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Why I love this music

2003-11-21 - 11:07 a.m.

American Standards

Stop the presses, as they used to say. I have to write about this now. I�ll explain in a minute.

One morning I woke up to Carl Hampton, one of the hosts on Music of your Life radio. (You have to call them hosts now; disc jockey doesn�t make sense when the discs are obsolete.) He was talking about American standards, the kind of music they play on that network. �What makes an American standard?� he asked.

Carl suggested that an American standard was a song that had stood the test of time, so that the emphasis was on the lyrics and the melody instead of on the performer. When a song stands on its own like that, other performers start to sing it. In that way, he says, some of the songs of the sixties and seventies are becoming standards in their own right.

After mentioning that a young singer named Ilona Knopler (sp?) had just released a version of �Never My Love,� Carl played the Association�s recording. Yeah, I can sing along with that. And that�s kind of what I said before, before when I was explaining my kind of music. The lessening of my attention to popular music coincided with the emergence of the kind of music I couldn�t sing. (Always keep in mind that I�m not much of a singer.)

Like so many things, this is not an absolute explanation. Sure, anyone can sing �Love Me Tender� (which began as a folk song, �Aura Lee,� very easy to sing); but you know that no one could sing �Heartbreak Hotel� like Elvis Presley. For the most part, no one tries. But that recording is still played on �Music of your Life� because it evokes so many memories. MOYL polls its listeners online and constantly invites new people to join the panel. What they ask about each song is: (1) are you familiar with it? (2) rate it as good bad or somewhere in-between; and (3) are you tired of it? I�m seldom tired of any of them!

If you listen to radio, I�d like to ask you to go to the Music of Your Life website and explore a little. Some of the hosts, like Carl Hampton, Wink Martindale, and Chuck Southcott, are experts in the history of popular music. Their programs often tie in memories of what was happening when these recordings were made. Other hosts know less about the history, but their personal experiences of having been in the business make interesting commentary too. Some of these include singers like Patti Page, Pat Boone, and Peter Marshall (yes, he of �Hollywood Squares�).

You may find that this programming is not your cup of tea, but you probably know someone who would love it. The reason I�m posting this now is that I�m hearing a bit of what I used to call �panic advertising.� I don�t know that there�s any problem, but I would hate to lose this network without trying to tell a lot more people about it.

In the New Haven area, �Music of Your Life� is heard on WQUN, which is an old-fashioned community station. By this I mean that they don�t turn on the satellite network and run it round the clock. There�s a four-hour stretch of local commentary during the morning � except on days when there�s no school or work � and there�s similar information at the end of the day. There�s real news � not just quick headlines � including CBS news and local coverage. Why not (1) look for a similar station in your area or (2) try to get a local station to run a similar format?

This morning was marked by recordings of the news flashes from forty years ago, but that�s an entry for tomorrow. Meanwhile, I�ll try to do the Friday Five on time.


Friday Five
November 21, 2003

Remember, these weekly questions are found at the Friday Five site.

  1. List five things you'd like to accomplish by the end of the year.
    It�s all a mindset, y�know. Figuring out how to:
    • reduce the pain when I sit.
    • manage my finances.
    • get rid of some of the junk around me.
    • persuade Husband to take better care of himself.
    • travel more.
  2. List five people you've lost contact with that you'd like to hear from again.
    • the friend I wrote about last June.
    • Sharon, with whom I worked at Red Cross Blood Services. She and her husband moved away, and I have been unable to find her despite extensive searches.
    • My cousin Eileen, with whom I had been friendly for years when we were teens. I dropped her a card a couple of years ago, but got no answer.
    • Annette, one of my closest friends in high school. I believe I know where she is, but a letter brought no reply.
    • Penny, who � last I heard � was a professor in Sweden or Denmark.

    And somewhere, I suppose, I should look for fellow Jonahs who seem to think I�m not a Jonah if I don�t work there any more.
  3. List five things you'd like to learn how to do.
    How realistic do I have to be?
    • I always wanted � ever since I knew they existed � to be a computer programmer.
    • Learn more languages and brush up on the ones I�ve studied before.
    • Play the piano.
    • Run a radio station. I almost did this in college, but two different organization scheduled meetings on one night� I�ll never know if I chose wrong.
    • Country dancing (is that what they call it?)
  4. List five things you'd do if you won the lottery (no limit).
    Haven�t we all considered this?
    • get all my kids out of debt.
    • trade the Cheesebox for a more appropriate residence.
    • set up a foundation to support all my favorite charities.
    • Travel.
    • Get season tickets to the UConn women�s basketball games.
  5. List five things you do that help you relax.
    You�ve heard a lot of these before.
    • Listen to music.
    • Word puzzles. Crosswords were the best until I started to have trouble focusing on the fine print. But I still like others, like cryptograms.
    • Memory games (listing the presidents in order, for example) help me to sleep.
    • Knitting or crocheting, if it doesn�t hurt to sit.
    • If I have company, card games or board games.
    • Television, or reading � sometimes both at once.
    Sometimes I just take a walk.

Current Reading: Founding Brothers - Ellis
Good Diary Today:
From the Old Folks' Radio: "Ruby" - Ray Charles

previous - next

thanksalot - 2012-03-15
update 12-2011 - 2011-12-04
Did You Know? - 2011-02-08
Not Really an Update - 2011-01-14
The Lonely Crowd - 2010-11-15

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