Mark Blackburn

SINATRA – Thanks For The Memory Nancy Sinatra's "Sinatra Family Forum" website came to an end yesterday (8/1/2021) after a 24 year run. A lot of memories! In sync with our hearts, the intuitive genius that is YouTube sent this one my way just a minute ago. From Frank's SHE SHOT ME DOWN album, arranged by Gordon Jenkins. This version at YouTube includes an informed note posted on the weekend. Val Haley (2 days ago) Written by Leo Robin in 1938. Sinatra recorded many Robin tunes including Just a Kiss Apart, Blue Hawaii, Bye Bye Baby, For Every Man There's a Woman, If I Should Lose You, Love Is Just Around the Corner, My Ideal, Prisoner Of Love and With Every Breath I Take. In 1981, Sinatra commissioned Leo to create an updated version of Thanks For The Memory for him to record on his new album, She Shot Me Down.

BUGLER'S HOLIDAY (Go Army!) A friend just shared a YouTube version of The Typewriter Song, by Leroy (Sleigh Ride) Anderson -- my favorite composer when I was two years old! I was crazy about that song -- and all his other unforgettable tunes, including his best-selling Blue Tango. And so many others -- one of my favorite waltzes, Belle of the Ball, The Waltzing Cat, Fiddle Faddle; And this maybe my favorite of them all Bugler's Holiday. First version offered at YouTube this day is this one: with over a million views, the U.S. Army Band. Goosebumps. At the speed it deserves to be played but almost never is! Note: around the 1:40 mark they begin to accelerate the tempo. Merely impossible!

SINATRA – My Shining Hour (1980)

Whenever I hear Frank sing "100 years from today" . . .

SINATRA - If (and the way he wore his hat)

JESSI COLTER / CHET ATKINS - Storms Never Last

Tony DeSare - All The Things You Are

For what is dancing, but making love set to music . . . playing

NATALIE COLE – I'm Glad There Is You

BARBRA STREISAND – Why Did I Choose You?

FRANK SINATRA - Flowers Mean Forgiveness

BOB DYLAN - It's Funny to Everyone But Me

Enjoying the replay for "Show #9 July 22, 2007"

ROD STEWART – Blue Moon

And as for Dolores Claman's “Hockey Night in Canada” theme music, the song's Wikipedia entry has an updated note about its “origins.” In 1968, the CBC commissioned McLaren Advertising in Toronto to create a new promotional tune for Hockey Night in Canada.[2] McLaren contracted Dolores Claman, a classically trained composer who had produced a number of successful jingles, promotional songs and television theme music,[3] to write the tune. Claman had never seen a hockey game in person and wrote the tune imagining Roman gladiators wearing skates. "It just arrived in my head," she recalled several decades later. Claman said she wrote her song to reflect the narrative arc of a hockey game from the arrival on the rink, to the battle of the game, to the trip home, "plus a cold beer."[4] Since the song was originally classified as an advertising jingle Claman did not originally get residuals but only a one-time creative fee of $800. The piece was originally performed by a 20-member orchestra.[4] In the 1970s, CBC began using the tune as the standard introduction for the show and Claman was entitled to music-use licence payments of between $2,000 and $10,000 each year. After she was advised by her agent in 1993 to license the song, she earned approximately $500 per broadcast. I grew up in Ottawa, where “The Parkdale (United Church) Community Orchestra” has for decades been an important musical presence in Canada's capitol: here they perform the best version I ever heard of this great “Hockey Night” melody by Dolores Claman (this arrangement by the late Howard Cable of Toronto).

Canadian-born composer Dolores Claman died this week, just after celebrating her 94th birthday (July 6). Anyone who is Canadian (and of an age) knows 'by heart' two of Dolores' best tunes from the 1960s: The first was the theme song for an Academy Award -winning short film, introduced at the Ontario Pavilion of Canada's “Expo '67” world's fair in Montreal. The other was the “Hockey Night in Canada” instrumental theme (more about that one below). The best report I ever read on Dolores Claman was by Toronto Star feature writer Leslie Scrivener who recalled in 2007 that “The big hits that sunny summer of '67 were Happy Together by The Turtles, I'm a Believer by The Monkees, and All You Need is Love by The Beatles – as optimistic as the year itself. There was one particularly Canadian song that year – one of dozens commissioned to celebrate the country's regions – that was popular and upbeat, as was expected at the time. “A Place to Stand” may not leap to mind as one of the hits of `67 – until you put the lyrics together: "A place to stand, a place to grow, Ontar-i-ar-i-ar-i-o." Remember that? Most do, because many people growing up in Ontario in 1967 have its rousing melody hardwired in the brain. The mere mention of it sends the tune looping round and round, maddeningly. The song was commissioned by the Ontario government to accompany the short documentary film of the same name that was screened at the Ontario Pavilion at Expo. That film was a marvel for its multiple, moving, split-screen images, a technique that had not been used before and astounded all who saw it. The song sold 50,000 copies. The film, which later toured movie theatres in the United States and Europe, would be seen by 100 million people, be nominated for two Academy Awards, and win an Oscar for 'Best Live Action Short Subject' for filmaker Chris Chapman. Vancouver-born composer Dolores Claman and her then-husband, Richard Morris, were hired to write the music and lyrics for the film. The couple met in London, England, where Claman, a graduate of the Juilliard School, was writing songs for musical revues – things like Air on a Shoestring – in West End London theaters. Morris wanted a taste of the new world. They moved to Toronto, where he worked for an ad agency and they started a jingle-writing business, Quartet Productions, whose clients included Ford, Chrysler, General Motors, and the major airlines. The only instruction they received from the province was that the music had to be suitable for children to sing. "The words drove the music," Claman says. "But it was complicated because we didn't see the whole film at all, just bits" of it. The fleeting images of the people of Ontario at work and play, and scenes of shimmering autumn leaves, geese in flight, and baskets of peaches, created what Claman interpreted as a "warm feeling." Reviewers at the time said it was difficult to remember a single sequence, but the effect was subtle and subliminal. "You'd have the sneaking belief that Ontario really is Eden," one observed. "I always had to get a picture in my mind and then let emotion take over," Claman says. "I have to get myself right in to it and not stand back too much." But when the lyrics were presented to the Department of Economics and Development, as the ministry was then known, "they didn't go down very well," she says. "Especially the `Ontari-ari-ari-o' bit." "I was busy listening to a mix in the recording room, so I didn't see what happened," Claman says. "Richard was sitting in the client's room, which was very small, when suddenly a lot of men in suits arrived, including the Minister of Industry, looking very nervous, and other dignitaries looking non-committal and finally Ontario premier John Robarts, himself. He listened to it once through, wiped a tear from his eye, and left. And that was that." Later they received a letter from Robarts. "He said every time he heard the song, he teared up a bit. It touched him emotionally." The song was enormously successful, and the couple, who held the copyright, decided they couldn't be bothered policing it – at one point, people were using the song to sell real estate – and instead sold the rights to the province. It's likely the success of "A Place to Stand" that led to the song that really made Claman famous, the Hockey Night in Canada theme, the brassy, triumphalist air that still heralds the Saturday night game on CBC television. "A Place to Stand" also led them to Spain, where they were hired to work out Spanish lyrics for the international distribution of the film. Worn out from the pace of jingle writing in Toronto, and as the parents of two small children, they ended up living in Spain (where Dolores died this week). If it was unsettling for the composer to see only part of the film, it was torturous for the filmmaker, Chris Chapman who had embarked on a dazzling new technique: Over a year, Chapman shot 70 kilometres of film, which he distilled into 18 minutes, though the images moving across the screen were the equivalent of an hour and three-quarters of film. It was a difficult task, because such a film had not been made before [and] Even at the first screening, at Todd-AO studios in Hollywood, he was still unsure. "There were a couple of stenographers, who were eating their lunch watching the screening, and they were agog. But I wanted to run. I was exhausted and thought it was a failure, but a chap grabbed me as I was going out the door. He'd been standing at the back of the screening room and said he was blown away by it. It was Steve McQueen." The next year, McQueen starred in The Thomas Crown Affair, directed by Norman Jewison, a film that used the split-screen technique that Chapman developed.

Frank SINATRA - I Left My Heart In San Francisco

Every 12 or 20 years, Jennifer Warnes releases a new album. Which means she's due for one any minute now (we hope!) A Facebook friend just shared a quote (I'd not read before) from Bob Dylan -- about Leonard Cohen (below) and thought of the song Cohen co-wrote with Jennifer Warnes 40 years ago. The two were on a tour bus together, near Lourdes, France when Jennifer explained to Leonard the significance of that 'Marian Shrine' – visited by upwards of 10 million Catholic faithful each year (pre-Covid days, remember?) Jennifer said Leonard said it would make a good song – and he even suggested the opening line: “There was a child named 'Bernadette' – I heard the story long ago.” Leonard Cohen is listed as co-writer of this, my favorite song by Jennifer Warnes. At YouTube there is one upload of the studio recording which just topped 109K 'views' with comments left on. Thank you, Al Zebra. [youtube]f96WymmAJAs[/youtube] “Leonard Cohen is the ‘number one’ songwriter of our time – and I’m ‘number zero’. When people talk about Leonard, they fail to mention his melodies, which to me, along with his lyrics, are his greatest genius. Even the counterpoint lines – they give a celestial character and melodic lift to his songs. No one else comes close to this in modern music. I like all of Leonard’s songs, early or late. They make you think & feel. I like some of his later songs even better than his early ones. Yet there’s a simplicity to his early ones that I like, too. He's very much a descendant of Irving Berlin. Both of them just hear melodies that most of us can only strive for. Both Leonard and [Irving] Berlin are incredibly crafty. Leonard particularly uses chord progressions that are classical in shape. He is a much more savvy musician than you’d think.” — Bob Dylan

ANN HAMPTON CALLAWAY - The Folks Who Live On The Hill

But this is where I came in . . .

JACK JONES – Who Cares? (so long as you care for me)

TONY & BILL “Together Again” – You Must Believe In Spring

Eleven years ago at the Grammys – honoring the memory of Les Paul – Jeff Beck performed to perfection Les's most difficult licks for a 'live' rendition of 'How High The Moon' (a chart topping million seller in the early 50s). Dublin born singer and multi-instrumentalist Imelda May and her band replicated the multi-track Mary Ford vocals. The video which is not available disappeared from YouTube after that night. But the Grammy Museum offered up this audio recording. If, like some of us, you know by heart every note of Les Paul's unique solos, you'd remember that night having goosebumps and – in my case, saying, not for the first time, That guy, Jeff Beck is the greatest all-'round guitarist to transcend his blues/rock roots. You may agree? June 24 2011 Jeff and Imelda replicated their performance at New York's Iridium jazz club where Les had played one night a week for 15 years.

Hiroshi Nakamura - "Danny Boy - inspired by Bill Evans" You know how some days you just need to hear a song for what you're experiencing (some sadness perhaps) in this present moment: hoping one will be sent your way by a kindred spirit who seems to be 'reading your mind.' This is such a day! and this was the very song I needed: from a gifted Japanese pianist Hiroshi Nakamura. Listening while recalling those poignant words -- of invitation to kneel at the graveside of a departed loved one, and "Say an Ave (Hail Mary) for me." Yes, recalling the lyric to Danny Boy while watching these gifted hands and an inspired transcription, of a favorite solo by most everyone's favorite jazz pianist. Bill Evans recorded this one as a solo -- after almost a year away from playing concerts, in the wake of the accidental death of his great bass player Scott LaFaro. Thanks, Hiroshi for sharing this day!

SINATRA - The Days of Wine and Roses