As I may have mentioned in a previous blog post, my father and mother each told me (separately) that when I was an infant, I would always cry when they sang “Good Night, Irene” to me as a lullaby.
If that is true, I’m not sure why they kept singing it to me (maybe to see if — yet again — it would move me to tears?)
I recorded it with pianist Doug Hammer when we were working on a show called “Songs About Parents and Children.”
I used to think that it was written by Rodgers & Hammerstein, but it turns out — as you may already know — that it was written by Richard Rodgers after Oscar had died (from stomach cancer on August 23, 1950 at his beloved Bucks County farm in Pennsylvania).
They are a well-known songwriting team based in New York City, and they have crafted a bunch of stand-alone songs — along with entire musicals — which are beloved by performers.
A few of their NYC-area hits include “I Like Them (Bald),” “Alto’s Lament,” and “Taylor, The Latte Boy.”
Jinny Sagorin and I recorded their song “There’s Nothing I Wouldn’t Do” with pianist Doug Hammer a few years ago.
Originally from South Africa, Jinny has lived in the Boston area for the past two decades.
In recent years Jinny has expanded beyond musical theater and cabaret to becoming a cantor.
We both share a sense that music can be very sacred (as well as silly, sexy, heartfelt, and open-minded).
Will (with broken elbow), Jinny and Doug — Photo by Jeremy Schmahmann
And performing in a synagogue, library, church or retirement community can be just as satisfying as performing in a bar or club — although we have both done plenty of that, too!
I first met Jinny when I was co-hosting an open mic at The Cambridge Center For Adult Education in Harvard Square (where I also was employed as an events manager and PR person).
Eventually we put together an entire program of songs called LIFE MATTERS.
Jinny also invited me to perform as a special guest when she debuted her solo CD, IT’S FOR YOU, to a sold-out crowd at Scullers Jazz Club in Boston.
And she has performed many of my original songs when I have done showcases of my own work.
In addition to being a performing artist, Jinny is also a visual artist.
Here’s an example of a work of art she created for an annual show called ART/Word in which she is a regular participant.
Thank you to Marcy and Zina for writing this song.
Thank you to Jinny and Doug for recording it with me.
PS: If you feel like streaming this song on your favorite digital music platform, please click here for links.
PPS: I haven’t mentioned the current challenges here on planet earth (wars, heat waves, forest fires, floods, spreading diseases, rising costs, lack of food/fertilizer/fuel, political upheaval, etc.) in recent blog posts.
But I remain vividly aware of them.
And I continue to find inspiration and hope from the courageous candidates and hard-working GOTV (get out the vote) organizations at work around the USA.
As you are probably well aware, there are a bunch of very inspiring human beings stepping up at the local, state and national levels these days.
Let’s support them — with tiny donations of time and/or money— as much as we are able.
My friend Molly Ruggles recently released a new song called “Sea Of Lies.”
She was inspired to write it by the ongoing challenge of sorting through all the news and advertising and sound bites and spin and “blah blah blah” coming at us on an hourly/daily/weekly/monthly/yearly basis.
I originally learned a version she created for four voices (the same four who sang on “My Sweet Honeydew (A Cappella).”
But then she decided to re-write/re-arrange/re-focus it for two voices plus her piano accompaniment.
That’s the version she ended up releasing to various streaming platforms.
It is the sort of melody — and message — which easily gets stuck in my brain on auto-repeat.
“Need a little peace… just a hint of hope — with a hand to hold, maybe I can cope.”
Molly sings lead vocal plus some extra harmonies.
I sing a few harmonies.
I think my favorite moment of the song is when we both sing “Save me… please save me” in harmony.
Molly also designed the artwork to accompany her song.
She is a multi-talented human being.
I am curious to learn — or be reminded — about how other human beings deal with all of the (dis)information coming at us 24/7.
I know some wise people turn off their phones and computers for hours at a time.
And others make sure to exercise (walk, swim, bike, and more), do some gardening, sit in meditation, cook with friends, take a bath, read a book, lie in a hammock, do some yoga, and/or cuddle with their loved ones (human, feline, canine and otherwise).
Deep breath in.
Deep breath out.
What are YOUR coping strategies these days?
One of mine is — no surprise — making music and doing music-related activities such as this blog.
I also find a lot of hope and inspiration learning a few details about people who are brave enough to run for office — whether on the town, city, county, state or national level — all around our country.
And then there are the flowering plants of the world!
They always lift my spirits.
Thank you to Molly for writing this song and then asking me to sing harmony with her.
Thank you to the generous and talented photographers at Pixabay.
And thank YOU for reading — and listening to — yet another blog post from me…
Today I have been inspired by the aphorism “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”
You may have seen it on posters, coffee mugs, etc. — attributed to Albert Einstein.
But according to an online search, there is little evidence that Einstein ever said it.
Instead I learned that a writer — Rita Mae Brown — created this quotation and attributed it to a fictional character in her 1983 book Sudden Death.
Thank you, Ms. Brown!
I think about this aphorism when I am reminded that one is supposed to budget an equal amount of money to market/promote/advertise one’s product as one has spent creating it in the first place.
Yikes!
I have never done this.
Other than maintaining my website, pitching a few songs to music bloggers, and writing this blog, I have spent very little money to promote my music.
However, this particular piece of marketing advice comes up fairly often when I am reading books/articles and watching videos about how to navigate the business of making music in the 21st century.
Now I must pause for a moment for a digression…
Over the past thirty years, I have observed that the music business — like life itself — is always changing and evolving.
So it is virtually impossible to do the same thing over and over again for more than a year or two.
And as a result of personal computers entering our daily lives, we have to keep endlessly learning the latest versions of many different programs/applications — as well as updating our hardware and software.
So as much as I would love to be able to do the same thing over and over again — while drafting new songs using Apple’s GarageBand or making videos using Apple’s iMovie, for example — I am forced to learn the latest updates (and alleged improvements) in order to continue making music.
Deep breath in.
Deep breath out.
This has always seemed to me to be a huge waste of time AND money in order to make a few tech company owners, tech company employees and tech company stockholders rich.
Graphic Design by Stephen C. Fischer
I keep hoping to find a research study which would document the billions of hours which we human beings have wasted in the process of learning — and re-learning…and learning yet again — how to use various computer programs.
I would also like to find studies which explore the cumulative toll on our mental health due to the Sisyphean frustration of having to update and re-learn so many basic tasks/skills on an ongoing basis.
Another deep breath in.
And deep breath out.
So I am happy to report that my friends Molly Ruggles, Ellen Epstein, Michael Cicone and I went in a pre-industrial — and some might even say late-Paleolithic — direction with our most recent song release which we recorded a cappella.
A couple of years ago singer/songwriter/pianist Molly Ruggles took my original version, added an entirely new section of music + lyrics, and then arranged it for four voices to perform a cappella.
Our new version is in the player at the beginning of this blog post.
You may recognize Molly as a vital part of my trio recordings with Carole Bundy.
Molly, Ellen, Will & Michael (Photo by Doug Hammer)
I have known the other two singers on this recording — Ellen and Michael — for decades.
If you are a fan of contemporary folk music, you may be familiar with them as part of a musical trio with singer/songwriter/guitarist Cindy Kallet for forty-five years.
Ellen and Michael have released three beloved CDs of music with Cindy as well as appearing on many of her solo recording projects.
So I feel very honored and excited that they agreed to be part of this recording!
Now I will circle back to the aphorism that “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”
Molly and I are doing something new with this recording.
We have hired a fellow singer-songwriter, Erik Balkey, to help us promote it to folk radio programs/stations around the USA.
Erik puts together compilation CDs of new recordings every two months and sends them to a couple hundred folk DJs and program directors.
We were surprised — and pleased — to learn that he chose “My Sweet Honeydew (A Cappella)” to lead off the second CD in his July/August promotional compilation.
If you happen to listen to a folk program in your neighborhood — or maybe far away from your neighborhood via an internet radio station — please let me know.
Then I will check and see if Erik sent his July/August promotional CDs — including “My Sweet Honeydew (A Cappella)” — to your favorite station/program.
It will be interesting to see what does — or doesn’t — unfold regarding airplay for our song this summer…
Another deep breath in.
And deep breath out.
Thank you to Erik Balkey for his radio outreach.
Thank you to Doug Hammer for his collaborative production skills (and spontaneous photographic impulses).
One of the pleasures of doing a Throwback Thursday blog post — as you may well know — is rediscovering something one once wrote (which one may have completely forgotten!)
In the case of this Throwback Thursday, I also rediscovered a song by Stephen Sondheim called “Everybody Says Don’t” which I had forgotten I’d recorded.
A new biography of Mr. Sondheim came out earlier this year which my sister gave me for my birthday.
I just finished reading it and — not surprisingly — come away with renewed respect and gratitude for the wealth of songs and shows he helped to create over the course of a 50+ year career…
If you are not very familiar with his work, he wrote the lyrics for two blockbuster Broadway favorites — WEST SIDE STORY and GYPSY.
But what he really wanted to do is create both music and lyrics — which is what he finally got to do with A FUNNY THING HAPPENED ON THE WAY TO THE FORUM, A LITTLE NIGHT MUSIC, COMPANY, SWEENEY TODD, INTO THE WOODS, ASSASSINS, PASSION and other shows.
Mr. Sondheim experienced a few flops along the way, including ANYONE CAN WHISTLE and MERRILY WE ROLL ALONG.
But he continued to work on the latter show for decades until he (and various collaborators) finally arrived at a version which was one of the hottest tickets on Broadway — starring, among other talented human beings, Daniel Radcliffe (the original Harry Potter) — during 2023-2024.
A version of this production was filmed and can be watched via various streaming platforms.
And I learned from Wikipedia that Richard Linklater is filming his own version of it over many years (as he has done with other creative projects). Sounds like we may have to wait for a decade or more to see THAT version…
Mr. Sondheim did not have many of his songs become big pop hits, although Judy Collins recorded a lovely version of “Send In The Clowns” from A LITTLE NIGHT MUSIC.
He crafted his songs to advance the plot of each show and often wrote them for particular actors to perform.
This specificity may have made it more challenging for pop musicians like Frank Sinatra or Barbra Streisand to pluck one of this songs out of the context of a particular show to become a more generic pop hit — although Ms. Streisand DID include many of his compositions in her two albums devoted specifically to Broadway songs.
And Mr. Sondheim, bless him, did agree to write additional lyrics for Ms. Streisand’s version of “Send In The Clowns” so that it made more sense for her to sing it (out of the context of the original show).
I think I may have featured photos of hydrangeas in a previous blog post, but they are what is blooming right now in my neighborhood as summer officially gets underway in the Greater Boston area…
And I LOVE them.
Happy summer to any and all readers in the northern hemisphere of planet earth!
Mr. Warren and Mr. Freed wrote “This Heart Of Mine” for a 1944 Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) musical called the ZIEGFELD FOLLIES which starred Fred Astaire.
I think I first heard it sung by Judy Garland, who recorded it the following year for Decca Records.
Arthur Freed also wrote the lyrics for a bunch of other hit songs — such as “Singing In The Rain,” “You Are My Lucky Star,” and “Make ‘Em Laugh.”
I haven’t read any biographies about him (yet) but according to Wikipedia, he lived a fascinating life.
Composite Images of Arthur Freed by Diane Yoder
He was born in South Carolina in 1894, and ended up attending a very prestigious prep school in New Hampshire — Phillips Exeter Academy. I am guessing he was probably one of very few Jewish students on campus — and according to Wikipedia, he became interested in writing poetry there.
After prep school Mr. Freed ended up in Chicago and performed with early versions of the Marx Brothers act (!!!) in vaudeville.
He also wrote special material for them, which led to co-writing enough successful songs that Hollywood beckoned…and he was hired to write songs for early MGM musicals.
After many years at MGM, Freed transitioned from songwriter to producer, working (as an uncredited associate producer ) on THE WIZARD OF OZ and then officially producing his first movie, BABES IN ARMS.
Both of these films, as you probably know, starred Judy Garland.
Mr. Freed went on to produce many more of Garland’s movies including LITTLE NELLIE KELLY, FOR ME AND MY GAL, THE CLOCK, and MEET ME IN ST. LOUIS — which is where she met her second husband, the director Vincente Minnelli, whom Freed had brought from New York City to work at MGM.
According to Wikipedia, Freed hired great talent and then gave them free rein to do their thing — whether it was choreography, costumes, set design, songwriting, direction, etc.
He also gave himself free rein to do some very odd and abusive things, such as exposing his penis to a young Shirley Temple when she came for a visit to discuss doing a movie at MGM — and making sexual advances towards her mother as well.
Temple wrote about this incident in her autobiography — and apparently Mr. Freed experienced no censure as a result of his horrible behavior…
Hoagy Carmichael — NBC Television, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
This month’s song is a minor hit from what is sometimes called the Great American Songbook.
Composer Hoagy Carmichael and lyricist Johnny Mercer created it for a Broadway show — I WALK WITH MUSIC — which did not prove to be a success.
But it did give us this sweet song.
I discovered it when I was putting together an hour-long program of songs by Hoagy Carmichael — who also wrote the music for standards including “Georgia on My Mind,” “Stardust,” “The Nearness of You,” and “Skylark” (another song co-written with Johnny Mercer).
Pianist/producer Doug Hammer and I had a lot of fun recording it.
I learned that — later in his life — Hoagy appeared as a songwriter character on THE FLINTSTONES animated TV show and also participated in a TV special with Fred (Mr.) Rogers.
And I was reminded that Johnny Mercer was a bit of a Jekyll/Hyde personality — beloved during the daytime and then drunk at parties saying mean things during the night — after which he would send flowers and an apology the next morning.
Johnny Mercer (from the Johnny Mercer Foundation website)
In addition to being successful songwriters, Hoagy and Johnny were also successful performers.
Later in his life, Hoagy worked as an actor in movies and TV shows, while Johnny recorded many hit singles over the years — of his own songs and as well as songs written by other people.
Johnny also was one of three men who founded and ran Capitol Records very successfully for many years.
He was mentored early in his career by Yip Harburg (the lyricist who co-wrote “Brother, Can You Spare A Dime?” “Over The Rainbow,” “How Are Things In Glocca Morra?” and “It’s Only A Paper Moon” among many other hits).
And near the end of his own life Mercer became a fan of singer-songwriter Barry Manilow.
In fact one of my favorite Johnny Mercer songs — “When October Goes” — was created after Mr. Mercer died with music by Barry Manilow and unpublished lyrics given to Mr. Manilow by Mercer’s widow, Ginger.
Both Mercer and Carmichael kept writing songs even after rock-n-roll had significantly altered the landscape of popular music — which meant that their work was less and less in demand…
Me (photo by Stephen C. Fischer)
I take inspiration from their creative perseverance as well as from the rich legacy of hit songs they left for all of us to savor.
On a personal note, I have begun attending several open mics on a regular basis, sharing my original songs while accompanying myself on ukulele.
Performing like this has been a good workout for my brain because I now have to remember both lyrics AND chords.
It has also been interesting to see how other regular open mic attendees do (and don’t) welcome one into each musical micro-community.
The key, I think, is simply continuing to show up.
Gradually we reveal ourselves to each other through our song choices and through the things we say between songs (the open mics I attend allow a person to perform 2-3 songs per night).
And trust begins to form…
Graphic Design by Stephen C. Fischer
And curiosity begins to arise…
Deep breath in.
Deep breath out.
All of the venues are also registered with ASCAP, the performing rights organization I joined several years ago.
So after each open mic, I log onto my ASCAP account and enter which of my original songs I performed.
In theory this is supposed to generate a tiny stream of income for me, but I haven’t seen anything yet…
One final thing I have been appreciating about attending open mics is that they give me a chance to fine-tune the lyrics of songs I haven’t yet recorded (but plan to record with Doug Hammer later this year).
One of my favorite bloggers is Dan Kennedy, who has worked at many different media organizations in the Boston area and is now a professor at Northeastern University.
He writes about what is happening in — and to — the media here in the USA.
My boss Diane Wortis and I created (and then produced annually for five years) a day-long conference called “Arts & The Media” which allowed us to call everyone who had anything to do with arts coverage in the Greater Boston area and invite them to participate on a panel.
This included folks from our big papers (including The Boston Globe, The Boston Herald, and The Boston Phoenix) — to folks at radio and TV stations, to folks who worked for smaller local papers and magazines.
Our conferences started happening as Mitt Romney’s private investment company Bain Capital was buying up a bunch of local daily and weekly newspapers in the greater Boston area and consolidating them into one company — which meant that the staff at all of these formerly independent papers was being slashed and lots of generic (non-town-specific) content was starting to be written which could be printed in many different papers within this new chain.
I bore witness firsthand to the degradation of media coverage as a result of large-scale, corporate consolidation.
And twenty five years later, that trend of media consolidation has only worsened.
All of this is to explain why I write near the end of this song — “May our press remain vital, always truth pursuing…”
Reading our local papers and nurturing relationships (via hundreds of hand-written thank you cards) with local arts writers and arts editors for over a decade helped me to understand how crucial the Fourth Estate is to a functioning democracy with healthy checks and balances.
Dan writes in his blog about what is going poorly (media consolidation continues, ad revenues drop…) and also where there are glimmers of hope via new models of local journalism.
And sometimes he weighs in on journalistic best practices.
He steered me to a speech Marty Baron gave at Brandeis University a few years ago which touched upon the fascinating topic of objectivity.
Mr. Baron used to be the editor of The Boston Globe and then became the editor of The Washington Post.
Here’s the heart of what Marty had to say:
“Objectivity is not neutrality.
It is not on-the-one-hand, on-the-other-hand journalism.
It is not false balance or both-sidesism.
It is not giving equal weight to opposing arguments when the evidence points overwhelmingly in one direction.
It does not suggest that we as journalists should engage in meticulous, thorough research only to surrender to cowardice by failing to report the facts we’ve worked so hard to discover…
The idea is to be open-minded when we begin our research and to do that work as conscientiously as possible.
It demands a willingness to listen, an eagerness to learn — and an awareness that there is much for us to know.
We don’t start with the answers.
We go seeking them, first with the already formidable challenge of asking the right questions and finally with the arduous task of verification.”
Deep breath in.
Deep breath out.
Graphic by Stephen C. Fischer
May our media in the USA stop kowtowing and collapsing… and realize that they are just as vulnerable as the rest of us to arrests in the middle of the night, arrests while we are walking from campus to our apartment, arrests while we are in a courthouse following all the rules about how to become a US citizen, arrests while we are picking vegetables, arrests while we are doing our laundry in the middle of the night.
If you might be kind enough to stream it —and maybe even “like” it and add it to one of your playlists if you are so moved — that would be very helpful to feed positive data into the various algorithms which decide whose music gets played and how often…
Dorothy Fields was an extremely successful lyricist and librettist in a very male-dominated entertainment industry.
She was friends with — and sometimes collaborated with — all of the songwriters in the Golden Era of Popular Song including Richard Rodgers, Larry Hart, Oscar Hammerstein, Jerome Kern, Cole Porter, Irving Berlin, and the list (of male songwriters) goes on and on…
She had hits from the 1920s to the 1970s — and did not get discouraged (as many of her male colleagues did) when rock-n-roll began to displace her songs from the hit parade.
Instead she started working with a much younger composer, Cy Coleman, and had one of her biggest hits — the musical Sweet Charity — when she was 62 years old.
I, as a late-blooming songwriter, find her to be very inspirational.
I have chosen freesia for this post because I imagine she would have enjoyed their delicious fragrance ‚ and because they always seem very elegant to me.
According to her biographers, she was always very well-dressed (one grandparent was a tailor…) with separate closets for hats, shoes, active wear, evening wear, etc.
Many songs from the 20s, 30s and 40s include references to specific people, places, products and events — thus functioning as historic 20th century time capsules for 21st century listeners.
A) Mulligan Stew, I learned from Wikipedia, is an Irish-inspired recipe for a soup or stew made from whatever food items one can round up.
It was also known as “Hobo Stew” during the early part of the 20th century in the USA.
I feel a special affinity for Mulligan Stew, because it appears to be very similar to the endless soup I like to make during the winter months.
I start with cut up carrots, potatoes, sweet potatoes, and onions — plus a frozen chicken thigh — and boil all the ingredients until the chicken is cooked and the carrots are starting to lose their crunch.
Then I add some cut-up garlic, fresh ginger, salt, pepper and whatever additional spices — curry powder? thyme? turmeric? one of Trader Joe’s multi-spice blends? — call out to me from the shelf.
Then I eat it for about a week — refrigerating it each night and adding more water plus additional ingredients — leeks? parsnips? kale? mushrooms? squash? rice? tomatoes? okra? tofu? canned beans? frozen artichoke hearts? leftover Chinese food? — on a daily basis before cooking it some more.
Yum!
B) Noël Coward, as you may already know, was a multi-hyphenate powerhouse — an actor-playwright-composer-director-singer from England who died in 1973 after a long and very successful career.
I have only learned and performed one of his songs — “If Love Were All” — which was part of Judy Garland’s repertoire.
But I have a Noël Coward songbook in my basement music library which probably deserves more attention in the future.
C) Wikipedia tells us that “The Beaux-Arts Ball… is the annual costume ball traditionally given by the students of the École nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris in the spring…on the rue Bonaparte overlooking the Seine… Its reputation for high style, nudity, wild antics, and cross-dressing encouraged imitators in American cities. In 1931, in New York, famous architects dressed up as their buildings and today, many American architecture schools hold similar costume balls.”
I am guessing that the one in New York in 1931 is the Beaux Arts Ball to which Larry Hart is referring in his lyrics.
They sound like very creative and somewhat outrageous events!
I am happy to share that my streaming numbers have been rising on Spotify and on Pandora (which are the only two music streaming platforms I currently monitor) — so a BIG THANK YOU to anyone and everyone who have given one of my songs a listen!
I have become more and more of a Pandora fan in recent months, even though their music is only accessible in the USA (and not globally like Spotify).
I use their free option, which means that I have to listen to ads every few songs — which I often mute.
And I use a similar free option on Spotify and YouTube Music.
Even though Pandora’s parent company, SiriusXM, has been laying off large numbers of staff in recent months, the core group of people at Pandora who offer customer service and training to independent musicians like me has — so far — remained intact.
What I particularly love about Pandora is that they do not use chatbots to communicate with independent musicians like me.
Real live Pandora staff offer free training sessions via Zoom each month to encourage musicians to take advantage of their free promotional strategies which can help songs find new listeners.
I tried one strategy — creating a featured track — and the song I featured received hundreds more streams as a result.
Of course, you probably remember that all of the music streaming companies pay only fractions of a cent per stream to recording artists and songwriters like me…
But I have released 58 songs during the past 4 years, and many of these songs have each been streamed over 1000 times on Spotify and Pandora — although less often on YouTube, Apple, Amazon, and other digital music platforms…
And all of those fractions of cents DO have the potential to add up to something substantial.
So I remain hopeful that my persistence will pay off as the months and years go by — as long as we have a functioning internet, a functioning economy and a functioning democracy…
Deep breath in.
Deep breath out.
Thank you to Doug Hammer for playing his beautiful Schimmel piano on this recording and for being very patient while we mixed and mastered it.
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