Long Tall Texan: stops, breaks, and punchlines

A footnote to my previous post

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Philippe (correspondent in France) detects similarities between She's About A Mover by Texas band Sir Douglas Quintet (February 1965, #13 USA) and Long Tall Texan, and by golly I think he's right. 

Compare, for example, these verse-endings:

1. Murry Kellum - Long Tall Texan (1963)

Well people look at me and say (pause)

Hurrah hurrah 

is that your horse? (instrumental backing resumes)

Listen to clip [wav, 6 secs]

2. Sir Douglas Quintet - She's About A Mover (1965)

If you have love and conversation (pause)

Whoa, yeah, 

what'd I say? (instrumental backing resumes)

Listen to clip [wav, 7 secs]

This way of pausing at the end of the verse is also heard in The Coasters' Searchin' (March 1957, #3 USA), written by Jerry Leiber & Mike Stoller:

3. The Coasters - Searchin' (1957)

But I'm like the Northwest Mounties (pause)

You know I'll bring her in some day (instrumental backing resumes)

Listen to clip [wav, 10 secs]

This appears to be a particular use of a musical device called stop time, also known as a break. It is heard in ragtime, jazz and blues compositions, sometimes as a series of breaks throughout a verse as in Muddy Waters' Hoochie Coochie Man, and in Elvis Presley's Trouble, another Leiber & Stoller composition. 

It was much used by Leiber & Stoller as a punchline (their word) at the end of a verse, for example in Coasters hits Charlie Brown, (1959, #3 USA) - Why is everybody always pickin' on me?- and Young Blood (1957 #8 USA, B-side of Searchin', written with Doc Pomus) - Look a-there Look a-there! Look a-there.

Michael Campbell, in Popular music in America : the beat goes on (2009), describes the phenomenon as it appears in Young Blood:

... breaks that showcase the Coasters' trademark humorous asides that drop down the vocal ladder, with bass singer Bobby Nunn getting in the last word ... 

In an episode of John Gilliland's Pop Chronicles featuring Leiber & Stoller, they discuss their writing process including

... the breaks and so on, especially with the joke material, you know, where the timing and the punch lines were so critical.