Sherryl Marshall had her annual recital next door last night—I traditionally kick things off, since I’m shameless enough to do it—and it helps put the others at ease to see me mess things up (which I do) and not have the world come to an end. Everybody gets up and sings a song or three—I did “Masquerade”, “Maybe”, and “Marching Along Together”, all from the 1930s, and all (as Claire pointed out) from the ‘M’ section of my songbook. I’ve played my parents’ old songbook for decades, but still I had to rehearse these three for a few days beforehand, just to be comfortable performing them in front of other people (something I only do this one time each year, excepting Xmas-caroling sing-alongs).
Afterwards, when I got home, I was like an old car that keeps backfiring for a while after you turn off the ignition—spazzing and making involuntary exclamations—like the police were coming for me or something. I’m really not cut out for public performance. But then there is also a feeling of having made it through an ordeal, which is very satisfying. I spent most of today just basking in the fact that it was over with, and that I hadn’t screwed it up too badly.
I don’t get out of the house much. It’s wonderful of Sherryl to include me in these annual recitals—I’m not even one of her students. She says it makes the other students comfortable to see a neighbor there, that it makes it more casual—but I think she’s just being very kind to her shut-in, next-door neighbor. And these annual concerts help to remind me why I don’t try to perform more often on my own—it’s terrifying. I only do it that once each year—I don’t know how Sherryl has the courage to do it for a living. But then, she’s a real musician—a professional—and I imagine that gives a person more confidence when they stand up in front of a crowd.
I wish I could offer you some video from the concert, but I left my camera at home—I didn’t expect my singing to be worth recording. This re-enactment video will show you why—I guess I do better under pressure. Or maybe it was the setting—I don’t know.
Also, I want to wish all you mothers out there a very happy mother’s day!
Happy Vernal Equinox (1st day of Spring) everyone! It’s colder today than it was on Xmas, so of course they’ve forecast a little snow for the area.
I’ve been asked about copyright issues. First, let me disclaim any education, pre-law or otherwise—I don’t really know anything—I can only give what is my present understanding of how these things go. Firstly, aside from my downloadable e-CD, “Opus Eleven by XperDunn”, I don’t have anything profit-based online—my YouTube videos are downloadable and are all part of their Community-Usage pool of material, my blog is not subscription-based, and I have nothing for sale on E-Bay—I’m a non-profit user.
As I understand it, that doesn’t exempt me from copyright law, it just makes me a low-value target for the litigious—unlike successful artists, who it seems must spend a great deal of time and money fending off pretenders to their work, valid or spurious. Were anything of mine to go viral, or to show any revenue-earning potential, then I would have rich people’s problems—but don’t hold your breath.
As far as what you can post to YouTube, there aren’t any hard and fast rules—you can even post a favorite album of yours, if you go to the trouble of making a video out of it. But if you do that, and the band you posted doesn’t like it, YouTube’ll take it down. What I do is slightly different. I post covers of music—meaning I perform a piece of piano music on video and post that.
A lot of my stuff is classical or folk—and that stuff is in the Public Domain—which means it’s at least a hundred years old and no one can ‘own’ it. But I do a fair number of jazz and pop covers from songbooks—and in these cases both the original music belongs to someone else—and the piano arrangement rights belong to the publisher of whatever book I’m sight-reading. Here’s the weird part—I own the video of my own performance.
In the case of covers, YouTube will send you an email asking you to agree that the song doesn’t belong to you—but they leave the video posted online. I always include a ‘cover’ tag with any such post of mine, just so nobody can claim I was trying to pull something. When I’m not feeling lazy, I try to include the credits and copyright info for each cover-song in my description text as well. It may subsequently have a suggestion-link that uses your video to sell the original artists’ e-tracks—but even if they don’t use it as advertising, the cover post itself is free publicity. Unpopular YouTube channels like mine don’t get a lot of views—and if I post a really bad cover, even my channel subscribers don’t watch it—so it isn’t as if it hurts the composer—unless he or she listens to it.
Perhaps I hadn’t made it clear in my previous posts about copyright claim disputes—in my case, it’s all about the principle of the thing. My sole downloadable CD for sale hasn’t sold even once in two years, that I know of—and that’s pretty much what I expected. Only when an artist generates revenue does the issue of copyright become a serious legal matter—after all, you’ve got to pay for the lawyers. If you are a piano player, like me (or play any instrument, or if you sing) then you should feel free to post whatever you record—nobody is going to sue you. No one’s going to pay you either, but no one’ll sue you.
Billie Holiday’s discography includes some beautiful old standards—one of my favorites is “I Can’t Believe That You’re In Love With Me” written by Jimmy McHugh & Clarence Gaskill in 1926. I find the sheet music demanding and if I can’t play the thing properly, I certainly can’t give you the slightest idea of how exquisitely simply beautiful it is on the Billie Holiday recording. Those early recordings of Billy Holiday with the Teddy Wilson Orchestra are, in many ways, the apotheosis of musicality—so weirdly perfect and so perfectly weird. (Apotheosis means “the highest point in the development of something; culmination or climax.”—I looked it up to make sure I wasn’t being stupid.) Here’s another favorite Holiday recording:
And that’s the context in which I first heard performed “Everybody Loves My Baby (But My Baby Don’t Love Nobody But Me)” written by Jack Palmer & Spencer Williams in 1924. Again, I struggle too much with getting this sheet music played to give it the easy bounce that it should have.
The middle piece from today’s video is by Vincent Youmans—a real class act—influenced in later years by Jerome Kern—but this early song is more of a jazz take on a revival-tent choir—“Hallelujah” written by Vincent Youmans, with words by Clifford Grey & Leo Robin in 1927. Here’s another from 1927, “I Know That You Know”:
“Hallelujah” is a tricky piece, included today because I’m not likely to get a better take of it. So there you go, caveats included—my piano cover video for today:
Well, don’t expect much, because it’s been a rough few days and it is Sunday after all. I’ve been thinking about Bernie Sanders and his surge in the early states’s polls—and while that doesn’t mean a change in the overall Democratic nomination process—it does feed into my worry that I’ve been so set on Hillary Clinton for so long that I might be overlooking something in her number one rival for the Democratic nomination. However, now that I’ve taken some time to think on it—this is why I’m ‘still for Hil’:
A couple of things—first, Sanders supporters might not be taking into account that Bernie’s message, while attractive to the Democrats themselves, may fall on deaf ears in the nationwide election. Secondly, while I applaud all of Bernie’s most thrilling reforms, I question whether any person could deliver on any big, sudden financial reform—there’s a lot of headwind in that process—and while Hillary may be promising to do less, she has more chance of getting it done.
Hillary Clinton, because of Bernie’s rhetoric, is becoming the ‘bird in the hand’ candidate. You can take what she offers and be fairly certain she’ll win the election (and, as importantly, work better with a probable GOP-majority congress) or you can reach for what Bernie is offering, even though the realpolitik of his succeeding in both the election, and in working with a GOP-led congress, are less than promising.
I kind of think of Bernie Sanders as an Elizabeth Warren without the wisdom to see that such reforms will require a longer game—and greater influence—than a presidential term or two. In fact, Liz Warren, continuing her struggle in the Senate, has more chance of getting these kinds of reforms passed than a President Sanders ever would.
The chaos of the Republican campaign has caused the Democratic race to be shrunk down into a cartoon of itself, with little room in the meager coverage—between Trump sound-bites—to get the subtle nuances of why Hillary Clinton is still far and away our best bet, in spite of Bernie’s pyrotechnics in live performance (who’d a thunk it, huh?) And I admit that my fear that one of those Republican clowns could possibly ‘slip through’ is another factor in my favoring Hillary Clinton. Bernie supporters should recognize that his appeal stems from the very things that will make him beatable by a Republican—‘Socialist’ isn’t a dirty word to Democrats—but to the rest of the country? Please. Not that I have any objection to Bernie Sanders—wonderful guy—great ideas—total champion of the little people—but as presidential candidate in lieu of Hillary? No.
So, that’s my two cents on the Sanders surge.
I played some music the other day, right after several days of practicing nothing but my book of Chopin’s Mazurkas—so I’ve entitled it ‘Mazurkoid’—not because it sounds like Chopin, but because it has harmonies and rhythms I’ve never have thought of, had I not immersed myself in his genius—and I like to give credit where credit is due. All my improvising, honestly, is informed by constant practice, sight-reading through the great composers, the great song-writers, and any sheet music I can find, really—so while I don’t know where my fingers will go next, I know that their paths have been shaped by others—and all I’m adding is my personality.
Today I played from my Jazz Standards book—these are songs that I may have posted previously but if so I guarantee that these are better versions than I’ve ever recorded before, so I want to post my progress, if nothing else. They’re even kind of listenable, if not professional grade, renditions—so please feel free to give them a listen. I also ended with a tiny improv that I call ‘Moving On’, because it sounded so bright and sunny—like a fresh start. Wish it was longer, but I was pretty tired from all that jazz. I had just failed to play a decent rendition of Gerry Mulligan’s “Five Brothers” which was so bad it’s not on the recording—and you can hear me mumble, “I ain’t no Gerry Mulligan.” as I begin to play the improv….
Xper Dunn plays Piano – January 17th, 2016
Nine Jazz Standards:
Wrap Your Troubles In Dreams
Cute – by Neal Hefti
Don’t Get Around Much Anymore
Moonlight In Vermont
Imagination
Bernie’s Tune – by Bernie Miller
Let’s Get Away From It All
Fly Me To The Moon
Moonglow
Last night started out good—I’ve become a fan of The Big Bang Theory and it had a season premiere last night—they’re pretty funny. I enjoy the comfort of an established sitcom with a toolkit of running gags and themes—all expositions, settings, and character intros have long since been made and the thing just chugs along—funny, funny, funny.
Had a big meal (Bear makes a mean chicken) maybe too big—I felt like I had to have some coffee. But then I watched TV until 2:30 and my eyes still refused to droop. I didn’t sleep at all last night—I was reading a couple of great sci-fi books—“Appleseed” by John Clute is a book I bought about ten years ago but forgot to read; and “Nexus” by Ramez Naam, which I finished at about 6:30 am—fortunately it’s only the first book of a trilogy, so there’s more. But no more coffee at night for me!
Now here’s a bit of lyric for all you strong babies out there:
Strong Baby
Hard muscle—lean cut—on a stri-king frail.
A hard look—a straight shot—makes my ego bail.
When she looks like a tank made o’doves
I could almost cry.
Talks like the drill sarge o’love—
I could nearly die.
Strong women—make me crazy.
Wo-o-ork it out—don’t be lazy.
Watch those ‘ceps pop—makes me dizzy.
Dat can’t be a woman—is she?
My god—that’s a lot of power.
Think it’s time for my cold shower.
Awe me with that rock of muscle
Tell me I can lose that tussle—please!
Baby—please—it’s too much—
Thoughts so hot they make me blush.
I’m a man with a plan but
A strong, fit woman there’s no man that is better than.
When you tell me I got-to-be nice
Then it’s understood—
No need to-tell-me the same thing twice
You know I’ll be good.
Strong women—make me crazy.
Work all day—make men look lazy.
Legs like trunks of trees of satin,
Eyes the light from stars get fat in,
Smell so sweet it makes me twitchy
And that voice so low and witchy.
Stand there like a tower of power.
Going strong from hour to hour.
Beauty—brains—and all that muscle
Tell me I can lose that tussle—please!
We poor men—fit and strong is supposed to be our thing. When we find strong women attractive, it’s confusing and a little embarrassing—but there’s no better make-up than muscle tone, nothing more youthful than a proud bearing. It’s funny—we talk about over-idealizing one standard of beauty—but that’s just the suits that make corporate decisions about magazine covers and such. For all our fixation on women, we men find attractive a myriad of flavors—tall women, short women, small women, big women, full-figured or skinny, any color hair, any color skin, librarians, firewomen, GI Janes, and nurses.
I find the spirit of a woman shows in her face and bearing—no matter what her outer appearance. You can see a person’s personality, male or female, and I find myself attracted to the spirit rather than the package—I think we all do.
Dy’ever have one of those days where you feel like instead of reaching a peak, you feel off the cliff? With health issues like mine, I often watch myself become more and more energized from day to day—recovering from whatever circumstance blew out my reserves of strength, like bad news or car trouble or just a crazy day. Each day I feel more like myself, more capable, containing more potential to get something done—and today was going to be one of those peak days where I really made a splash in a video, or in writing, or something. Or so it seemed, leading up to it. But today, phht!—nada, nothing, goose-eggs, zippo, kaput. I might as well go back to bed.
Wednesday, September 23rd, 2015 10:31 PM
I saw “Pitch Perfect 2” on VOD yesterday—it was okay, but “Pitch Perfect” was one of those movies that caught lightning in a bottle—beyond the premise, the characters, the songs—there was pacing, introspection, coming-of-age notes were hit—it was a perfect movie, in some ways. “Pitch Perfect 2”, I’m sad to report, was more like an extended episode of Glee guest-starring Anna Kendrick and Rebel Wilson. It was so busy hitting all the old themes and adding new material, that it never gelled into a movie. It wasn’t terrible—the songs were nice, Rebel is funny, and I’ve got an age-inappropriate ‘thing’ for Anna Kendrick, so it was watchable, but a let-down, still.
I’m too old for Glee—they sing contemporary songs and mash-ups—which I enjoy, but for me a sing-along uses songs my parents, and even my grandparents, used to sing. If I was a little more dexterous I’d get a job playing karaoke back-up piano—when you’re no virtuoso, it’s great to have voices drowning out the piano-playing. In today’s video of 1940s Song Covers, I even try to sing along myself—but that doesn’t help so much, since it distracts me from the playing—and I’m no Andreas Bocelli, either. I left in a brief interruption, where I’m begging my son to sing along with me—and he, being kinda shy, pretends to have a sore throat—someday I’ll catch him in the right mood.
This second video is more song covers—I would have called it Part II, but these songs aren’t from the 1940s—more like the 1930s thru the 1960s. I guess I just felt like singing today.
And here we have another ‘stitched-together’ improv that is really three different segments from among my cover recordings, when I stopped to take improv-breaks.
I’m running into some confusion lately—my improved piano-playing ability makes me very happy, and I enjoy posting new recordings of pieces that I’ve posted before, but much more listen-able. But even today’s posts, which came out pretty fair—I was tempted to not post them and wait for a better take. I also consider playing pieces many times over before posting a recording—something I am doing now with the Brahms Opus 117. Trouble is, even in my new condition, even when I’ve rehearsed a piece, I’ll still spaz out or stumble over a chord; I’ll still have pages to turn; I’ll still get folks wandering through my recording studio (our living room, that is). So perfection ain’t gonna happen—I post what I get and I hope for better in the future. But it is confusing sometimes. I would like to become a real boy (said Pinocchio the wooden pianist).
I was grateful yesterday to be joined once more by my good friend Pete Cianflone for an unusual recording session. In the course of our collaboration, we decided that we should retire someday to an old-folks’ home in Colorado, where weed is legal—someplace like “The Buds-Up Sunnyside Rest Home”. And thus a new super-group is born.
Pete crushes it on the Purcell “Air”—giving it the kind of renaissance aura such old music calls for—and he adds great vocals to the drumming on our Beatles song-covers. The improv isn’t half-bad either—and I take all the blame for the Rainbow Connection cover—sometimes I just like a song better than I can perform it.
I’ve been playing too much and posting too slow, so I’m adding four or so less-new videos, after the four Pete and I just made—they seem a bit pale compared to the new stuff but when I’m on my own, I have to do what I can. I hope you enjoy it all.
September 17th, 2015 – Peter Cianflone, Bongos and Xper Dunn, Piano
Improv – Buds Up
September 17th, 2015 – Peter Cianflone, Bongos and Xper Dunn, Piano
Henry Purcell – Air in d minor, Z. T675 (originally intended for “The Indian Queen”)
September 17th, 2015
Beatles Song Covers – as performed by The Buds-Up Retirement Orchestra
featuring Peter Cianflone on Bongos and Perc. and Xper Dunn at the keyboard
Pete came by yesterday—we killed our imaginary audience and made some recordings which I hope no one will mistake for Pete’s fault—if you look closely, you’ll see a very capable drummer trying to be nice to a totally awful piano-player. This mess is completely my responsibility. I almost never play with musicians because musicians, understandably, don’t go looking for half-assed collaborators—but Pete is an exceptionally kind soul and an old friend who is the exception that proves the rule.
This is a picture of Pete and Spencer back in the day–If you watch Spencer’s walk-through on the video, you’ll see he’s grown some since this picture was taken.
I’ve been thinking about collaboration lately. As I’ve mentioned often in these posts, I think that people may have excellent self-control when the situation demands it but that humanity as a group, as a mob, has no brain and does whatever it does, crazy (or even suicidal) or not. We try to mitigate this with governments and other frameworks for group action—but even these foundations can only influence people en masse to a certain degree.
Take the Drug War as an example—with Prohibition as a historical precedent, we can’t be very surprised that the Drug War has been a complete failure—drug abuse is a part of the human condition. People will seek out recreational drugs just as they seek out alcoholic beverages. After all, life is a struggle and there aren’t that many features that offer unalloyed enjoyment—we can gain peace from our relationships and achievement from our endeavors, but not always—and it’s a struggle, win or lose. But a weekend spree is an easy and affordable escape from the rigors of the work-week and the number of people who choose to do without it will never be unanimous—criminalization simply complicates things.
Collaboration, cooperation,—even democracy—all also run up against the matter of people all being different in many ways. I heard the debate yesterday during the news reports of the first two women who passed the Rangers Training School requirements. As the closet-misogynist debated the moderate-feminist, they both had some confusion about the fact that average men have expected differences from average women, but the best of the best soldiers are exceptional people with above-average abilities, gender notwithstanding. Generalizations about gender roles do not apply when speaking of virtual Supergirls—although, rightly, we ought to take the hint that generalizations about gender all have that flaw to some degree—because we are all different.
Thus individuality and human nature are both obstacles to traditional governments and other organizing frameworks—yet they are both strengths as well. Perhaps our paradigms of organization are at fault. Churchill once opined that ‘Democracy isn’t a perfect form of government—it’s just better than all the others’. And I feel that we have become sophisticated enough to look at democracy (and capitalism, for that matter) and start to face that fact—having found systems that outdo more ancients customs is great—but is it the best we can do?
For that matter, can Democracy and Capitalism coexist without one cancelling the other? We see many examples where capitalism has infringed on the democratic process recently—but there are also times when the force of majority rule outdoes the primacy of property. We aren’t really being honest about this whole subject—we’ve been too busy defending democracy from fascism and capitalism from communism to allow ourselves to question their basic values.
While Democracy and Capitalism fight it out (and while we pretend that they work together) we have a third player—religion, or Christianity, since I’m speaking primarily of the USA. Many conservatives will insist that religion is a bedrock value—in spite of the fact that we are famous for sidelining religion from our governing principles. They’ll put on their blinders and assure us that ‘religious freedom’ was only meant to apply to the different Protestant sects of Christianity—as if that made sense, and full ‘religious freedom’ didn’t.
This is partly a failure to understand history—in much the same way that conservatives insist that our constitutional guarantee of ownership of flintlock rifles translates into prowling the Wal-Mart with semi-automatic weapons. But it is also a failure to understand religion, as a concept. Most people of faith make the mistake of counting their religion as the truth, while all other religions are, at best, to be tolerated. But Truth and Faith are not interchangeable—particularly in the situation where we have allowed for the existence of more than one form of faith.
What the original colonists did was recognize that even a single individual’s unique faith, with or without an established church, may be questioned as to its validity—but it can’t be made illegal. The opposite truth to that premise is that no one religion can be made the legal faith under our government. Basically, we accept that citizens will have whatever faith they may or may not have, but the law will operate separately from any one faith. Anyone who seriously proposes that America become a Christian nation is as much a threat to our way of life as the Communists were in the 1950s—even more so, since the Commies have had their day and faded away. ISIS would be a better example, come to think of it—both parties wish to transform us into a theocracy.
But let me return to collaboration. In science fiction novels, one gets the impression that the human race will expand outward, mimicking our behavior of the exploration era and the pioneering era. One gets used to the idea of the human race having a ‘destiny’—a place or a state that our future selves will eventually reach out to and evolve into. We envision a solar system busy with mining, colonization, exploration, and discovery—our little blue marble, Earth, just a single part of a civilization that calls the Sun its home. We even dream of FTL starships that allow colonization of other stars—a future civilization so vast and varied that imagination can barely envisage its size, never mind its nature.
Our gravity well, however, is no small barrier. If humanity is ever going to go beyond Earth, it will have to involve tremendous collaboration. At this point in modern technology, we will need tremendous collaboration just to survive at all. Where does the motive come from? How do we mobilize our efforts towards the survival of humankind when we have never had to worry about it before? Up until now, we’ve been so sure that the Earth is invulnerable to our attentions that we have never considered it a factor in our decision-making. The whole debate over climate change is really just humanity trying to convince itself that we’ve outgrown that simplicity.
Our systems of government, of commerce, and our cultures have all developed under the mistaken mindset that humanity can do whatever it will—we are slowly coming to grips with the fact that this is no longer true.
Part of our problem is that heretofore we have assumed that the point of life was the afterlife—that we should concentrate on living our own individual lives under the tenets of our faiths because the important part, the afterlife, will be affected by how well we follow the rules while living. No part of human culture actually emphasizes the importance of species survival—‘God’ made us, so naturally we can’t be unmade unless ‘He’ decides to unmake us. Climate change, drought, chemical and oil spills, and nuclear waste make it clear that we can certainly unmake ourselves—there’s nothing religious about it, it’s just a fact.
So now we have to turn from our focus on our individual afterlives to the maintenance of the survival of the human genome, and to Gaea—or whatever you choose to call the overall biome of the Earth. For we have two ‘afterlifes’—one is a spiritual belief, the other is our offspring. To reach the first one, we have to be mindful of ethics. To protect the second we will have to begin having ethics as a group—something we’ve never had, and something I have no idea how we’ll ever attain. The alternative is to remain the simple, global mob we’ve always been—and just wait for the lights to go out.
My old friend, Randy Bell, dropped by yesterday for a brief recording session. It had been three years since his last ascension from his Georgia home to visit his old stomping grounds and we had a lot of catching up to do. Inevitably, we turned to music—Randy, a one-time fervent ‘Dead-head’, has a very different musical perspective from mine, and our collaborations, while challenging, produce some very interesting results (for me, anyway).
It was a confusing afternoon in one sense—I have a tendency to improvise on basic chord progressions, and those chord progressions, being in some sense basic building blocks in a variety of tunes, can go in and out of the ‘cover’ domain. For instance, my favorite a-minor chord progression led Randy to start singing along, revealing those chords to be the basis of a Chris Issak hit, “Blue Spanish Sky”. However, as I said, some chords progressions are basic components to many pieces, of both classical and popular music. So if I have to credit Chris Issak, then Chris Issak has to credit basic music theory, as do the Beatles and the Turtles, who use the same chord progression in hit songs of theirs, and Vivaldi, who uses it in his “Four Seasons”.
Having crossed that line, I showed Randy how I had derived my favorite G-Major chord progression from Bob Dylan’s “Like a Rolling Stone”. It was weird—after a good half hour of ‘improvisation’, we had recorded two ‘covers’!
But my favorite part was Randy teaching me to play a cover of a song written by someone we both knew—“Hard Road Blues”, written by Randy’s lifelong friend and one-time collaborator, Burrie Jenkins. Burrie is a Massachusetts composer and guitarist best known for his “Dharma of the Leaves” . I hope he doesn’t mind too much that Randy and I ‘roughed up’ his tune—it was hella fun to play…
XperDunn plays Piano on August 15th, 2013 Improv – Concord Grapes: NOTE: ‘Grapes’ graphic downloaded from https://www.facebook.com/oldmosswoman on 08/15/2013
Improv – Concord Grapes (2013Aug15)
I fell asleep watching “The Big Wedding” last night, so I watched the end this morning. Great movie, BTW. Then I noticed that the End Credits music was a jazzy, personalized, “Row, Row, Row Your Boat” by a familiar-sounding female vocalist. So I waited for the music credits at the end (as I usually do) and saw that I was right–it was one of the cast singing, Christine Ebersole. I had never enjoyed “Row, Row, Row Your Boat” quite so much before, and she inspired me to do my own improv on the tune. While looking her up online, I found her husband’s, William J. Moloney’s, artwork, so I snagged it for my the Title screen of my video…
Improv – “Row, Row, Row Your Boat” (2013Aug15)
Improv – “Row, Row, Row Your Boat” (2013Aug15)
NOTE: Christine Ebersole, winner of the 2007 Tony Award for Best Actress in a Musical, gave her all (talents-wise, that is) for her latest movie, “The Big Wedding”–during the end credits, Christine Ebersole (who plays ‘Muffin’ in the
film) sings her jazzy rendition of “Row, Row, Row Your Boat”, which inspired me to fiddle with it too…
In looking her up I learned she is married to William J. Moloney, a graphic artist–so I stole one of his collage images for the Titles and Credits cards! See the actual work of William J. Moloney [including Collage: “Love’s Oasis”]
at williamjmoloneyDOTcom.
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XperDunn plays Piano August 15th, 2013 – Three (3) by George and Ira Gershwin- “Embraceable You” “A Foggy Day” & “I’ve Got A Crush On You”:
“Embraceable You”/”A Foggy Day”/”I’ve Got A Crush On You”
XperDunn plays Piano
August 15th, 2013
Three (3) by George and Ira Gershwin:
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“Embraceable You” Music by George Gershwin Lyrics by Ira Gershwin
[From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia:
“Embraceable You” is a popular song, with music by George Gershwin and lyrics by Ira Gershwin. The song was originally written in 1928 for an unpublished operetta named East is West. It was eventually published in 1930 and included in the Broadway musical Girl Crazy. where it was performed by Ginger Rogers in a song and dance routine choreographed by Fred Astaire. Billie Holiday’s 1944 recording was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 2005.]
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“A Foggy Day” Music by George Gershwin Lyrics by Ira Gershwin
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia:
[“A Foggy Day” is a song composed by George Gershwin, with lyrics by Ira Gershwin, introduced by Fred Astaire in the 1937 film A Damsel in Distress. It was originally titled “A Foggy Day (In London Town)”, and is often still referred to as such. {I have mislabeled it here on the video, as }”A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square”, a romantic British popular song written in 1939 with lyrics by Eric Maschwitz and music by Manning Sherwin. {Sorry for the confusion!}
Berkeley Square is a large leafy square in Mayfair, an expensive part of London. The Ritz Hotel referred to is also in Mayfair. With its sweet, wistful song the European Robin is a likely source of the legendary Nightingale, as birds, stimulated by the street lights, can often be heard singing in cities during the night.]
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“I’ve Got A Crush On You” Music by George Gershwin Lyrics by Ira Gershwin
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia:
[“I’ve Got a Crush on You” is a song composed by George Gershwin, with lyrics by Ira Gershwin. It is unique among Gershwin compositions in that it was used for two different Broadway productions, Treasure Girl (1928), and Strike Up the Band (1930).]
How Do I Spell Successes? With Six Esses!
In other words: these six (6) song titles all start with ‘S’:
XperDunn plays Piano Covers on July 27th, 2013
Six Song Covers Starting With ‘S’
(“Love is Lovelier”) “The Second Time Around”
“The Shadow Of Your Smile”
“Shangri La”
“Siboney”
“Softly, As I Leave You”
“Stairway To The Stars”
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From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia:
“The Second Time Around” is a song with words by Sammy Cahn and music by Jimmy Van Heusen. It was introduced in the 1960 film High Time, sung by Bing Crosby with Henry Mancini conducting his orchestra, and was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Original Song.
Its theme is captured by its first two lines:
Love is lovelier the second time around,
Still wonderful with both feet on the ground.
It is especially associated with Frank Sinatra, who released multiple recordings of the ballad.
Jane Morgan sang the song on a 1961 episode of The Jack Benny Program.
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From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia:
“The Shadow of Your Smile”, also known as “Love Theme from The Sandpiper”, is a popular song. The music was written by Johnny Mandel with the lyrics written by Paul Francis Webster.
The song was introduced in the 1965 film The Sandpiper, with a trumpet solo by Jack Sheldon and later became a minor hit for Tony Bennett (Johnny Mandel arranged and conducted his version as well).
It won the Grammy Award for Song of the Year and the Academy Award for Best Original Song.
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From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia:
“Shangri-La”
The ‘finale’ song from ‘Shangri-La’, a 1956 musical with a book and lyrics by James Hilton, Jerome Lawrence, and Robert E. Lee and music by Harry Warren. Based on Hilton’s classic 1933 novel “Lost Horizon”
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From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia:
“Siboney” (Canto Siboney) is a 1929 classic Cuban song by Ernesto Lecuona. The music is in cut time, originally written in C major.
The lyrics were reportedly written by Lecuona while away from Cuba and is about the homesickness he is experiencing (Siboney is also a town in Cuba, and can also refer to Cuba in general)
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From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia:
“Softly, as I Leave You” is a popular Italian song composed by Giorgio Calabrese and Tony De Vita (1932–1998), translated into English by Hal Shaper.
It was originally an Italian success by Mina, at the Sanremo Music Festival, entitled “Piano” (“Softly”). Mina published a recording of the song first as a single in 1960 and later as well on an EP and on three LPs.
The English songwriter Hal Shaper noticed the song and in November 1961 wrote English lyrics to the melody, calling it “Softly, as I Leave You.” The best known versions are those by Matt Monro (#10 on the British charts in 1962) and Frank Sinatra (#27 on the Billboard Hot 100 and #4 on the adult contemporary chart in 1964).
The Sinatra family announced Frank’s death on May 14, 1998 by placing an announcement on their website that was accompanied by a recording of the singer’s version of the song.
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“Stairway To The Stars” -from the United Artists Motion Picture “SOME LIKE IT HOT”-original song 1935 lyrics by Mitchell Parish, music by Matt Malneck and Frank Signorelli. Glenn Miller’s version has alternate lyrics.