jitterbug – Tony Shimkin speaks about unreleased demo



Madonna goes “all the way” as Mae Mordabito, jittering her bug with co-star Eddie Mekka – A League of Their Own director, Penny Marshall’s co-star in Laverne and Shirley

Exactly five years ago, this very week, I visited the Copyright Office of the Library of Congress in Washington, DC to listen to a number of Madonna’s rare unreleased demo tapes.

One or rather, two of the most interesting tapes on file at the LOC are what has become known in Madonna myth as “The Rain Tapes”. If you haven’t heard of them before, “The Rain Tapes” are two cassette tapes containing a number of demos from the Erotica album that were filed at the LOC by Madonna’s Erotica co-producer, Shep Pettibone – the existence of the tapes were first brought to light by my old friend, Bruce Baron in his 1999 article “Madonna – From Genesis to Revelations” in US magazine, Goldmine.

On one of the two Maxwell UD II 90 minute audio cassette tapes on which the Erotica demos are recorded (LOC reference: Pau.1.605.641/643), in between two demos of Thief of Hearts is a clip of a song called Jitterbug. The song is listed as “Jitterbug” Rough 1/17/92 on the handwritten cassette cover, spelt incorrectly with a “G” and corrected with a bold “J”. All songs on the tape are credited to S.Pettibone/M.Ciccone/T.Shimkin (Shep Pettibone, Madonna and Tony Shimkin).

When Bruce Baron visited the LOC, he was given a number of hours to listen to and review the demos. I was given permission to review the demos over a four day period, so my notes about the song differ slightly from Bruce’s original online report:

Madonna sings in a cartoonish/I’m Breathless style, “Jitter, b-b-b-b-b-bug, Get up, u-u-u-u-u-up”. The music is like a modern take on the swing music of the 1940s, but incorporates some house style piano and synth horns. The music continues and Madonna mock scolds in her best Cry Baby “Nu Yoik” voice, “That’s not how you do it!” (Do what – the jitterbug?) The music continues and Madonna says, “Is this gonna go on forever?” no less than twice and then says, “Somebody end this damn thing,” continuing, “There were some cute ideas in there”.

A few days after my trip to the LOC, I interviewed Madonna’s Erotica co-producer/songwriter, Tony Shimkin, at his office/studio in New York:

thebeatswithin: I heard a snippet of a song called Jitterbug when I visited the Library of Congress, which was on the same tape as the other Erotica demos, but sounds nothing like any of those songs.

“It was an attempt to do something for the A League of Their Own soundtrack where there was a jitterbug dance scene in the film and it was an attempt to try to do a jitterbug in somewhat of a modern way. So, it was a real, rough demo idea of how it would be and envisioning it.

Actually, if it had have been carried out, it probably would played out like the actual piece of music that was used in the movie. It was very Big Band oriented and, if it were to have been produced, I think it would have been produced with a full Big Band and a full horn section and all that.

We were trying to think conceptually was there a way to do a jitterbug in a cool kind of contemporary way and give it to her and see what kind of lyrics and melody she would come up with and it was never really explored beyond the initial demo music.
thebeatswithin: I only heard about 30 seconds of music. Was that as far as the idea went?

“Pretty much. There was just a really rough sketch – “How about something like this? Is this what you’re trying to do?” I think we were in the middle of so many other things at the time and maybe there wasn’t a necessity for it in the movie.

It was around the time we were doing This Used to Be My Playground and the Jitterbug thing was an idea then. We went to meet with her in Chicago when she was doing the movie, so that’s when that was done.”

thebeatswithin: Did you record that demo with Madonna in Chicago?

“No, we recorded This Used to Be My Playground in Los Angeles and Jitterbug, we did in New York at Shep’s house.”

Click here to watch the scene from A League of Their Own, that inspired Jitterbug. Incidentally, the scene uses the song Flying Home, written by “The King of Swing” Benny Goodman, with Lionel Hampton, Sid Robin and Sydney Robin, and is performed by Doc’s Rhythm Cats.

in the evidence of her brilliance – Tony Shimkin speaks

Shimkin and Ciccone - getting their "beats within" out in the studio





In July 2006 I flew to New York City and met with Tony Shimkin at his office at Noble Music, a company that he established back in the early 1990s. From 1989 to 1995, Tony worked extensively for Madonna – from the Like a Prayer singles remixes, to Vogue, The Immaculate Collection, Erotica and the Bedtime Stories single remixes.

On a typically balmy summer's afternoon, in Tony’s office/studio (complete with Tony’s impressive RIAA Diamond certification for The Immaculate Collection proudly mounted on the wall), I spoke with him about his amazing career and his work with Madonna – which included an impromptu instrumental performance of Deeper and Deeper by Tony on his unplugged electric guitar. Towards the end of the interview, Tony spoke about Madonna’s song writing:

“I’d say Patrick Leonard’s best work is Madonna. William Orbit’s best work is Madonna. Mirwais’ best work is Madonna. Stephen Bray, everybody... and Shep Pettibone is best known for Madonna. I think what she does is, whatever you do, she adds a melody that’s on par, or if not, brings it to a higher level. A lot of these songs that any of these people, including myself, had written, somebody else could write a melody to it and it would be a totally forgetful song.”

the beats within: Critics have often applauded Madonna for being incredibly discerning when it comes to choosing the right collaborators; however it often comes across as a bit of a backhanded compliment, with an assumption that the credit for her music lies elsewhere.

“If you take any of those tracks and take her contribution off it, it would have a different melody and lyrics and it would never be a hit. I’m sure she can get airplay because of who she is, but people are singing her songs to this day. I have written a piece of music that I did and given it to three different singers and you’d be amazed at the difference between what each person could contribute and where one can just be head and shoulders above the others.

But what Madonna brings to a song is so unique to herself. It’s her voice too. She’s not the greatest singer in the world, but if Cathy Dennis were to sing it, it wouldn’t be as successful. It would be successful and it would still be a great pop song, but it’s the melodies she (Madonna) writes.

Deeper and Deeper is a cool piece of music, but without that melody and without that energy that is added to it. It’s really the opposite – people think that so-and-so wrote the music. The music is not the hard part to write. The hard part to write is the lyrics and the melody. That’s the hardest thing to write in the world. If I, or these other people, could write lyrics and melodies like her then these people would be supplying her with finished songs and she would just be singing them. But that’s not the case if anything she’s made their songs come to life and made them notable because she put a great lyric and melody on it. I really think it’s the opposite.

There are a million tracks out there by artists now and if you took their vocals off and gave it to her to write to it would be a huge hit. It’s as simple as that. It’s one of the hardest things to write a memorable melody, like Beatles songs. So many of their songs are just simple Blues progressions but listen to what they wrote over it, it’s legendary.”

Click here to find out more about Tony at the Noble Music website

Goh Hotoda – we love you

This week, 21 years ago, Vogue was still giving good face, spending in its eighth week inside the Top 10 of the UK singles chart. The song had already been at #1 for a month – not to mention #1 in 30 other countries!

When I interviewed Goh Hotoda in 2007, he told me about mixing the song and coming up with the song’s synth string introduction.

“Even for me, Vogue was my monumental work. As my career was Chicago house music, it was only ever dance music and never crossed over to pop music. The pop music style in 1990 was still white bread candy pop with lots of reverb and many expensive effects all over the place. Our work on Vogue was very contemporary – so simple and very dry. There was nothing like it then - now, the beat style is so popular that everybody is making music like that. But that was the kind of music that I really wanted to work on for such a long time.

Madonna’s original aim was to release the song as special 12” record and so she gave us total freedom. The song was originally produced a bit different at first. I made a different introduction to the mix and recreated a different version only for club play (Bette Davis Dub). It was standard that I make a dub mix after everything was done and Tony (Shimkin) would edit them later. Shep and Madonna really liked the new introduction that I made and so we went back into the studio to re-make the video version based on my Dub Mix and Tony’s edit. The song became an untouchable hit.”

Click here to listen to Vogue (Bette Davis Dub), as mixed by Goh