Tag: Elvis Presley

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Earwig Redux

A subscriber to my silly little blog “thanked me” for so cleverly inserting a Tom Dooley earwig into his cerebrum.

As with all things Curmudgeon, there is a bit of a back story.  This Kingston Trio song  rose to the top of the charts in 1958. I would have been six.  Tom Dooley is the first popular song of which I remember singing the lyrics.

But…my mother had a favorite story about the four year old me being completely enamored with the Elvis Presley version of Hound Dog  in 1956. Apparently I would sing the song loud and often.  I am sure I was entirely precious!

As a favor to my subscriber…the best way to get rid of an earwig is to replace it with another one. So without further ado here is Elvis singing Hound Dog…

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Motown: The Musical

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I was born in the fifties, grew up in the 60s, and attended college in the early 70s. The soundtrack of my youth is in many ways the Motown playbook. Whenever I hear any number of those songs, I “Dr. Who” it back to that era when the song was new.

We saw Motown: The Musical Saturday night at The Fabulous Fox Theatre in St. Louis. It was a short three hours of wonderful music and dancing. So many of the performers did the songs so well, it felt like the original artist was there in front of us.   Robin thought it was the best show she had seen at the Fox. I would not go that far, but it was definitely up there.

As a bit of background, St. Louis has been on edge for several weeks due the situation in Ferguson with the Michael Brown shooting.   A white policeman shot a young black man several times resulting in his death. There were demonstrations and some minor rioting afterwards. The shooting was the evening of August 9, 2014. Here it is Nov 22, 2014 and the grand jury is still out without a decision, although one is expected any day. The typical crowd at a Broadway musical presented at the Fox is older Continue reading “Motown: The Musical”