[youtube width="425" height="344"]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-bnKJjewcII[/youtube]

One of my favorite singers doing one of my favorite songs. Susan Boyle may have conquered the world this past week, but my heart still belongs to Annie. As a songwriter, I couldn’t imagine a more wonderful fate for a song than to be given life by an artist of such amazing depth and passion. Of the thirty or so renditions of this song that I’ve listened to in my lifetime, this is certainly the most achingly beautiful and, without a doubt, the best. Read More

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mgQw-jeItVs[/youtube]

This jam is from a 1986 tribute to Fats Domino, recorded at the Storyville nightclub in N’awlins. Paul Shaffer assembled a cast of guest artists that include, Ray Charles, Jerry Lee Lewis and Ron Wood. This video has been in circulation for quite some time, so you may have seen it before. Stuff like this, however, never goes out of style. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m gonna go overdose on piano music . . .

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“Well, Art is Art, isn’t it? Still, on the other hand, water is water. And east is east and west is west and if you take cranberries and stew them like applesauce they taste much more like prunes than rhubarb does. Now you tell me what you know”….Groucho

Let’s talk about songs. Songs are the background music of our lives. They are playing everywhere, all the time. They are captions to our memories and the sign posts that mark our individual time lines. They are playing when we fall in and out of love, when we get married, when our children are born and when loved ones die. They soothe us, commiserate with our predicaments and inspire us to action. Read More