music Archives - Page 25 of 261 - Ramblin' with Roger

July rambling: Dr. SCOTUS

Gleichschaltung

Dr. SCOTUS Will Now See Your Next Patient – Ron Harman King fears our healthcare lies with those in black robes, not white coats.

Cory Doctorow: Unpersoned about romance writer K Renee and others locked out of their Google docs

CrowdStrike blames test software for taking down 8.5 million Windows machines.

Teaching the Bible in Public Schools

Disputing Errors on Your Tenant Background Check Report

Succeeding in the Post-Wayfair Landscape: Top 3 Trends in Sales Tax Six Years On (yes, this is interesting to a geeky business librarian)

The Nation’s Data at Risk: Meeting America’s Information Needs for the 21st Century

Why Paper Checks Refuse To Die

A neurological disorder stole her voice. Jennifer Wexton takes it back on the House floor.

Quieting Your Inner Critic – Self-Compassion and Other Methods

Navy exonerates Black sailors unjustly punished in 1944 after a deadly California port explosion.

Bob Newhart Was an Everyman With a Comic Voice Like No Other. The 25 best TV series finales ever. Newhart is #22 and should be much higher. I watched him on Ed Sullivan and his three CBS shows

Whitney Rybeck, ‘Friday the 13th’ Actor and Crash Test Dummy in Seat Belt Ads, Dies at 79

The Worm Charmers: A Florida family coaxes earthworms from the forest floor

Homicide: Life on the Street Finally Gets Streaming Home at Peacock. This was one of my favorite programs.

Oscars: What To Do When You Lose

Now I Know: The Dirty Lyric Snuck Onto The Radio and The Pencil That Told Kids To Do Something They Shouldn’t and A Mountainous Problem With Instant Noodles

Kelly and Sunday Stealing

SSA

“Soon, you will no longer be able to sign in to your online Social Security account using your Social Security username and password. To access Social Security online services, including my Social Security, you will need to create a Login.gov or ID.me account.”

This is a real thing, reported on AARP and CBS Mornings.

“The change affects about 46 million of the roughly 86 million people who have My Social Security accounts, according to an SSA spokesperson.”

POLLYTICKS

How Joe Biden launched his career by beating two unbeatable Republicans

Thank You, President Biden

Weekly Sift: Resolutions and The Two Kinds of Unity, in which I was introduced to the word Gleichschaltung. “It’s an old German engineering term for when you wire a bunch of electrical circuits together under a common master switch. It got applied to German politics in 1933, for reasons that you may recall from history books.” Also, the Kamala surge and Couches, Cat Ladies, and J. D. Vance.

djt Returns to Bad Form — and Gives the Democrats Hope

Immigration, Crime, Politics, and lies and Fact-checking djt’s lies during his RNC acceptance speech

RNC & “Migrant Crime”: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver

Demagoguery repeats itself

djt Sells Sneakers, Coins, and Trading Cards Imprinted with his Bloody Face

How Kamala’s name is pronounced; even a child can do it

From way back on July 15: ‘Terrified’ – Americans in NZ react to Trump shooting, Biden uncertainty

Borowitz Reports repeats: New Conspiracy Theory Links Wide Availability of Guns to People Getting Shot

MUSIC

Anything Goes – Peter Sprague featuring Rebecca Jade

Look At Me, I’m MTG!– A Randy Rainbow Song Parody

John Mayall, British Blues-Rock Legend and 2024 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Inductee, Dies at 90. Room To Move

Flivver Ten Million by Frederick Converse, performance is by the Buffalo Philharmonic,

Coverville 1495: Cover Stories for Marc Cohn and Simple Minds and 1496: The Trevor Horn Cover Story II

The Great Curve – Talking Heads

K-Chuck Radio: Gaze into the crystal ball …

Coast -Kim Deal

You’ve Got To Hide Your Love Away– Peter Sprague, featuring Allison Adams Tucker.

Patterns – Laura Marling

Several versions of Sit Down, You’re Rocking The Boat here and here and here and here (1992 Tonys – Nicely-Nicely (Walter Bobbie) plus Nathan Lane and J.K. Simmons) and here and here (current London revival) and probably more here

Knee Deep Blues – Caleb Caudle:

Breath Out – Dawn Richard and Spencer Zahn –

This LOST 1986 Song Went Viral…But for Years-NOBODY Knew WHO Sang it—UNTIL Today!–Professor of Rock

Middle-Road Singles of 1964

different Ray Charles

Billboard began compiling an adult contemporary chart in July 1961. I’m calling this Middle-Road Singles of 1964. What they specifically called the category kept changing.

It went from Easy Listening to Middle-Road Singles in November 1962 to Pop-Standard Singles in May 1964, and back to Middle-Road Singles in November 1964.

Four of the five biggest AC hits were also #1 on the pop charts.

Hello, Dolly – Louis Armstrong, #1 AC for nine weeks AC, #1 for one week pop

Everybody Loves Somebody – Dean Martin, #1 AC for eight weeks, #1 pop for one week. Dean’s NBC variety show began in September 1965 through May 1964, and this was the theme song for the program.

Ringo – Lorne Greene, #1 AC for six weeks, #1 pop for one week. Greene, a Canadian, played patriarch Ben Cartright on the TV western Bonanza starting in the autumn of 1959. After Bonanza moved from Saturday night to the sweet Sunday night slot, the ratings went from #17 (autumn 1960) to #2, #4, #2 (’63-’64), to #1 for three years running.

We’ll Sing In The Sunshine – Gale Garnett, #1 AC for 6 weeks, #4 pop

There! I Said It Again – Bobby Vinton, #1 AC for five weeks, #1 for four weeks pop

Fava – Al Hirt, #1 AC for 4 weeks, #4 pop. Instrumental. The theme of the 1966 ABC show The Green Hornet with Van Williams and Brice Lee was an arrangement of Flight Of The Bumble Bee played by Hirt

Love Me With All Your Heart (Cuando Caliente El Sol) – The Ray Charles Singers, #1 AC for four weeks AC, #3 pop. This Ray Charles was born Charles Raymond Offenberg in Chicago.

People – Barbra Streisand, #1 AC for three weeks, #5 pop

Teen idol

For You – Rick Nelson, #1 AC for two weeks, #6 pop. The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet aired on ABC from 1952 to 1966, with the family, including Rick’s brother David playing themselves.

The Girl From Ipanema – Stan Getz/Astrud Gilberto, #1 AC for two weeks, #5 pop

The Door Is Still Open To My Heart – Dean Martin, #1 AC for two weeks, #6 pop

Navy Blue – Diane Renay, #1 AC for one week, #6 pop

Interestingly, though they dominated the pop charts in 1964, The Beatles were not represented on the AC roster. They didn’t appear on the AC charts until Something, #17 in 1969. Their only AC #1 was Let It Be in 1970.

Lydster: Boggled

Wade In The Water

I am boggled by my daughter’s prowess at the word game Boggle. In 2017, I wrote about the game itself. Then, in 2021, I noted how much better my daughter plays.

Now, she beats me. Every time. I will have a small lead at some point, but she always comes back. She usually beats her mother, too. But my worst results happen when I play both of them. Each of them finds different words that I write down.

Of course, she used words I didn’t see, but also ones I didn’t really know, such as grava and weap.

My wife and I were also boggled by the tattoo she got this month in honor of the late feline Midnight. The design she developed was based on his photo, plus the moon and stars. No, we did not know that was going to happen.

God’s gonna trouble the water.

I was also mildly surprised to hear her singing Wade In The Water around the house. Usually, she’s into a song from 1990s soul artists. Indeed, I did not know she knew the song. I asked her how she learned it, but we got more into the song’s derivation.

Some of her friends suggested it was NOT tied to Harriet Tubman sending a message to enslaved people escaping their bondage. The National Parks Service agrees: “Tubman sang two songs while operating her rescue missions: “Go Down Moses,” and “Bound for the Promised Land.” However, I can find several references stating otherwise. The song is generally considered a recognition that one should venture into even unknown waters because God will be there.

The song was famously included in the 1901 “New Jubilee Songs as Sung by the Fisk Jubilee Singers. The book was published by Frederick J. Work and his brother John Wesley Work Jr., a teacher at the HBCU Fisk University in Nashville who spent years collecting and promulgating songs of this nature.” Here’s a later iteration of the group performing the song.

BlackHistory360 and a United Methodist minister describe the tale’s biblical roots. While it does reference the famous Moses Crossing the Red Sea story in Exodus, the heart is a New Testament tale.

The Gospel

“The refrain… is based upon the narrative of John 5:2-9. It is the story of the pool by the Sheep Gate—Bethzatha in Hebrew. A portion of this passage follows: “Now there is at Jerusalem by the sheep market a pool, which is called in the Hebrew tongue Bethesda… In these lay a great multitude of impotent folk, of blind, halt, withered, waiting for the moving of the water. For an angel went down at a certain season into the pool, and troubled the water: whosoever then first after the troubling of the water stepped in was made whole of whatsoever disease he had .”

It has been embraced by generations of Civil Rights activists. When I was growing up, I thought of it initially as a response to the insane reaction some white communities had to black kids swimming in the local municipal pool or even a particular section of a lake, which I wrote about here; bizarrely, in 2009, there was a then-contemporary example.

Wade In The Water:

Brother John Sellers

Ella Jenkins

The Soul Stirrers

Ramsey Lewis

The Staple Singers

So, my daughter’s venture into older music, which I did not expect, was fruitful.

Sister Leslie loves music

Happy birthday, Leslie!

No doubt: sister Leslie loves music.

I’ve known Leslie longer than almost anyone. Perhaps I met a cousin of my father in the couple of years I was alive before Leslie was born, but I have no specific recollection of that.

I grew up with Leslie. We went to the same elementary school with an ancient music book from which we sang. When I found a facsimile several years ago, I had to send her a copy.

I remember which LPs were hers and which were mine. She had, among others, Lady Soul – Aretha, Look at Us – Sonny and Cher, and Supremes A Go-Go. We, along with our little sister and a neighbor girl, would lipsynch to the songs of my Beatles VI album. Leslie was Paul because he was left-handed, like her, and cute.

Of course, we attended the same church and sang in two different iterations of the junior choir. One was the MAZET singers, which our father directed. MAZET is an anagram of the initials of Trinity African Methodist Episcopal Zion. Eventually, we both sang in the senior choir, though she was there longer than I did because I went away to college.

Trio

I’ve mentioned the Green Family Singers, which are comprised of Dad, Leslie, and me, in the past. She learned to play guitar functionally in about a month! Not incidentally, she now owns Dad’s steel-stringed Gibson guitar, but playing it is tough on her fingers.

Leslie and I sang in the Binghamton Central High School choir together for a year and a half. If we could find a soprano and tenor who knew the other parts, we could probably still sing some of that music from memory.

She was in a series of pop bands around Binghamton, the only one I remember being called Crystal Ship. Also, she attended what is now Binghamton University, where she participated in choirs. She was also in a few musicals in the community theater, including A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Forum and Hair; she kept her clothes on.

Her primary source of income was when she moved to Puerto Rico in the early 80s. I wish I had come down and seen her.

SoCal

When she moved to southern California, she sang in church and community choirs. I have a couple of her church choir’s Christmas concerts, and she almost always has a solo. Occasionally, she’s even directed a couple of church choirs.

When she was on a tour ship with her daughter, the singer Rebecca Jade, in 2018, she got to duet with Larry Graham of Sly and the Family Stone. She participated in singing the Mozart Requiem at Carnegie Hall in 2022, which my daughter and I enjoyed seeing.

Leslie recently visited a music store going out of business and learned about a slim guitar from Canada with nylon strings called Godin. On her next visit, it was marked down, though still pricey. With the help of her favorite daughter, she bought it! Moreover, she’s enjoying relearning the tunes she used to play.

Leslie and I can have very arcane conversations about music on a Zoom call with our baby sister. “Do you remember how that chord structure worked?” Marcia’s eyes glaze over. When I wrote recently that I love to sing the bass harmony, even when I’m in the congregation, Leslie sent me a message saying, “Oh yeah, I totally sing alto in the congregation.” We have the same sort of sensibility.

This picture from the San Diego Master Chorale epitomizes her joy of music. So, happy birthday, Leslie. May music always be in your heart; I know that it will.

Moon songs

from 1906 to 1971

Why moon songs? On June 25, the book review at the Albany Public Library was about Our Moon: How Earth’s Celestial Companion Transformed the Planet, Guided Evolution, and Made Us Who We Are by Rebecca Boyle. The reviewer was Sherrie Lyons, PhD, science historian & author of From Cells to Organisms: Re-envisioning Cell Theory (2020).

The book discussed how failing to fully understand the effects of the moon’s tidal puls led to military disasters. Early civilizations used the phases of the Moon to measure time, which allowed people to become more than hunter/gatherers. Of course, the Apollo missions changed humans’ relationship with the satellite.

On the 55th anniversary of the landing of Armstrong and Aldrin onto the lunar surface, it seems appropriate to post some songs starting with the word Moon. And not Moonlight or Moonglow. Maybe for the 60th anniversary. I’ve ignored the ones that hit #1 because they have or will show up in those annual music reviews. The sources, as usual, are Joel Whitburn’s Pop Memories, 1890-1954, and his Top Pop Singles, 2008 edition.

The songs

Moon At Sea – Cab Calloway, #19 in 1937

Moon-Faced, Starry-Eyed – Freddy Martin, #14 in 1947. The version by Benny Goodman and Johnny Mercer went to #21 the same year. Written by Langston Hughes and Kurt Weill?

Moon Fell In The River – Guy Lombardo with Carmen Lombardo on vocals- #22 in 1941

Moon Glow – Duke Ellington, #2 in 1934. I already linked to the #1 version by Benny Goodman from that year. Cab Calloway (#7) and Glen Gray (#8) also charted that year. Goodman also went to #8 in 1936.

Moon Got In My Eyes – Shep Fields, vocals by Bob Goday #11 in 1937. A very nosy version, unfortunately. I skipped over the #1 version by Bing Crosby the same year.

Moon Has His Eyes On You -Frank Stanley and Corinne Morgan,#4 in 1906 it was also covered by Ada Jones the same year.

Moon Is A Silver Dollar – Lawrence Welk, #7 in 1939

Moon Is Blue – the Sauter Finnegan Orchestra with Sally Sweetland, #20 in 1953

Moon Is Low – George Olson, Fran Frey on vocals, #7 in 1930

Moon Is Still Over Her Shoulder – Michael Johnson, a non-single from 1987

Moon Love – Al Donahue, with vocal by Paula Kelly #7 in 1939. Adapted from the second movement of Tchaikovsky’s 5th Symphony. I skipped over the #1 version by Glenn Miller the same year. Also that year Paul Whiteman went to #8 and Mildred Bailey went to #14

Moon Of Manakoora – Bing Crosby and the John Scott Trotter Orchestra, #10 in 1938. Ray Noble also went to #15 the same year.

Moon On My Pillow – Jimmy Dorsey with Teddy Waiters (?) on vocals, #29 in 1944

Moon over everywhere!

Moon Over Burma – Shep Fields with Dorothy Allen, #26 in 1940. It also went to #23 in 1949 by Gene Krupa

Moon Over Dixie -Duke Ellington, #14 in 1932

Moon Over Miami – Connie Boswell, #19 in 1935. It also went to #1 by Eddie Duchin, #5 by Jan Garber, and #14 by Art Karle, all in 1936.

Moon Over Naples – Bert Kaempfert, #58 in 1965. Wait a minute – this is Spanish Eyes!

Moon River – Jerry Butler, #11 in 1961. Henry Mancini also went to #11 that year. The classic by Andy Williams recorded in 1962 was not a single

Moon Shadow – Cat Stevens, #30 in 1971

Moon Song – Wayne King, #3 in 1933. Also in ’33, it went to #5 by Jack Denny and #6 by Art Kassel

Moon Talk – Perry Como, #28 in 1958

Moon Walk – Joe Simon, #54 in 1970

Moon Was Yellow (And The Night Was Young) – Bing Crosby, #13 in 1934 It was also covered by Frank Sinatra, #99 in 1962