in memory of neil hefti and levi stubbs

The composer Neil Hefti wrote some of Count Basie's most propulsive tracks, and had a varied and illustrious career that spanned jazz, pop, and film soundtracks, but what he is most famous for are the themes he crafted for "Batman" and "The Odd Couple."

Sammy Cahn wrote lyrics to Hefti's "Odd Couple" theme, which weren't used in either the film or tv series, but I am citing them here so you can sing along to this swingin' version by Billy May.

No matter where they go they are known as the couple.
They're never seen alone so they're known as the couple.

As I've indicated they are never quite separated,
They are peas in a pod. Don't you think that it's odd?

Their habits, I confess, none can guess, with the couple.
If one says no it's yes, more or less, with the couple.

But they're laugh provoking; yet they really don't know they're joking.
Don't you find, when love is blind It's kind of odd.

Levi Stubbs' voice came barreling out of a transistor radio with such ferocity that it was startling; it wasn't simply that it was rich, and loud, but my god, the urgency. And never was it more powerful than when it was desperate. Listen to "Bernadette," or "7 Rooms of Gloom," or "Shake Me, Wake Me," or "Ask The Lonely" or "Standing In The Shadows of Love." This is a voice that could tear walls down, but in loneliness, or possessiveness, or paranoia, it's a voice that also trembles. At Motown, only David Ruffin was his equal at that hypermasculine sensitivity (Smokey, Marvin, and Eddie Kendricks did vulnerability from a different angle). Phil Spector called "Reach Out (I'll Be There)" Motown doing Dylan, and you can kind of hear that, the way Levi lifts the ends of his phrases like Dylan does on "Like A Rolling Stone."

And here is Billy Bragg singing "Levi Stubbs' Tears":