals. The deeper I got into the demo, the more I thought it would be a lot of fun to give this the full CPR Trio treatment.
The following week, Chris and Peter and I were in Chris’s car, on our way to Old Saybrook, CT, to see a performance by Julian Lage. I synced my phone to Chris’s audio system and played my bandmates both the original song and my demo, and suggested we make this our next project. Chris and Peter were onboard immediately.
The first problem we had to overcome: This song, unlike “Summer Wind“, was going to require recording a full (live) drum kit, and the gear I had was not capable of doing this — not well, anyway.
We had enough microphones to mic each drum and cymbal; that wasn’t the issue. The problem was that the audio interface I had, and GarageBand itself, limited me to recording at most 1 stereo track at a time. That meant my only option for recording the drums was to set up two microphones, pointed at the drum kit, separated by a few feet. That may have been acceptable back in 1962, but if you listen to rock/pop recordings from that era, you’ll find the drums don’t usually sound that good. In a modern studio, each drum and cymbal are isolated and recorded on separate tracks, allowing full control over the volume, balance, and EQ during the mixing and mastering phases. Often, live drums are even augmented with electronic samples once the basic tracks are captured.
To get this level of control, I’d need to seriously upgrade my audio interface device, and also upgrade my iPad to a Mac. The Mac version of GarageBand allows simultaneous recording across multiple channels. That would mean shelling out a few thousand dollars, and I wasn’t ready to do that.
The compromise was to buy an inexpensive mixing console, feed all the drum mics into this console, premix down to stereo, and send the stereo output into my audio interface which then pushed the signal into the single stereo track in GarageBand. I still wouldn’t have much control over the individual drum and cymbal sounds after the fact, but at least I could work with Chris to get a decent premix, which we did one afternoon, tweaking the gains, the panning, and the output levels incrementally until we felt the final stereo track captured a robust drum sound.
I think we mostly succeeded. I did still have to play with the overall EQ a bit, and there were some challenges finding sufficient space in the mix for both the drum and bass tracks, but the end result is pretty good, and I learned a lot of lessons I will apply in subsequent projects until I spring for the gear upgrades mentioned above.
Once we had a plan for recording the drums, we then dove into the project. Using my demo as the guide, we spent an evening getting the drum track recorded. The drumming on the original song is quite simplistic. Chris was clearly ready to rock out that night, and neither Peter nor I were going to stop him. Chris’s drumming set the stage for our version of this tune. I think Chris only needed 5 takes to nail his part. He then added a separate tambourine track in 1 take, which earned him the nickname “One Take Jake.”
In the days that followed, I recorded my bass guitar track, which mostly follows the original bassline, as well as a couple of rhythm guitar tracks using my Rickenbacker, again following the original recording, more or less.
Next, I recorded a piano track to bolster the heavy chords of the rhythm guitar during the intro, the chorus, and the bridge.
Speaking of the chorus, prior to recording the guitar and piano tracks, Peter and I had a little debate on just what chords are being played during that section. I am referring to the part of the song with the lyrics “You oughta treat her like a lady. It’s the best you can do. You gotta treat her like a lady, and she’ll give in to you.” In my demo, I had played it with all major chords: A – B – A – B – A – B – F#. Peter listened to the original and concluded that at least the first two B’s should actually be minors, thus A – Bm – A – Bm – A – B – F#. After discussing it, consulting with resources we found online, playing it both ways, and discussing it even more, we both agreed Peter’s take on it was correct. This small variance in the chord progression is in fact the “secret sauce” — as Peter put it — that transforms this tune from good to great. And this is yet another reason why collaboration always leads to a better end product.
Peter’s guitar tracks came next. For this, Peter broke out his Fender Telecaster, and we bypassed the amp and plugged it directly into the iPad (through my new Focusrite Scarlett Solo audio interface), dialing in an amp emulation that resulted in what I think is a quintessential Tele sound.
Another sidebar: Our goal here and with Summer Wind was not to exactly replicate the original recording. We each have the freedom to take the song wherever we think it needs to go. After we had completed this project, we got together to discuss it. The three of us realized we each bring a unique dynamic to our trio when it comes to how we approach our individual contributions.
Chris sort of “feels” his way through. As mentioned, our version rocks because Chris felt like it needed to rock, and he let that feeling flow through his hands and feet the night we recorded his drums, nailing his contribution in just a few takes, without having worked through it ahead of time. He set the tone, and it was all delivered extempore.
I tend to stick to what I hear in the original recording, especially with the bassline. I listened to the original track over and over and over, and tried to captured what I heard.
Peter, on the other hand, for his lead guitar tracks (which consist not only of his solo, but also the little riffs and fills you hear throughout the song) spent hours listening to the demo, contemplating, experimenting, tweaking, and refining until he had laid out something truly unique that worked. The solo aside, listen to the original and, except for the first verse, you won’t hear anything close to what you hear Peter playing on our version. Now consider the 16-bar solo. This does not exist at all in the original, so Peter created it out of whole cloth. It’s brilliant, just brilliant. It’s Peter, with just a touch of Keef for color. It is a product not only of his years of experience as a guitarist, but also his dedication to finding that exact thing that fits perfectly into the spirit of this rendition.
Having put in the work ahead of time, we got Peter’s tracks recorded in just a few takes. Peter suggested I double the final 4 bars of his solo on the bass, so I dropped in that edit a few days later. Great suggestion.
This is only our second project as a trio, and I am already convinced that my favorite session of any project will always be the one we dedicate to recording the backing vocal tracks. For Summer Wind, the three of us gathered around a single mic and sang together. For this song, we each recorded our parts separately. Chris took the low harmony, Peter the middle, and I took the high. We recorded Chris’s parts first. The challenge here wasn’t getting Chris to sing on key — no issues there. The challenges were getting him to sing “Oooooo”, not “Ahhhhhh”, and to rewire his brain to avoid the urge to enunciate every syllable. The lyrics may be written “Treat her like, got to treat her like”, but if you sing them as they are written, you sound like Pat Boone covering “Ain’t That a Shame.” Not good.
The solution was for me to write out the lyrics the way they needed to be sung. The backing vocals during the verses became “Treater like, gotta treater like.” The “Love her, tease her, please her, hold her, want her, need her” of the bridge became “Lover, teaser, pleaser, holder, wahner, needer.” It worked! And it also gave us an idea for an original tune we shall title “Lover Teaser Pleaser.” All we need to do is write the music and lyrics, but how hard can that be when you already have a killer title?
Peter took care of his vocal parts in short order, I added my layer, and then Chris added a bit of falsetto harmony towards the end of the bridge to round it out. During the mastering process, I panned our harmonies across the stereo spectrum, and added some depth to them by employing a little artificial double tracking that turned 3 voices into 6.
The final step in the recording process was to capture a decent lead vocal. I mostly worked on this solo, then shared the results with Chris and Peter once I felt I had something worthwhile. As usual, the lead vocals took me quite a few takes, but in the end what you hear is a single take with no edits.
Some may listen to these lyrics and think they are bit misogynistic. I disagree. The fundamental message of this song is to treat others nicely. The line “Strange as it seems, you know you can’t treat a woman mean” I interpret as “Hey, idiots, news flash: If you treat people like crap, they are not going to like you.” And that’s my $0.02, for what it’s worth.
Finally, a shout out to my good friend Brian who, as always, provided some helpful feedback and useful tips during the final mastering process.
Next up: The video. Stay tuned …