This is one of my favorite songs. This version is visually great.
Boring visual, but the music, oh my, that sound. Duke Ellington.
Or a good video with wonderful sound, 2017: Edmonds Woodway High School. (Darn, I wish my kid’s high school band sounded like this).
We have to close this out with the divine Ella, with the Duke on the piano.
I’m feeling down from the SCOTUS lack of spine. I was looking for a song about good things to come. Instead, this came to mind.
The Fort at No 4 held the annual Rendezvous last weekend. Ally had a blast. She came back with new moccasins that she is raving about.
As an interpreter for the Fort, she baked bread in the beehive oven, then sold it to the encampment, this is very much in period.
That went over so well, she had bread baking classes the next two days.
This isn’t great music, it has some great images to go with it.
I have heard this song many times. I love Eartha’s voice, and her ability to tell a story.
This is the first time I’ve seen her singing. Wow.
Maybe Val’s version is better?
Here’s the album version
Regardless, it is one of the tracks from my youth that lives on.
There are so many versions of this song. The ending changes sometimes.
I have always loved this song. I first heard it some 20 odd years ago, and it has stuck with me ever since. There’s a specific verse that comes to mind once in a while, when I’m feeling down or bad or wrong…
Now, depression’s not a million laughs
But suicide’s too dang’rous
Don’t go leapin’ out of buildin’s
In the middle of the night
It’s not the fall but landin’
That’ll alter social standin’
So go first and ask your father
And I’m sure he’ll set you right
I miss my father. I was always a daddy’s girl when I was young, and even as an adult, it was dad that I wanted to spend time with. My mother was an abusive cunt, and I had little interest in anything to do with her, and we’ll leave it at that. Dad made a hard choice, some years ago, when he chose to stick by his wife and to let go of his daughter. I barely talked to him the past 20 years, and he died a couple of years ago. It hit me funny. Until that schism, I could have gone to him with anything, and he would have shared good advice. I miss that.
Anyhow, this isn’t political, it was just… introspective. I hope you enjoyed.
This randomly showed up on my Google Radio the other day, and it made me stop and listen. The music strikes me as a cross between a Russian folk song and something out of a circus performance. But the lyrics… Oh, the lyrics.
My first impression of this was that it was a rallying cry to the Left. Jobless on the streets and all that. But when you listen to (or read) the lyrics, it’s something else entirely. I found out this song was originally written in Yiddish in the 1930s by a Jewish Krakow resident named Mordechai Gebirtig. He wrote it as a song of resistance against the rising tide of antisemitism in Poland and Germany. You can read more about Mr. Gebirtig here, and I highly recommend you do. I had no idea who he was until this song arrived in my play list. I’m glad it did.
Mr. Gebirtig lived through a time where he was treated horribly, persecuted and prosecuted without reason. Here was a man who wanted to work, who had meaningful work, who had family to support, and he was put out of Krakow because of his religious beliefs.
The Left talks a lot about how the Right is like the Germans and Trump is our Hitler. But when you actually read things like the above history of Mr. Gebirtig, you see that it’s the other way around. And it’s rather frightening.
“Drink a toast to my best friend, Samuel Colt!”
One of the things I’ve noticed in listening to the vast array of older music lately, is that most of it wouldn’t make it on today’s radio. This song, for instance, would be considered horribly violent even though it wouldn’t even be a footnote in an action movie. I’ve listened to a song about truckers showing up at a kid’s house to take him out for a ride while his mom was at work (Teddy Bear), another about a bunch of Boy Scouts sneaking up on Girl Scouts bathing nude (The Battle of Kookamonga), yet another about a guy who gets blown up running illegal liquor (White Lightning)… The one that made me giggle the most was Lil’ Red Riding Hood by Sam the Sham and the Pharaohs, which talks about how Red is “everything a big bad wolf could want.”
I love this music. Some of it is from my childhood. Some of it is from earlier. They all tell stories that would cause pearl clutching today. Perhaps that’s why I find them so amusing.