This weekend, Anne Litt played a cover that totally captured my attention. It was LA band The Decoders taking on the classic track “Walk on By”, with vocals by Noelle Scaggs, from Fitz and the Tantrums.
The song is already amazing, but their dub-reggae spin is seriously irresistible. People have been emailing me trying to track it down and here it is, available for download!
Stream “Walk on By” — The Decoders feat. Noelle Scaggs
We’ve been fans of this band for some time. It’s a project from respected LA musicians Itai Shapira, Adam Berg and Todd Simon (trumpeter/arranger for Mayer Hawthorne, TV On The Radio, etc.), who have been in our studios as part of various other musical outlets.
I spoke to Itai about how this all came about:
“I was approached by Richard Rudolph, Minnie Riperton’s husband, producer and co-writer (and studio partner with Larry Klein, a Grammy Award-winning producer and bassist whom I was working for at the time).
Rudolph works with one of the largest music publisher’s in the world, Music Sales. They have a catalog that includes music from the 1920’s to the present, everything from classical to doo wop, jazz and blues to rock and rap, R&B to pop.
Burt Bacharach’s music is also in the catalog, so aside from doing songs from Minnie’s catalog we decided to take advantage of all this great music and do our own versions of these timeless classics.
“Walk On By” in particular has always been a childhood favorite of mine, especially the Isaac Hayes version with its awesome string arrangements and horn stabs.
It also happens to be one of Noelle’s favorite songs growing up as well. She was the first one that came to mind when we were thinking of potential singers.”
Check out more about the Decoders here.
RR