I'm a Man
Composer: Miller/Winwood
Key: C minor
Meter: 4/4
Lead Vocal: Kath / Cetera / Lamm
Form: intro, verse 1, chorus, verse 2, chorus, verse 3, chorus, drum solo, verse 4, chorus, verse 5, chorus, outro with guitar cadenza.
Instrumentation: trumpet, tenor sax, trombone, electric guitar, organ, bass, drums, percussion, three voices
Overall form and style: "I’m a Man" has the feel of a loose jam and seems less structured than most of the songs on the album. While the arrangement is, in fact, quite carefully structured, the loose feel comes from the live quality of the lead vocals, which trade between all three singers. The vocals are performed freely, and, except for the harmony vocals in the chorus, not sticking strictly to one particular melody or rhythm. This tune actually has a whopping five verses, each followed by a chorus, though each verse and chorus (eight bars each) is not very long. The long running time is mostly due to a lengthy introduction and a long drum solo in the middle.
Another thing contributing to this song’s loose, live-performance feel is the lyrics. Normally, Chicago are very articulate singers and it’s quite easy to understand Chicago’s lyrics. Not so here. Even following along with the lyrics, it’s awfully hard to hear them. For example, the first line is supposed to be “Well, my pad is very messy”. Terry Kath’s line sounds just barely like it, being much closer to “Well, my dad he sent a message”. The other singers aren’t any more intelligible on this song.
Melody: The melody is freely interpreted by all three singers, and each verse has the melody varied anywhere from a little to a lot from the previous verse. The melody is simple, recitative-style, and sticks around C pentatonic minor.
Harmony: Easily the most harmonically simple piece on the album, “I’m a Man” keeps its verses entirely on the tonic C minor chord. The chorus has the only harmonic change, starting with E-flat major then walking down chromatically back to the i chord:
III V/V V (tritone sub) i
Eb D Db C-
However, as discussed in the next section, the band manages to get some interesting results out of this simple progression.
Arrangement: This is where this track really shines. A simple, fun rock tune, a great hit in their live shows, is turned into something no less fun but much more interesting by a really nice arrangement. There is a longish introduction, in which instruments gradually add in one by one to form the groove. The horn section is not playing here (and in fact doesn’t play until 3/4 of the way through), but those guys are instead contributing to the groove with cowbell, claves, and tambourine. Listen also for Terry Kath’s percussive guitar strummings with muted strings, which adds another percussion-like sound into the mix.
“I’m a Man” features all three lead vocalists, something Chicago surprisingly did very rarely. (“What’s This World Coming To” from Chicago VI is the only other one that comes to mind.) Terry Kath takes verse 1, Peter Cetera verses 2 and 4, and Robert Lamm verses 3 and 5. The variety is quite nice, as each singer handles the verse differently, both in style and (especially for Cetera) in range. Five verses might be an awful lot of verses if they were all sung by the same person.
The most noticeable feature of this arrangement is the long drum solo in the middle. The band made a conscious decision to confine the drum solo into strict time by keeping the percussion ensemble playing. Danny Seraphine solos over this solid accompaniment, at first haltingly, then in longer and longer phrases. While he could also do some very cool free-form drum solo work (see “Motorboat to Mars”), it’s neat to hear an extended drum solo played in strict tempo within the groove of the tune. In keeping with the tune’s live feel, various extraneous vocal encouragement can be heard behind the solo. I’ve always liked this solo, partly because Seraphine uses the whole drum kit. Too often, drum solos end up being fancy snare work and some crashes. Here, we get plenty of tom work as well.
Only after the drum solo does the horn section join in. They add some accents in the verses, joining with Kath’s guitar. Horn sections are much more often paired with organ (see, for example, Chase’s first album), but Kath uses a wah-wah effect to seamlessly blend in with the horn section on these accents. This is a subtle effect, but cool once you notice it. The big contribution of the horn section here, however, is rendering the chorus a wonderfully crunchy, dissonant wreck. That sequence of descending major triads outlined earlier is made much more gleefully nasty by having the horns play both the major and minor thirds of those chords. The tonic C chord remains minor, but the others now contain both thirds, accounting for the harmonic crunch you hear.
A drum fill leads into a guitar cadenza (which could become incredibly long in concert) to lead the tune to its end.
Other notes: This is the only tune from outside the band Chicago would record until “What You’re Missing” and “Waiting for You to Decide” on Chicago 16, 13 years and 12 studio albums later.
Another conceptual nuance on this album that I don’t think is widely acknowledged: Remember the percussion ensemble from the end of “Beginnings” that slowly faded out after after a few minutes? Here we have a similar percussion section creating the groove for the drum solo. For one thing, it makes the listener realize what a distant memory the joy of “Beginnings” really was. Also, this time, instead of simply fading out, the percussion ensemble continues under a pounding, crashing drum solo.
PM
Key: C minor
Meter: 4/4
Lead Vocal: Kath / Cetera / Lamm
Form: intro, verse 1, chorus, verse 2, chorus, verse 3, chorus, drum solo, verse 4, chorus, verse 5, chorus, outro with guitar cadenza.
Instrumentation: trumpet, tenor sax, trombone, electric guitar, organ, bass, drums, percussion, three voices
Overall form and style: "I’m a Man" has the feel of a loose jam and seems less structured than most of the songs on the album. While the arrangement is, in fact, quite carefully structured, the loose feel comes from the live quality of the lead vocals, which trade between all three singers. The vocals are performed freely, and, except for the harmony vocals in the chorus, not sticking strictly to one particular melody or rhythm. This tune actually has a whopping five verses, each followed by a chorus, though each verse and chorus (eight bars each) is not very long. The long running time is mostly due to a lengthy introduction and a long drum solo in the middle.
Another thing contributing to this song’s loose, live-performance feel is the lyrics. Normally, Chicago are very articulate singers and it’s quite easy to understand Chicago’s lyrics. Not so here. Even following along with the lyrics, it’s awfully hard to hear them. For example, the first line is supposed to be “Well, my pad is very messy”. Terry Kath’s line sounds just barely like it, being much closer to “Well, my dad he sent a message”. The other singers aren’t any more intelligible on this song.
Melody: The melody is freely interpreted by all three singers, and each verse has the melody varied anywhere from a little to a lot from the previous verse. The melody is simple, recitative-style, and sticks around C pentatonic minor.
Harmony: Easily the most harmonically simple piece on the album, “I’m a Man” keeps its verses entirely on the tonic C minor chord. The chorus has the only harmonic change, starting with E-flat major then walking down chromatically back to the i chord:
III V/V V (tritone sub) i
Eb D Db C-
However, as discussed in the next section, the band manages to get some interesting results out of this simple progression.
Arrangement: This is where this track really shines. A simple, fun rock tune, a great hit in their live shows, is turned into something no less fun but much more interesting by a really nice arrangement. There is a longish introduction, in which instruments gradually add in one by one to form the groove. The horn section is not playing here (and in fact doesn’t play until 3/4 of the way through), but those guys are instead contributing to the groove with cowbell, claves, and tambourine. Listen also for Terry Kath’s percussive guitar strummings with muted strings, which adds another percussion-like sound into the mix.
“I’m a Man” features all three lead vocalists, something Chicago surprisingly did very rarely. (“What’s This World Coming To” from Chicago VI is the only other one that comes to mind.) Terry Kath takes verse 1, Peter Cetera verses 2 and 4, and Robert Lamm verses 3 and 5. The variety is quite nice, as each singer handles the verse differently, both in style and (especially for Cetera) in range. Five verses might be an awful lot of verses if they were all sung by the same person.
The most noticeable feature of this arrangement is the long drum solo in the middle. The band made a conscious decision to confine the drum solo into strict time by keeping the percussion ensemble playing. Danny Seraphine solos over this solid accompaniment, at first haltingly, then in longer and longer phrases. While he could also do some very cool free-form drum solo work (see “Motorboat to Mars”), it’s neat to hear an extended drum solo played in strict tempo within the groove of the tune. In keeping with the tune’s live feel, various extraneous vocal encouragement can be heard behind the solo. I’ve always liked this solo, partly because Seraphine uses the whole drum kit. Too often, drum solos end up being fancy snare work and some crashes. Here, we get plenty of tom work as well.
Only after the drum solo does the horn section join in. They add some accents in the verses, joining with Kath’s guitar. Horn sections are much more often paired with organ (see, for example, Chase’s first album), but Kath uses a wah-wah effect to seamlessly blend in with the horn section on these accents. This is a subtle effect, but cool once you notice it. The big contribution of the horn section here, however, is rendering the chorus a wonderfully crunchy, dissonant wreck. That sequence of descending major triads outlined earlier is made much more gleefully nasty by having the horns play both the major and minor thirds of those chords. The tonic C chord remains minor, but the others now contain both thirds, accounting for the harmonic crunch you hear.
A drum fill leads into a guitar cadenza (which could become incredibly long in concert) to lead the tune to its end.
Other notes: This is the only tune from outside the band Chicago would record until “What You’re Missing” and “Waiting for You to Decide” on Chicago 16, 13 years and 12 studio albums later.
Another conceptual nuance on this album that I don’t think is widely acknowledged: Remember the percussion ensemble from the end of “Beginnings” that slowly faded out after after a few minutes? Here we have a similar percussion section creating the groove for the drum solo. For one thing, it makes the listener realize what a distant memory the joy of “Beginnings” really was. Also, this time, instead of simply fading out, the percussion ensemble continues under a pounding, crashing drum solo.
PM
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