Somehow I had never heard of Eileen Ferrell until a few years ago. I had an uncle who liked music as much as I do, and he happened to have am immense collection of reel-to-reel tapes, classical, jazz, show tunes, international music, and others, just a treasure trove that I now have after his passing. I highly recommend that anybody explore the musical collections of people who are generations older than you, you may be very surprised what wonders you might uncover. Being stuck in your own particular musical decade is to be needlessly limiting.
In the introduction to this series I said that Especially Wonderful Songs were those that grabbed me, stopped from whatever I was doing while the music was playing. Well, it was the very fist note out of Eileen Ferrell's most that stopped me in my tracks. I nearly exploded due to the power of her voice. I not only paused from what I was doing, I stopped that task and sat down on the couch in the living room and listened to the whole album. What an amazing collection of songs on that one album, "I've Got A Right To Sing The Blues."
Who here has the right to sing the blues, raise your hand. Again, here is another song that one might think is a "downer", but tell me, do you feel down, listening to this? I sure don't! Think back to who developed the blues and what kind of life they were suffering through. They didn't create this music to support suicide...not on your life. It was music that helped them to cope, to survive, and maybe even thrive regardless of external conditions.
Please listen to this and let me know if it leads you to thriving. Anybody singing this song might think at first that they may as well drown themselves, but you know damned well that kind of music made sure they rarely succumbed to such despair.
5. Song name: I’ve Got A Right to Sing The Blues
Artist: Eileen Farrell
Song Writers: Lyrics by Ted Koehler, Music by Harold Arlen
Arranger: Luther Henderson
No comments:
Post a Comment