Four Songs, All Different

Driving home the other day and heard, for what I believe to be the first time, a song called "Walk Between Raindrops" performed by Donald Fagen. Not ever hearing the song before, it should be no surprise to acknowledge that I had no idea who Donald Fagen was. Ah, well, I have learned. Even at my age, though, Fagen is probably someone whose name I should have had some familiarity with, given the span of his career. All that aside, "Raindrops" is a happy little tune.



As I often do after hearing a song on the Tube of You, I looked at the other selections offered on the page. Well, I found this. It's Michael McDonald doing "Lonely Teardrops", a classic, old song. The piano player is Fagen.



I decided to change gears and hear something really different. The Beat Farmers fit the bill.



And we finished up with Junior Brown. I really dig the Beach Boys reaction to Brown's take on their song.

Dad, Louie, Ferlin, a Bucket, and Music

I like my parents' music. I like it more every day.

I don't know exactly how to explain it, I am no musical scholar. I can only say that the rumbling bass and incessant riffs of my youth have receded into the background and the melodies, rhythms, and the voices (oh, the voices!) of the 1930's and 1940's are more front and center.

I got a Louis Prima CD for my birthday and am having a blast listening to this crazy guy. I was introduced to Prima by my dad. Not formally, of course, but because Dad had one of his albums. I don't remember ever hearing it, but I'm sure the folks listened at one time or another. Lately I've been hearing more of Prima as I listen to a station here that is devoted to this kind of music. Prima is compared to Louis Armstrong and for good reason, I suppose. Prima was a New Orleans guy and you can hear it in the music. Prima was Italian, which I did not know, and when I hear him, sometimes I hear Dean Martin coming out.

Prima's style could be described as frenetic, the album's liner notes say he and his band essentially invented the lounge act. Here, from the Tube of You, is Prima, Keely Smith (at one time married to him), and saxophonist Sam Butera, in all of their glory:

Keely Smith's job, besides her great voice, was to provide a stoic contrast to the antics of Prima and his orchestra - it was all part of the act.

Dad also liked country music and while I dip into that less liberally, there's a quite a bit of it that is growing on me, particularly the sounds of country swing and the rockabilly stuff. Dad went to school with country singer Ferlin Husky, who passed away just a few months ago. During the years when Ferlin was singing in Branson, Mom and Dad would try to go once or twice a year. Ferlin would be talking and ask if anybody there was from home and Dad would raise his hand and Ferlin would say, "Hello, Paul!" and then they'd have a conversation right in front of everybody. Here's Ferlin and Paul a few years earlier:

Ferlin is #20 and Dad is #22. This past July was the 12th anniversary of Dad's home-going and that caused me think about those two guys again.

One time during my childhood, I was in the back yard and for some reason I was talking to Dad about a bucket - either I was looking for one or lost one, or something. Dad grinned and said, "Does it have a hole in it?" I didn't get the reference and tried to explain what I needed and that I hadn't said anything about a hole. He just explained that there was a song about a bucket with a hole in it.

Well sure there was, a Hank Williams song to be exact. A lot of people (Robert Plant and Jimmy Page!) have covered it, but I'll give you Van Morrison, which might be my favorite version.

70's Saturday Today

On the way home from hunting and gathering, I had the radio tuned to a station that features music from the 70's on Saturday. Get this - they call it "70's Saturday." Pretty handy, I think.

At one point, the Boz Scaggs song 'Lido Shuffle' came on. I had not heard this song in a long, long time and it immediately took me back to a period in my life. On a similar note, I remember the MASH episode where Hawkeye suffers from an allergy and other symptoms and Sidney, the shrink, comes to help him. There's something in there about smells being a powerful memory trigger. Maybe. But songs can do it too.

So, 'Lido Shuffle' stirs up memories of listening to rock music way too loud at 'The Ranch, ' cruising around Missouri State, nee SMSU, showing the campus to a guy from out of town who, as a young father, was trying to persuade his toddling son not to admire Darth Vader so. I told him I liked Vader and he said, "Yeah, but you're not four."

So, what does 'Lido Shuffle' remind you of?

This is a live version and not the one of 30 years ago and Boz obviously can't hit the high notes anymore, but I find it compelling nonetheless.

Let's Put On A Show!

Julie Andrews, as Mary Poppins, once famously said that a spoonful of sugar makes the medicine go down. More precisely, she sang it. Along those same lines, I put on some music today while I was transforming dirty dishes into apparently clean dishes.

My music of choice today was Steve Tyrell's "A New Standard". It is a fine collection of old standards, songs that have stood the test of time and, while one may not know every word of every song, almost everybody recognizes something about them.

One of the songs on the album is "I'm In The Mood For Love" and it makes me smile when I hear it because the reason I know the song is not because I heard Frank or Bing or Dean do it. No, it was another well-known crooner who taught me this tune. Maybe he taught it to you, too.

Also on the disk is "I'm Through With Love" which I learned from the same source. I apologize in advance for poor video quality, but the fond memories will probably serve to compensate for it.

Friday Night Fun

As I write, there are two lady guests of my wife's in the other room and the three of them are preparing name tags for a ladies function at church next week. The frequent laughter erupting from the dining room is enough to make a man curious. However, the Natural Order of Things says I will keep my distance. It wouldn't be a problem to go in there, but it would be, ah, . . . different.

While we are on the topic of guests of the lady persuasion, my lovely bride hosted 10 or so last Tuesday for Bible study. While they held their confab in the living room, I took the opportunity to have the oil changed. In our car. I'm not sure what the topic was the women were discussing, but when I returned, trying ever so hard to not make a disturbance, they all rose in unison when I walked in the door. I will say the notion of being in the wrong house crossed my mind. But no, they cooked up the little display for fun!

For the last thirty years, or so, I have harbored the idea that learning guitar would be a neat thing to do. And these many years later, it remains a harbored idea. There were a couple of times I nearly set sail, but alas. A few days ago I came across this video of a young man which causes me to think about starting to learn AND abandoning the idea all at once! I trust you will understand my meaning when you watch.

And, this one is amazing.

Happy Friday!

It Occurs To Me

It occurs to me that if Adultery and Children Born Out of Wedlock were eradicated from the country overnight the "creative team" at the Jerry Springer and Maury Povich shows would have no ideas.

It occurs to me that Susan Boyle's entire experience on 'Britain's Got Talent' was a dream! I'm pretty late finding out about this, I think, but I've watched it three times and get tears every time.

It occurs to me that Rick Ankiel has reached his ceiling as an everyday ballplayer, he's as good as he's ever going to be. If the Cardinals could get a real second baseman or a decent reliever for him, they should make the deal and not think twice.

It occurs to me that all of Pink Floyd’s music sounds like the soundtrack for our lives after the apocalypse. Hearing their work makes me imagine a fleet of spaceships laden with our children fleeing the cataclysm and who, like the infant Clark Kent, are seeking to start life over on some new world. I can hardly think of any music that tempts me to depression more.

125. Beautiful Music Together

I’m generally a happy person, so when I listen to music, I want music that, at a minimum, does not drain my happiness.

Until recently, I put a great deal of stock in ‘styles’ of music or ‘types’ of music I liked or didn't like. Something like “I hate country” or “I hate disco”, and I would use these 'opinions' to guide my music selection. But this approach is often informed merely by peer pressure or the ever fickle culture and is so insufficient as to almost always miss the point.

What is most important is my heart, the furnace of my soul and source of all my outward action, including my mood and attitude. Obviously, my heart’s health is primarily dependent on being happy in the Lord each day and then, as the day goes on, I will encounter stuff that either aids my happiness or doesn’t, like music.

That said, I’ve decided that ‘genres’ of music is just not enough information alone for picking music and I suppose that's not really groundbreaking. But the motive is the happiness of my soul no matter what the alleged 'genre'. Where I can get fooled is by the memories that some music evokes and sometimes that's enough to trick you into 'liking' a tune, but not because you really like it, but because it reminds you of a time or a place or people. And that's not the point.

The point is, does the music cooperate with my current happiness or drain me of it?

Now, what's really interesting is my wife wrote about this very topic on her blog today and neither of us knew what the other was doing!

Stuff like that makes me happy, too!