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).
Skimming over some of my previous posts, I see that I rarely mention anything about feeling frustrated, unhappy, anxious, or any other “negative” emotional state.
I would like to clearly state that I feel disappointed, scared, envious, disheartened, disgusted, vengeful, upset, discouraged, and cranky on a regular basis.
But I strive — when feeling out of sorts — to remind myself of any number of things in my life that I can be grateful for.
A wonderful life partner. Health. Plenty of food. Lots of family. Lots of friends. A functional bicycle. Employment. A safe place to live. Clean water. No tanks patrolling my neighborhood. Music. Electricity. The children and grown-ups in my Music Together classes. Warm clothing. Two lap top computers. Access to the internet. Great collaborators. Our local network of public libraries. The retirement communities which invite me and my pianist friends back to perform again and again.
Once one gets started, the list can go on and on and on…
The week before Doug Hammer and I performed Songs About Parents & Children at the Third Life Studio in Somerville, MA, I found out that I had been awarded a grant from the newly-created Bob Jolly Charitable Trust to help pay for rehearsals and marketing outreach.
Bob Jolly, who died in 2013, was a beloved actor in the Boston community for 28 years.
Bob Jolly
The Bob Jolly Charitable Trust — established by his will — supports local actors, performers, composers, and theater companies with modest yet very meaningful financial support.
I am very grateful for this grant as well as Bob’s vision to nurture Boston’s creative community for years to come.
His generosity is indeed something good!
The song in the player at the beginning of this blog post was created by Richard Rodgers for the movie version of The Sound Of Music.
To my ears, many of the songs from The Sound of Music are tinged with a bittersweet quality.
This may be because they remind me of my own childhood, and seeing the movie version of The Sound Of Music on a huge screen at a theater in Times Square, NYC.
This may also be because I know now that Oscar Hammerstein was dying from stomach cancer while they were working on this — their last — show.
This knowledge makes songs like “My Favorite Things,” So Long, Farewell,” “Climb Every Mountain,” “Edelwiess,” and “The Sound Of Music” seem especially poignant and intimate — a final gift of wisdom to all of us from Oscar as he approached his own death.
Bob Jolly
Richard Rodgers wrote both the music AND the lyrics for couple of songs which were added to the movie version: “I Have Confidence” and “Something Good.”
He wrote both the music and the lyrics because Oscar died before the movie was made.
Learning more about Mr. Rodgers life — including his challenging relationship with Larry Hart, his own (much more covert) alcoholism, his relationships with various female cast members in his shows — many more layers of complexity to “Something Good,” which Doug and I performed as our final encore at the end of Songs About Parents & Children.
Deep breath in.
Deep breath out.
PS: In the years since I published this blog post, I have released “Something Good” to various streaming platforms.
On some it has proven to be surprisingly popular (9375 plays on Pandora, for example) while on others much less so.
I guess this is the result of the mysterious algorithms which affect how much one’s recordings are shared with other potential new listeners…
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