Pioneering Pop: The Melodica on Record

July 2020 Update!

You may not know the melodica by name, but you might have seen one or, more likely, heard one at some point in your life. Essentially, the melodica is a wind-powered keyboard that sounds much like a harmonica:

Wikipedia tells me that the “modern version” of the melodica (also known as the “pianica” or “blow organ”) was invented by Hohner in the 1950s, although its more primitive forebears go back to 19th-century Italy, apparently.

I first encountered the instrument in the 1980s via Joe Jackson‘s ska-inflected “Pretty Boys” and the great side-two opening track off New Order‘s Power, Corruption & Lies album, “Your Smiling Face.” Around the same time, someone lent me an album by Augustus Pablo, a dub reggae musician and producer who almost single-handedly popularized the melodica and inspired others to see it as something beyond simply being a “kiddie instrument.”

I am also told that composer, Steve Reich, was the first to use the melodica as a ‘serious’ musical instrument on his 1966 composition entitled, “Melodica” (which would be released 20 years later on the 3-LP compilation of experimental works, Music from Mills, by Terry Riley, Morton Subotnick, and Ramon Sender, among many others.).

Moreover, I have discovered another musical artist who committed the melodica to tape around the same time as Reich but utilized the instrument within a composition that was aimed at a broader audience. Who, you might ask, first pushed the boundaries of pop to include the lowly melodica?

LP cover

Germany

Incredibly, it’s The Bee Gees. Their second album – originally released in Australia in 1966 under the title, Monday’s Rain (later Spicks and Specks, but repackaged here in the States as Rare, Precious & Beautiful on Atco) – includes a catchy, Beatles-y composition, “Tint of Blue,” that features an instrumental break whose haunting melody is played on the melodica:

“Tint of Blue“

The Bee Gees (1966)

In December 1968, Atco issued a special edition 6-song 7-inch EP of Rare, Precious & Beautiful on which “Tint of Blue” served, fittingly, as the closing track.