Stand by Me — Ben E. King (1961)

Why this song

These four chords have a nickname: people call them "the Stand by Me changes". That is odd, because the pattern is older than the song. It was everywhere in the 1950s, in hundreds of records.

So a song from 1961 ended up giving its name to something it did not invent. It became the clearest example, and the example won.

Learn the four chords here and you get the other songs for free.

Historical context

Before it was a radio song, Stand by Me was a church hymn. Charles Albert Tindley wrote it early in the twentieth century, from Psalm 46. The title reached Ben E. King by another route: a spiritual by Sam Cooke and J. W. Alexander, Stand by Me Father, recorded by the Soul Stirrers.

Foto: cortesía de Tindley Temple, dominio público, vía Wikimedia Commons

The recording is from 27 October 1960, in New York. King had just left the Drifters. He had finished recording Spanish Harlem and there was studio time left over. The producers, Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller, asked whether he had anything else.

King had written it for the Drifters and they had turned it down. He played it on the piano right there. Stoller went to the other piano, worked out the chords and invented the bass line.

He later put it in one sentence: it was in the key of A, and then he created a bass line. The credits split it up: King half, Leiber and Stoller a quarter each.

It came out in 1961 and reached number 4 in the United States. That was not the end. In 1986 a film used it as its theme and the song went back on the charts. In the United Kingdom it hit number 1 in January 1987, pushed by a Levi's 501 jeans advert. Back in 1961 it had only got to number 27 there.

Musical characteristics

Start with what comes in first.

That bass is a double bass, the big standing string instrument, played by Lloyd Trotman. It repeats the same figure over and over while everything else comes in on top. A figure a bass repeats like that is called a bass line, and this is one of the most recognisable there is.

Foto: Chris Brown, CC BY-SA 3.0, vía Wikimedia Commons

Notice something. That line does not belong to the person who signed the song. Stoller added it in the studio. And when Stanley Applebaum later wrote the string parts, he built them by copying that same bass line. The bit you recognise arrived last, and somebody else brought it.

Now the chords. One idea unlocks them, and it is the most profitable idea in the whole course.

Take the A major scale and number the notes: A is 1, B is 2, C# is 3, D is 4, E is 5, F# is 6, G# is 7. Build a chord on each one. You now have the seven chords of that key, each with its number attached. That number is the degree, written as a Roman numeral.

Degrees go in capitals when the chord is major and in lower case when it is minor. In A major: I is A, vi is F# minor, IV is D, V is E.

Stand by Me is I – vi – IV – V. In A: A – F#m – D – E. That is all of it. There is no fifth chord hidden anywhere.

The useful part is that the numbers travel and the names do not. Those same four degrees in G major are G – Em – C – D, which sit far better under the fingers on ukulele and guitar. Same song, different key: same degrees, different notes.

This four-chord turnaround was repeated so often in the fifties that it collected several names: the fifties progression, the doo-wop changes and, because of this record, "the Stand by Me changes".

There are more people behind that bass than you would guess: saxophone, piano, two guitars, percussion, drums, a wordless choir and a string section. None of that is what you remember. You remember the bass.

The voice is planned too. In the verse the melody moves between A3 and F#4: six notes, which is why almost anyone can sing it. The chorus climbs to A4. That difference is a decision, not an accident.

Hard facts: A major, 4/4, 120 BPM, 2:57. Verse and chorus take turns, but the four chords are the same in both.

So the harmony does not tell you where you are in the song; the words and the number of players do. That is exactly the problem in ¿Cómo sabes por dónde vas en una música que oyes por primera vez?.

Trivia and curiosities

• King wrote the song for the Drifters, his old group, and they said no. He recorded it himself with studio time left over from another session. Songs that last sixty years do not always come from a plan.

• The part everyone recognises, the bass, was not written by the song's author but by the producer, on the spot. Then the strings were built by copying that bass. A song is not only the property of whoever signs it.

• The hymn it comes from was sung in churches long before records existed, and reached King by word of mouth, through other groups. That journey is the subject of ¿Cómo mandas una canción a mil kilómetros sin poder escribirla?.

• In 1999 the songwriters' society BMI worked out it was the fourth most-performed song of the twentieth century: around seven million logged performances.

• In 2015 the United States Library of Congress added King's original to its National Recording Registry, five weeks before he died. The same recording had once been an offcut at the end of a session.

Classroom activities

• Play: the whole turnaround in G major — G, Em, C, D, on a loop. On ukulele and electric guitar these are four easy shapes and none of them needs a barre. On bass, start with just the note each chord is named after (G, E, C, D), then move to the full line once that is automatic. Drums: only what is needed to hold it up.

• Sing: the verse fits in six notes. A comfortable place to sing together while voices are changing, because nobody has to stretch. The chorus goes higher; save it until the verse is solid.

• Analyse: two questions with checkable answers. First, with the song playing, count how many beats each of the four chords lasts. Do they all last the same? Second, if you play it in G major and the chords are G, Em, C and D, write the Roman numeral for each one.

• Create: take those same four degrees, I – vi – IV – V, move them to another key and write a melody over them that sounds nothing like this one. Steal the skeleton, not the song.

Key vocabulary

• Bass line — línea de bajo: la figura que el bajo repite por debajo de todo
• Degree — grado (el número del acorde dentro de la escala, en cifra romana)
• Chord progression — progresión de acordes
• Key — tonalidad
• Doo-wop — doo-wop: el estilo vocal de los años cincuenta que repitió esta vuelta de acordes

Resources

Official video — RHINO, the label that holds the catalogue.

Guitar tutorial — guitarraviva, step by step, in Spanish.

Ukulele tutorial — Louise Anderson, in G major, the key you will play it in class.

Bass tutorial — BassBassBass. Slow, and it takes the whole line apart.

Drums — Claude Hoffmann. A simplified beginner version rather than a copy of the record, with the score posted free.

• Tab — the button opens it in Songsterr.