My earliest memories of my home involve music; a dizzying array of various styles of music. My parents, Tom and Elaine Fugate, were music lovers. Mom and Dad played the clarinet in high school, and Mom continued to play piano, mostly for her own enjoyment, and then organ for our Methodist church in Mentone, Indiana. I can't honestly say that she performed on the church organ out of sheer enjoyment. Many a Sunday morning found her at our home organ, fretting about a prelude piece that wasn't coming together as she would have liked.
The Magnavox stereo in our dining room, a combination turntable/8-track, had a storage bin that held, among many others, 8-tracks and LPs of: the soundtracks from Hair, Grease and Midnight Cowboy; An American in Paris and Rhapsody in Blue by George Gershwin, original cast recordings from The Sound of Music, West Side Story, and My Fair Lady; Switched-On Bach, A Perry Como Christmas, Beethoven's Sixth Symphony, Queen, Beach Boys, John Denver, The Kentucky Woman (South Bend's own Nancy Flanagan), Christmas with Joe Longstreth and John Escosa, (mentioned in a previous post), Hooked On Classics (confession time--I LOVED those recordings!)--that's just a start. Whew--what an interesting mix!
With such a varied musical upbringing, I've been pretty open to all sorts of musical styles. I suppose it wasn't a coincidence that when I first read last spring that Brian Wilson of The Beach Boys would be releasing a new recording titled "Brian Wilson Reimagines Gershwin" in August, it took me less than a minute to log in to Amazon and put it on my wish list.
One track in particular caught my ear, and, truth be told, the ear of my five-year-old son Alex too. (We finally had to limit the number of times he listened to it at a time.) It's actually a tune that Wilson crafted from two unpublished Gershwin sources. The soaring Gershwin melody, trademark Brian Wilson out-of-nowhere chords, and the tight Beach-Boy-style background harmony make "The Like In I Love You" a truly
ethereal experience to listen to. It sounds as if it would be gorgeous on harp, and I'm working on an arrangement. I hope to post a video very soon!
Stay tuned!
