Ay Güey! Woke up on an upswelling cyclothymic wave. (I was determined to use that in a sentence. ;-) The gift of your songs is making me giddy. It feels like the arrival of one of those "missing pieces" falling into a place of sheer joy with no thought of competence (well little) or commerce. It's a Christmas morning moment.
Backstory: before I even came to SB, I had a conversation with a singer friend about where I might get involved with singing. Prospects looked dim ... church or hospice groups singing songs I didn't want to sing.
Back further, I went to a 4-room country school, two grades per room. In the 7th grade, I had the best teacher of my entire school career, but she was forced out because she didn't have a teaching certificate. She was replaced in the 8th grade by the worst teacher of my school career. However, one of the gifts of that bad teacher was singing. We sang a lot ... when we weren't memorizing the 105 counties in Kansas ... she was that bad. Somehow, I wound up doing a graduation ceremony duet. Perhaps a first brave moment.
Back even further, the first thing I remember wanting to be when I grew up was an "opera singer." As I remember, we've both expressed a dislike for opera and my parents definitely weren't opera buffs, so I have no idea where this idea came from, but I remember walking around outside the house shouting/singing as loud as I could and thinking it was opera.
It makes me giggle to see singing come back into my life ... and actually takes me into a state of delighted bafflement about how life operates. Who knows where this will go but it does make me want to focus on a more playful hero's journey.
And, one of the songs we learned that bad year of school has stayed with me for sixty-plus years. It's not a "favorite" but it's catchy so I'm including the YouTube for it (it's a late 30s, early 40s song and a tribute to YouTube that there are several versions of it.) The lyrics are suitably silly. Here's one version:
Long way of saying thanks for your gift of songs. I'm delighted by all three and look forward to playing with them.
EWR lovely post, your enthusiasm for music comes through and it's delightful to see you going back and identifying those early occasions when it came to the foreground.
In my case, I imprinted on Elvis and the Everly Brothers, but there was a little encouragement to try to imitate them, so I was content mostly to sing along to the 78 and 45 rpm records I was beginning to collect.
The Beatles ignited my thirst for more participatory playing and showing us that you didn't have to be a studio grade musician to crank out your own versions of the pop hits. I taught myself guitar as well as I could buying sheet music or just listening carefully to the tunes I was hearing. It more or less worked but I hit a pretty solid wall in terms of my ability to take my playing to the next level. Unlike some of my friends, I didn't have the ability to hear a guitar part and figure out how to play it. So I stuck with the strumming style that got me through most situations.
In the subsequent years I played whenever the opportunity presented itself and that in turn, was a function of who I happen to be hanging around with. The opportunities to play came and went, and along the way I tried my hand at piano and flute, all with the thought in mind of being a multi-instrumentalist who could make my own albums.
At some point in the 80s I put my guitar away and stayed away for the better part of 25 years. There seem to be no where to take it. I only returned to it eight or nine years ago at the invitation of my friend Wayne, who built a studio in his basement.
The challenge in adapting songs like Elmers Tune from a big band format to more of an acoustic guitar format are in the arrangements. You have to find a way to compensate for all the lush background music that provides a platform for the crooning. It certainly can be done but I have found it most advantageous to look for acoustic, folk- oriented versions of those songs where somebody else has already done the adaptations.
Here's a pretty terrible version of Elmer's Tune on electric guitar that could be adapted. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YJtCMm0ij2Q
JW: The first notes of this version just made me laugh out loud and think of my mom who was a country and honky tonk woman and loved steel guitar, which I thought this version was going to be. She was also a sing around the house type. Interesting that this should be connecting me to her.
I have dabbled at piano, clarinet, banjo, and hammered dulcimer. Even though I enjoy studying music theory, it's still basically a mystery ... another unconquered language like Spanish.
Although Elmer's Tune is fun and a 60-year ear worm, my first preference is folk and a motley assortment of sing along songs.
I am calling you. I also get obsessed by songs occasionally and play them endlessly over periods, but they're probably not singable for me. Not quite sure why these songs fall into that category, but here's one that stayed on that chart for a very long time. Maybe because I like the movie, too.
Thanks for your addition to this post. I almost missed it because there's no system notice when a post has changed. I look forward to more music.
ReplyDeleteAlso added one of my obsession songs: I am calling you from Badgad Cafe. I think I'm going to make a post of all of them and see if I can find a thread connecting them.
ReplyDelete