Well, dear readers, I am sitting here like so much fish, listening to Mr. Munch do Ravel’s Mother Goose Suite – a sublime work that is sublimely sublime. I’ve actually never heard a bad version of this work, but Munch is up there with the best of them. Other conductors tend to take the first movement a little brisker than Munch, but I love the way Munch luxuriates in the music, bathes in it. If you’ve never heard the work, YouTube is your friend. And that’s where I’ve been for the past two hours, since I could not find a movie I wanted to watch. I’ve been doing what they call a deep dive or a dive down the rabbit hole or a deep rabbit hole dive down deep on the first song I really learned how to play on the piano. Of course, I’ve written about my history with the song in Kritzer Time. I’ve loved this song from the second I heard it and had every instrumental version of it I could lay my hands on back in 1962 – there weren’t that many, and all were what they’d now call Easy Listening. I was particularly fond of a version by Acquaviva, which I found several years ago on YouTube. I used to play and sing it all the time, recorded it for the CD that accompanied Kritzer Time and have performed it a couple of times in Kritzerland shows. Funnily, I’d never really done a comprehensive search on vocal versions and other instrumentals I may have missed. I found quite a few. Several are great, several are good, and then a few are completely and utterly awful, especially a few that decide that one of the most beautiful ballads ever written should be a swingin’ up-tempo affair. What a joke. The first major recording for the song, written in 1952, was the 1953 Nat King Cole version, which, with its Nelson Riddle arrangement, is still pretty great. Sinatra has a nice version arranged by Don Costa. Michael Buble has a lush version, but I just don’t care for his singing and blandness. Mel Torme is okay. Dianne Reeves is the worst of them all. Rod Stewart has a lovely arrangement but it’s Rod Stewart, so, not for me. Peggy Lee also has a nice version – Nelson Riddle again. But of all I listened to, my favorites were the very first recording of the song – not major like Nat King Cole, and done the year it was written by one of the songwriters, Bob Haymes, who has a deep, pleasant voice, rather like Ed Ames. He’s obviously completely true to what he and Alan Brandt wrote, the arrangement is lovely – it was done as an independent 78rpm record and amazingly, it’s on YouTube. I saved that one. But the most hyper romantic in the kind of washy stereo sound I absolutely love is, not surprisingly, Johnny Mathis on Columbia, from his classic album, Heavenly. I saved that one, too, so I can have me a That’s All marathon. Whoop de do. Do de Whoop. That sounds like a 60s dance craze, doesn’t it?
Yesterday was certainly a day in which I only got four hours of sleep, which had me feeling weird most of the day and evening. I was up at seven-thirty and out the door by eight-thirty. I joined Robert Yacko for breakfast at BeaBea’s – perhaps our last there because he’s moving to Valley Village and will be very close to Hugo’s. Food was good – I just don’t like eating breakfast. I did remember to take pill one. After that, I went to the mail place and sent the mis-addressed package that was returned to us to the correct address, then I did my banking – first bank, which is usually two minutes from start to finish, took about ten minutes – my gal got the guy before me, a business customer who obviously had all the time in the world to do whatever he was doing. I finally got helped by someone else and once that happened, it all went very quickly. Then I went to my bank and deposited all that needed depositing. After that, I decided not to do a Gelson’s run and just came home.
Once home, I began catching up on stuff, after sending a PDF of the new manuscript to the gal and her hubby. I asked him to read it as a reader, which he did. He found three things, only two of which needed fixing – the third thing turned out to be correct as we had it. I know the gal was reading it tonight and two hundred pages in hadn’t noticed any of the lifts or the bigger stuff I did, which is good. Doug Haverty sent five variations of his cover design – same basic layout for all (it’s a great photo of the gal) but each version with a different color scheme and title font. For me, the clear winner was number one and the minute they saw it they agreed completely. So, that was easy. I caught up on quite a few things, too. At around three, I had hot dogs for food and took pill two and Prednisone.
We had about ten drops of rain, otherwise it was ninety-five damn degrees and eighty in the house. I finally had to cool things down. I dozed off for a bit, then had a Zoom meeting with Doug and a potential set designer for our upcoming show. I liked him very much and we hired him. We seemed to be very much on the same page as to the style we needed and how I never wanted the show to stop for a minute – just one thing flowing into another. After the Zoom, I tried to find a movie to watch and was not successful, then I did the That’s All deep dish deeply deep dive into a deep-dish rabbit hole and here we are. I took pill three around nine, with a nice slice of triple berry cake – really tasty, I must say – and have said.
Today, I’ll be up around ten as long as I’m in bed no later than one-thirty. I’ll do whatever needs doing, continue catching up on stuff, then I may go to the Cheesecake Factory for another gift card meal – why not? My plan is not to spend any money on food until the weekend, which means I make another batch of tuna pasta salad tonight for eating tomorrow and Friday. I do love it, and I always lose weight doing that over two days. Then I’ll watch, listen, and relax.
The rest of the week is more of the same, I’ll be getting two more piano tracks for the upcoming show – once I approve those, then they get orchestrated.
Well, dear readers, I must take the day, I must do the things I do, I must, for example, be up by ten, do whatever needs doing, continue catching up, maybe have a nice meal at the Cheesecake Factory, make tuna pasta salad, and watch, listen, and relax. Today’s topic of discussion: It’s Ask BK Day, the day in which you get to ask me or any dear reader any old question you like and we get to give any old answer we like. So, let’s have loads of lovely questions and loads of lovely answers and loads of lovely postings, shall we, whilst I hit the road to dreamland, always happy to do a deep dish deeply deep dive into a deep-dish rabbit hole for That’s All. Or to put it another way – That’s All, Folks.