The Smiley Smile Message Board

a few nights ago, in one of those dreams that you wake from feeling elated, then instantly crushed, brian sat at the piano and sang me the whole of the vocal line to Trombone Dixie.  (as is often the mad way with dreams, the laws of physics were rather elastic, and he was able to sing all the bb's backing vocals at the same time.)  damned if i can remember a single note of it.  but it got me thinking.

is there any record of a song having been written for this backing track?  i'm struck that it would be unusual for him to cut an elaborate track without having had a song already in place for it.  (or would it?)

can any of you groovers help?

Its all on the Remember the Zoo album :)

But seriously......

I dont know of any lyrics or anything else being considered for Trombone Dixie. I don't think the melody lends itself well to a planned vocal to my ear. I consider it an instrumental experiment in much the same way that the PS title track and Lets Go Away For A While developed and evolved. This one just fell by the wayside for a few decades, nice bonus track though.

'Had to phone ya' is based on it, so perhaps the original melody was along those lines (ie: not that great)

I think "Trombone Dixie" and also "Three Blind Mice" were Brian experimenting in '65 to see if he could pull of something like Pet Sounds.  I think they were his ways of fine tuning his abilities in the studio to arrange strings and horns to his own liking.  Even though it was pretty much abandoned by Brian, Trombone Dixie is one of my favorite BB instrumentals.

Trombone Dixie is like the peak (of course right up there with LGAFW and PS) of his genius. It combines the sound he was doing at the time. I find it to be quite beautiful.

TD based on 'had to phone ya'?  blimey.  i could have sworn 'had to phone ya' was based on 'love to say da da'.  mind you, now you mention it, i can hear it...

(idiot.)  of course, i meant ''had to phone ya' based on TD?'