the best songs ever

[Eric the Green]

I accept your opinion about Rudolph. Myself, as I often point out, what a song "is about" is not a prime consideration. I am interested in the music. That's what I go by in my picks.

" Certainly not one of the best Rodgers and Hammerstein songs."

Feel free to tell us which you think are the best. (note however I have already mentioned The Sound of Music)

I used to like "Oh What a Beautiful Morning," but we sing it in church, and now I think it feels trite.

[Eric the Green]

Now this is a "children's song" that is truly outstanding, from 1944. I like this version:





https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swinging_on_a_Star

Bing Crosby's version was the original hit from 1944:
https://youtu.be/rATftJiWdkw

But I suppose Rudolph is more politically correct for today than this song. Comment on the Crosby video:

dance fly 5 months ago
This song is very fishist, monkeyist and mulist....
The animals did not appreciate this song very much.

I do like one modern Christmas children's song very much, and a modern version by an artist that you all know that I know and love. But the original is from 1934, so I'll get to it later. But a hint, it reminds me of this one in its plea for good behavior.

I guess this one from 1944 fits in with my picks, though, since I also like "Yakety Yak" (Don't talk back) by the Coasters (1958)

[Eric the Green]

Sentimental favorite among WWII soldiers and their families





Bing Crosby first made it a hit in 1944, but it was published in 1938.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I%27ll_Be_...You_(song)

[Eric the Green]

This wiki site has a lot of songs from The Great American Songbook to choose from:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_American_Songbook

[Ragnarök_62]

(09-17-2016, 10:44 AM)Eric the Green Wrote: I accept your opinion about Rudolph. Myself, as I often point out, what a song "is about" is not a prime consideration. I am interested in the music. That's what I go by in my picks.

" Certainly not one of the best Rodgers and Hammerstein songs."

Feel free to tell us which you think are the best. (note however I have already mentioned The Sound of Music)

lyrics Wrote: 
"Girl Money"

Yeah yeah yeah
Girl money
Girl money
Girl money

I was sittin' alone
But not very long
She had a weakness for comin' on strong
She was licking my fingers
And drinking my booze
She whispered sweet nothings
I said 'Babe, is it true?'
What'd you say? - Show me yours & I'll show you mine
What'd you do? - Ordered a bottle of the finest French wine
Where'd you go? - I was heading for heaven when she took the wheel
She took me to the cleaners, she knows how it feels

Out all night
Time to get started
Saving all week for her bedroom party
Dollar for her drink
Dollar for the honey
Burnin' a hole
Gonna spend my girl money
Girl money

Long legged Rosie from Baltimore
Took me farther than I've been before
Oh she loved me for those diamonds & pearls
Took me for a ride
Took me around the world

What'd you day?
What'd you do?
Where'd you go?

Come on baby
Come on baby keep drivin' me crazy
You know the story I'm speaking of
Champagne, red roses & limos
Head first to the tunnel of love
Sometimes you're out
Sometimes you're in
Sometimes you lose
But sometimes you win
Playing the game
Paying the price
We're throwing a party
And you're coming tonight Yeah yeah

Out all night
Time to get started
Saving all week for her bedroom party
Dollar for her drink
Dollar for the honey
Burnin' a hole
Gonna spend my girl money

Out all night
Time to get started
Saving all week for her bedroom party
Dollar for her drink
Dollar for the honey
Burnin' a hole  
Gonna spend my girl money
Spend my girl money

Girl money

This song is a new one on my top 400.  It's about Bill Clinton, Monica Lewinsky, and Bill's cigar!
Of course I can't blame Ol'e Billy boy.  If I was married to a lady like Shrillery Shrew, I'd be on the prowl as well.

[Eric the Green]

I was hoping brower might be the one to chime in. Obviously, this one above has nothing to do with what's here. Even looking at the way the word is written shows that it is no candidate for the American Songbook or the Big Band Era or Rodgers and Hammerstein. It belongs somewhere else, Rags. Ain't gonna listen to it here, man.

Suggestion: delete it, and repost to another thread; there are several where it fits. What happened to your 4T rock thread? You deserted it again. Delete it from here today, put it there, and then I can delete this post too.

[Eric the Green]

Resuming from that most inappropriate (I could say worse) interruption....

Tommy Dorsey's best, I guess!




Opus One, 1943.

[gabrielle]

(09-18-2016, 01:29 AM)taramarie Wrote:

(09-18-2016, 12:38 AM)Eric the Green Wrote: I was hoping brower might be the one to chime in. Obviously, this one above has nothing to do with what's here. Even looking at the way the word is written shows that it is no candidate for the American Songbook or the Big Band Era or Rodgers and Hammerstein. It belongs somewhere else, Rags. Ain't gonna listen to it here, man.

Suggestion: delete it, and repost to another thread; there are several where it fits. What happened to your 4T rock thread? You deserted it again. Delete it from here today, put it there, and then I can delete this post too.

He does not have to delete if just because you do not think it qualifies.Who made you king? The thread is about the best songs ever. According to him it is one of his favourites. You cannot pick and choose what qualifies as the best. Just because you do not like it does not make it any less the best for him. Or have you forgotten this thread is about the best songs ever NOT the best songs ever ACCORDING TO ERIC. If so change your fkn title.

Whenever Eric talks about music:

[Ragnarök_62]

(09-18-2016, 12:38 AM)Eric the Green Wrote: I was hoping brower might be the one to chime in. Obviously, this one above has nothing to do with what's here. Even looking at the way the word is written shows that it is no candidate for the American Songbook or the Big Band Era or Rodgers and Hammerstein. It belongs somewhere else, Rags. Ain't gonna listen to it here, man.

Suggestion: delete it, and repost to another thread; there are several where it fits. What happened to your 4T rock thread? You deserted it again. Delete it from here today, put it there, and then I can delete this post too.

1. That song came out in the 1990's so it doesn't fit in the 4T.
2. I downloaded the whole album and posted my favorite one from said album.
3. This thread is called "best songs ever", and that one fits in my book.
4. I'm not a lemming.    Just because a bunch of other folks want to jump into a canyon , doesn't mean I have to follow along.
5. You don't have to listen to it if you don't want to. Nobody's got a gun pointed at your head.

[Eric the Green]

It fits in the 3T thread, then. "best songs ever, the lost years" is on the 1990s.

You'll do what you want, I know. So if you want to be consistent with what you are saying here, don't bother me if I post something about Justin Bieber anywhere I want. JB is far better than what you often post from the 3T, in MY book. And it's a good book.

Jump into the canyon. Find out about a time that you have dismissed, but may have something you can appreciate. If I can do that, even on that other thread, you can do that too.

As for Terror-marie, it's unfortunate that someone quoted that (expletive deleted). GO fish in the lake and stfu. I knew she wouldn't post something constructive. What an (expletive deleted). Whatever she says, is to be disregarded and ignored. Period. I don't suffer total fools.

I'll ignore those muppet show posts too. Not appropriate.

[Eric the Green]

Despite terrible-marie's cynical efforts to ruin my wonderful thread (or at least *I* like it except when she interferes), I am waist deep in the big muddy and so far without brower's asked-for help, big fool that I am, I'm going to press on through 1942 and the forties. (how's that for tying in a song by Pete Seeger I forgot from 1967-1968!) (if you don't click on the song btw, it refers to 1942). So while Terror-marie would rather scold and argue over nothing, I'm going to keep posting songs and musics that lift the heart and the spirit. For those who have ears to hear, let them hear.

So this marvelous one from 1942-43 from "Rodeo" by Aaron Copland was based on a song by William Stepp, from 1937, which was a total reworking of an old Irish fiddle tune entitled "Bonaparte's Retreat." The resulting "Hoe Down" is an anthem of Americans in the days when they were pushing westward ho (or hoe).





It's what's for dinner!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rodeo_(ballet)
https://blogs.loc.gov/folklife/2013/11/b...s-retreat/

Pete describes some other early American wartime songs in this Democracy Now clip.
https://youtu.be/L0ixuSMGKeI

Another Seeger clip; the full 1968 performance, including bits of other wartime songs
https://youtu.be/qHETC5qAnqo

[Eric the Green]

It's time for this one. The early 40s were undoubtedly the peak of Aaron Copland's career, as well as the peak of the big band era. This piece is also the peak of MY musical career, so far. I wrote a transcription for organ of this piece in 1986, and in recent years have made it available on my website, and received hundreds of requests for a copy. It shows how people all over America respond to this piece and need it to celebrate and mark their milestones in life. It is sometimes even thought of as an alternative national anthem. As the poster of this video says, however, it really belongs to all people. Fanfare for the Common Man (1942)





In spite of terrormarie's predictable reaction, I'm going to post this too:
http://philosopherswheel.com/sheetmusic.htm#Reviews of Fanfare

[Eric the Green]

I've Got a Gal in Kalamazoo - Glenn Miller band w/Tex Beneke & the Modernaires

I like this in spite of the very dated singing style of the group.





Typical 4T fare!

More info:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/(I%27ve_Go..._Kalamazoo

taramarie
The contents of this message are hidden because taramarie is on your ignore list.

snicker snicker!

Like FDR said in this era, I say about the terrorist marie: for pointing out the obvious, terrormarie is unrelenting in her hatred of me, and I welcome her hatred!

[Eric the Green]

Pushing on, this song from 1941 was number one in early 1942. Glenn Miller's Band was the greatest of the era.





https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_String_of_Pearls_(song)

[Eric the Green]

Pardon me, boys and gals, and whatever the terrorist marie is:





This 1941 song became #1 on Pearl Harbor Day and remained so for many weeks in 1942.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chattanooga_Choo_Choo

I also liked the Harper's Bizarre version too, which was the only one I knew in 1967:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gdHXZPRnwu8

"Boy the way Glenn Miller played! Songs that made the hit parade!"

Honorable mention, this one from 1945, published in 1944:
Judy Garland - On The Atchison, Topeka And The Santa Fe
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_the_Atc...e_Santa_Fe
I got to ride that one.
(a portion reminds me of the Beach Boys song "All Summer Long" (1964) of course they were known for car songs, not train songs)
Judy also did the Trolley Song
https://youtu.be/0odXnKhKBxQ

[gabrielle]

[Eric the Green]

What is it with this era and trains?





Duke Ellington
The song was first recorded on January 15, 1941 as a standard transcription for radio broadcast. The first (and most famous) commercial recording was made on February 15, 1941.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Take_the_%22A%22_Train

[pbrower2a]

You are in my area. To be sure, many of the Big Band hits are not songs, strictly speaking.

This was highly-polished music... tuneful, tasteful, and even fun.

In a way, Mozart was a 'Big Band' composer. True greatness in any cultural expression depends upon fitting several levels of esthetic delight at once. Most works of classical music (most works by Handel, Haydn, Mozart, and Schubert are immediately accessible) are acquired tastes.  If you find Bach's fugues or Beethoven's late string quartets among the apices of musical expression you may have your justification -- but you also have rare sophistication in music because you have had adequate leisure at some point in your life. You haven't had to work ten hours a day at one job consistently or work two jobs just to survive as is becoming the American way of life.

... The Big Band musicians in at least one instance (Let's Dance) made an improvement over a classical work, Carl Maria von Weber's rambling Invitation to the Dance. Let's Dance  is superior to the original to the work whence it is derived in the one aspect that defines classical music from practically everything else: a tight formal structure.

[pbrower2a]

(09-18-2016, 10:50 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: It's time for this one. The early 40s were undoubtedly the peak of Aaron Copland's career, as well as the peak of the big band era. This piece is also the peak of MY musical career, so far. I wrote a transcription for organ of this piece in 1986, and in recent years have made it available on my website, and received hundreds of requests for a copy. It shows how people all over America respond to this piece and need it to celebrate and mark their milestones in life. It is sometimes even thought of as an alternative national anthem. As the poster of this video says, however, it really belongs to all people. Fanfare for the Common Man (1942)





In spite of terrormarie's predictable reaction, I'm going to post this too:
http://philosopherswheel.com/sheetmusic.htm#Reviews of Fanfare

1942 -- when the fascists debasing the ordinary person everywhere, including even the supposed Master Races of Germany and Japan who had been turned from citizens to serfs, were still on the advance. People in the democracies needed to be reminded of what the war was about on their side, namely the defense of humane decencies established in the American and French Revolutions and the British reform era, and in spirit (if not fully in practice) the Bolshevik Revolution. The common man would defeat the fascists or the fascists would destroy everything good in life.

I think also of the Sandburg-Copland Lincoln Portrait, as clear a rejection of the new manifestations of slavery in the infernal empires of Germany and Japan as a rejection in Lincoln's words of the moribund slavery of the Confederacy. Not even Churchill or FDR could match those words of Lincoln as anti-fascist propaganda. The brave talk of "a new birth of freedom" (from the Gettysburg Address)  would be as necessary for defining victory in the Civil War of Western Civilization (better known as World War II) as in the American Civil War. I don;t know how significant it is, but while the Allies were recognizing a heroic death as a tragedy, the fascists were glorifying death in the name of the Fatherland or the Party.

[pbrower2a]

(09-19-2016, 12:20 AM)Eric the Green Wrote: What is it with this era and trains?





Duke Ellington
The song was first recorded on January 15, 1941 as a standard transcription for radio broadcast. The first (and most famous) commercial recording was made on February 15, 1941.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Take_the_%22A%22_Train

 That's how musicians got around. Not aircraft or motor-coaches as they now do. Not horse-drawn carriages as they might have four decades earlier. Not by gondola (inspiring the many barcarolles) in the canals of Venice. Not steamships on the Mississippi River. Take the A Train refers to an elevated train... to Harlem?

Horses offered the clip-clop that one often hears in Strauss waltzes.  Jet aircraft might offer some monotonous sound not suggesting any music at all. I can't imagine anyone getting musical inspiration from a jet engine. A motorcycle? No sonic charm. Space craft? Submarines? Ludicrous. Trains? The regular chugging of the locomotives and the irregular whistles make some musical suggestions.





This is a 1944 recording of a work with some very different culture behind it... It is definitely inspired by the sounds of a locomotive.

Were I a composer I might think of a toy train with stations in San Francisco, Santa Cruz, and Monterrey. There has never been such a railroad, but no child is ever going to let that reality squelch such an imagination. There would be a chugging locomotive (eight to the bar, as for the Chattanooga Choo-Choo). (Would you rather have South Bend, Kokomo, and Indianapolis, where there really was a train route and probably is one now?)