We saw a revival of Guys and Dolls last week in New York. While we heard “If I were a bell.” I whispered to my daughter that “This is one of my ten favorite songs.”<\/p>\n
I immediately knew that was a rash statement. My daughter being my daughter, she of course, asked what the other nine were.<\/p>\n
So in moments snatched here or there over the last few months, when I was too exhausted to do anything productive, I\u2019ve made a list. There was no way to get the list down to ten. So I settled for twenty five. And even then, I have a waiting list of another twenty.
\n
\nI’m sure the list would change if I were to think about it for another few months. But all such amusements must come to an end, so for her and you, here it is.<\/p>\n
How many Philadelphians do you think there are among the songwriters?<\/p>\n
Note: I mean songs, not music. The list of my 25 favorites pieces of music would be totally different and would be a list of performances\u2014of some of these songs and a great deal of other music. A great songs, for me, must be capable of standing apart from a particular and serving as the framework for a number of different interpretations. So, there is nothing composed by my favorite musician, Miles Davis, or one of my favorite bands, Talking Heads here. And if we were taking about music, there would be a lot more by Duke, Sonny Rollins, Bird, and David Murray. There are only a few songs on this list that have never been \u201ccovered\u201d by a number of performers and those exceptions could and should be corrected.<\/p>\n
1. Theme for an imaginary western–Jack Bruce \/ Pete Brown
\n2. Do Nothing til you hear from me–Duke Ellington \/Bob Russell
\n3. They Can’t Take That Away From Me–George Gershwin \/ Ira Gershwin
\n4. Our Love Is Here To Stay–George Gershwin \/ Ira Gershwin
\n5. Take Me To The River–Al Green, Mahon Hodges
\n6. Bye Bye Blackbird–Ray Henderson \/ Mort Dixon
\n7. (Your love is like a) Heat Wave–Edward Holland, Jr. \/ Lamont Dozier \/ Brian Holland
\n8. Box of Rain–Phil Lesh \/ Robert Hunter
\n9. Sugar Magnolia–Bob Weir \/ Robert Hunter
\n10. Time after Time–Cindy Lauper \/ Rob Hyman
\n11. Strawberry Fields Forever–John Lennon
\n12. If I were a bell–Frank Loesser
\n13. Domino–Van Morrison
\n14. Brown eyed girl–Van Morrison
\n15. Cypress Avenue–Van Morrison
\n16. Ev’ry Time We Say Goodbye-Cole Porter
\n17. At Long Last Love–Cole Porter
\n18. Gimme Shelter–Keith Richards \/ Mick Jagger
\n19. The Weight–Robbie Robertson
\n20. It’s got to be love–Richard Rogers \/ Lorenz Hart
\n21. You Musn’t kick it around–Richard Rogers \/ Lorenz Hart
\n22. Dancing in the Streets–William Stevenson and Marvin Gaye
\n23. Together til the end of time–Frank Wilson
\n24. Can’t Find My Way Home–Steve Winwood
\n25. When I Fall In Love–Victor Young \/ Edward Heyman<\/p>\n
Postscript 2014: How did leave out I See Your Face Before Me by Arthur Schwartz and Howard Dietz?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
We saw a revival of Guys and Dolls last week in New York. While we heard “If I were a bell.” I whispered to my daughter that “This is one of my ten favorite songs.” I immediately knew that was a rash statement. My daughter being my daughter, she of course, asked what the other nine were. So in moments snatched here or there over the last few months, when I was too exhausted to do anything productive, I\u2019ve made a list. There was no way to get the list down to ten. So I settled for twenty five. And even then, I have a waiting list of another twenty. Continue reading<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p35YuU-6I","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcstier.com\/blog2\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/416"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcstier.com\/blog2\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcstier.com\/blog2\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcstier.com\/blog2\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcstier.com\/blog2\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=416"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/marcstier.com\/blog2\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/416\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8516,"href":"https:\/\/marcstier.com\/blog2\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/416\/revisions\/8516"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcstier.com\/blog2\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=416"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcstier.com\/blog2\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=416"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcstier.com\/blog2\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=416"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}