When I was little, I'd watch the "Ed Sullivan Show" on Sunday nights.
I'm not sure that's where I first heard Ella Fitzgerald, but I loved
"A-Tisket A-Tasket" from the start. Even today,
I can't look at a basket, big or small, or pink, blue or yellow,
without the song running through my head.
In a world where people run through their daily routines with iPods
playing all sorts of rap, I walk around with my own music inside.
Sometimes I just want to dance along the street,
"scatting" for the traders and winos as I go.
But I'll leave that to Ella, because she could SING!
Me? I'm just good in my mind.
4 comments:
Another fabulous texturefest; you sure do have the photographer's eye, Speedway.
Great videos, too. There's no such thing as too much Ella and it's always good to see Basie; was there ever a cooler and more minimalist pianist? What splendid accompaniment to my breakfast this morning.
I loved the first video in particular. I found myself gaping, goggle-eyed at the casual racism of a bus filled with clean white folks and poor Ella relegated to the back seat or standing in the aisle (which was only right and proper as Rosa Parks would tell you).
And was that Abbott and Costello hanging off the bus? Pretty surreal stuff.
Wow! I just got to the trade-off with the tromboner (thanks to Homer Simpson all trombone players will for ever be tromboners). Inspirational, whoop-it-up scat!
I'm like you in always having a song in my head. Yesterday you put Rainy Days and Mondays in there and this morning it'll be "A Tisket, A Tasket."
I've blogged about this before, but a long while ago: do you find you have one song that is always there? One song that constantly plays in the background? When Rainy Days faded yesterday my own song replaced it, like it does every day.
It's weird, like it's hard-wired into my brain; whenever I'm not consciously thinking of stuff it's there, playing away. Mine's an odd song, too … not catchy at all: Joni Mitchell's version of Sweet Sucker Dance from her Mingus album. Something jammed it into my head the first time I heard it and it's always there. When eventually I lose my marbles it will probably be the only thing left to me. Strangely, I never get tired of it.
So what's your hard-wired song?
When I read your question this morning, I had to think about it for a while because I had a Halloween song running through my head at the time.
But I think it's the scatting, something that just hit me right when I was little. When I was working, I would look forward to coming home to someone, and I had a little tuneless song, one I'd even sing out loud after I got off the bus. But it's gone now, though remembered, replaced by the scatting.
My dad brought home albums of 78 rpm show tunes when I was about 3 or 4 and the one song that hangs with me from that time is "Be My Love," sung by Mario Lanza.
Hoorah for scat and a definite hoorah for Mario Lanza. Singing is good for the soul.
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