I Wanna Be Yo' Chauffeur

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I Wanna Be Yo' Chauffeur

"Let me and this sweet time drive you away"

I hear you’re lookin’ for a driver

So why don’t you consider me?

Let’s try test drive, baby

Come on, gimme the key

You won’t forget this roll, darlin’

I’m sure you’ll agree

I wanna be yo’ chauffeur

I’ll keep it oiled, tuned-up, and shined

I wanna be yo’ chauffeur

Let me drive you outa yo’ mind

Can I hold that door open?

Spread those wings so wide

Now it’s my turn, baby

Won’t you let me come inside

Let me turn that heat on

Lay back, enjoy the ride

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I wanna be yo’ chauffeur

A ride like you’ve never had

I wanna be yo’ chauffeur

Baby let me drive you mad

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Songwriter’s Notes

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Most really significant friendships have their little private inside jokes. These personal memes are things that evoke some special memory - something funny, something sentimental, something romantic, something embarrassing, etc. Whatever the occasion was, it’s always something special that stirred that magical emotional chewy nougat center we have for an emotional core.

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As you might imagine, I have my own. The concept of a personal “chauffeur” is one of my most important two-way personal relationship memes. How it evolved is a long story, and it’s really quite personal, so I won’t linger on details. But “I Wanna Be Yo’ Chauffeur” was, in some ways, my answer to a proposal to explore a long term relationship.

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Let me say that “I Wanna Be Yo’ Chauffeur” is, hands down, my dirtiest song. It’s obviously highly suggestive, full of innuendo and double entendres. I don’t know how many more of these kinds of things I want to do. Dirty songs are typically artistically low hanging fruit, and easy money if you want to take money from undiscriminating palates. They can be easily written and passed around like a joint at a Grank Funk concert, and I don’t have much interest in that. I’m really happy with this one, though. For all its brazen indecencies, it’s a great and challenging composition and a hell of a hard song to sing. It covers my whole range with varying degrees of sensual commitment, and every note has to be perfect and sincere. Yeah, OK, I must confess “I Wanna Be Yo’ Chauffeur” is a shameless exhibitionist. It’s also musically completely monstrous.

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At its core, the song is pretty much straight-forward I-IV-V twelve bar blues. The last phrase is punctuated by a bIII-bVII motif, but that doesn’t detract at all from its heart, which is pure blues and R&B fusion, throbbing and driving. Like all good blues melodies, it exploits the blue notes at the right times, but it does so sparingly, and deliberately so. If it’s lyrically a shameless tramp, it’s musically a demure athlete - lingering relentlessly in the light so you can take it in, dancing with you in melodic dignity until the whole composition seduces you without apology.

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I might be a little embarrassed by “Chauffeur” if some of my favorite people weren’t big fans of the song. I won’t give away any names, but suffice to say they know who they are. And of course there’s the original inspiration for the song. It's a song that's impossible to hate, but if everyone else was indifferent to it, that would be plenty to keep it alive in my rotation.

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.Production Notes

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“I Wanna Be Yo’ Chauffeur” was my first attempt at playing keyboards in a recording. I think clavinet is a beautiful and underused rock instrument, and I wanted a keyboard that could both bite and drive, so for me, it was an easy choice. The dancing melodic semi-arpeggiation on the right hand provides a great counterpoint to the thudding bass line. I don’t try to play many chords with the right hand; the bouncing improvised melodic line does the playful blues minuet that chords can’t hope to do.

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In fact, I love the clavinet in this song so much I created the introduction to forecast it. After hearing the whole song, I decided the clavinet was such a dominant figure in the production it merited a harpsichord introduction. The introduction is presented with stilted dignity; it’s a simple baroque invention I improvised on the spot that offers little clue as to the blues power song that follows. However, for me it feels right at home with the clavinet that follows in the introduction. Look for this to be a featured part of the video that will follow one day.

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The clavinet and main rhythm guitar ring with melody and arpeggiation on their respective sides of the stage. You get an earful from each of them, but as is true of all excellent duets, they’re best heard when they’re played in balanced unity. They don’t depend on each other; they don’t even really listen to each other. They’re doing their own thing throughout the main blues segments of the song in completely unwitting complement to each other. It’s a rhythm player’s dream; each of these instruments is its own artistic person in this song, riding over the rhythm in simple chord-based lines while the drums and bass do the heavy lifting. They’re important, don’t get me wrong. They provide great midrange scaffolding for the lead vocal.

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However, while the clav and arpeggio guitar are doing a melodic rhythm duet, the second rhythm guitar is banging a basic root-fifth rhythm. This fills the harmonic holes created by the parallel melodies and makes their midrange separation true choreography. That simple rhythm continues throughout the song, merging other instruments into unity (whether or not they realize it). And it just wouldn't be a Rick Thorne production without big muscular acoustic guitar chords banging away - in this case, the 9th are all played as 7ths. Dominance is a theme here.

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The bass provides the dance floor, thudding the low D (tuning D-A-D-G) and spanning the octave to the second string D. The tonic chord bass part is a first-position arpeggiation itself, playing D-F#-A-B-D in sequence. But it’s the downbeat bass stroke that provides the driving sexuality of the song; it pulses the 88 bpm like the heartbeat of a partner being slowly seduced. So while the guitars and clavinet do their separate but equal midrange invention, the bass’ pulsing floor provides the foundation that transforms the rhythm section into a throbbing engine.

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In the second verse, the horn section joins the orgy. Ninth chords are an arranger’s hobby shop; the options of voicings are so rich with ninth chords, that almost whatever one chooses, something wonderfully tense and tittilating happens. The second verse horn score is lower in the range of the instruments, providing a warmth that brings the musical evolution into the heavy foreplay stage. It’s in the bridge where the horn score really becomes its own force. The teasing staccato tension in the horn arrangement in the second verse transforms in the bridge into a legato dominatrix, fully engaged and in charge. It’s less playful in the bridge, driving its own purpose, and rather than teasing you as it did in the first verse it takes control of the mood and takes the listener into a different place - one that's purposefully direct and seductive.

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The guitar sound in the solo after the first bridge was chosen to be a clean, high sustain electric sound - a perfect foil against the joint rhythm and horn section frenzy that stretches the audio spectrum. It’s a somewhat gentle solo - a different character than has been otherwise expressed in the song - but its classic melodic lines bring you back into the roots of the song - reminding you that for its musical sophistication, it’s blues that chug you along in a relentless gravitational groove.

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If you haven’t figured this out, the choice of horn voicings in the verses was chosen to emulate a car horn. Again, it’s the ninth chord structure and the tensions that work so well with it that lend themselves to a playful purpose. As an arranger and producer, once that harmonic decision was made, the work was easy. Horn arranging can be drudgery - it’s really only a somewhat creative activity. It's largely a rather mechanical and mathematical process - but writing the horn chart for “I Wanna Be Yo’ Chauffeur” was a blast. Every kick was a voicing orgy.

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And while we're talking horns: special thanks to Julio, Jorge, and Ismael for providing their tight and well-rehearsed horns to this production. It was my first web-based reach out, and what a find you guys were! Thanks for the quick turn-around and an excellent job of playing my chart.

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All creative content created, developed, produced,

and futzed with obsessively by Rick Thorne

"I Wanna Be Yo' Chauffeur" was performed by

Rick Thorne and Relatively Few Friends

Kick yo’ hot shoes off

Lay yo’ hot self down

Kick yo’ sweet legs up

Let yo’ sweet hair fall around

Close your eyes and forget this day

Let me and this sweet time drive you away

Give yo’ sweet mind a rest

Let yo’ cold cares go

Give some fuel to that fire

Feel that engine glow

Don’t mind the bumps in that lonely road

Just strap in tight, let’s lose that load

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What a nice trip, baby

I hope you’re satisfied

You want these bright lights off?

Whatever you decide

Let’s take the long way home

No request denied

I wanna be yo’ chauffeur

Ride, baby, ‘til yo’ beguiled

I wanna be yo’ chauffeur

Baby let me drive you wild

Rick Thorne: all stringed, keyboard, and percussive noises

and continuing vocal abuse

Trumpet: Julio Diaz

Trombone: Jorge Dobal

Tenor and Baritone Sax: Ismael Vergara

Creative advisor: Nicole Lamm

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Acoustic Video will go here