A bit of high-class crooning today. You can keep Sinatra, Bennett et al, if I have to listen to one crooner it will be Andy Williams. And here we have Nino Rota's Love Theme from The Godfather (I don't need to tell you again how good those films are) with a lyric bolted onto it for Williams to do his damnedest. Speak Softly Love.
I know where this one comes from. If you start a deep-dive into Belle and Sebastian (and on that score I refer you back to my introduction of this year's calendar) Spotify forms the strong opinion that you will like Richard Hawley. It is mildly alrming that an algorithm can be so spot on. Tonight the Streets Are Ours.
The trees are up (yes we have two - so bourgeois) and the lights are shining. Thus I can start my festive diet of things cinematic.
He's not even the most famous musician from Stourport-on-Severn (that would be Ray Thomas from my beloved Moody Blues) but Clifford T. Ward was responsible for this nicely soppy song, Home Thoughts from Abroad. Ward had a dodgy haircut (a lot of us did in the seventies) but anecdote has it that he was good at his day job as an English teacher so I thnk we will forgive him that.
You've got to have a bit of corn in there. This song is uber-corny (or should that be tres corny). This is Charles Aznavour's rendition of She. A song made fashionable again by the use of the Elvis Costello version in the film Notting Hill - which, by the way, is, in the opinion of this critic, better than its close cousin Four Weddings and a Funeral. Just saying.
I think I must have been channelling my Andy Williams vibe when this track came up. That's the way it works - I always have music playing when I am working and if something really grabs me I add it to my 'Liked' list.
Sierra by Boz Scaggs. This is a seriously haunting piece of music. I came across it when exploring Spotify for tracks suggested by a liking for Ry Cooder. Not sure the link makes any sense other than in my untutored manner - perhaps it's even the similarity of their names (that probably doesn't make any sense either) but what I do know is that my great mate Big Willy, who strums a mean guitar himself, approves of both.
Joan Baez has a voice of crystal clarity. Perhaps most famed as an interpreter of others' songs, this is one of her own compositions. Some commentators liked to imagine that Diamonds and Rust was a bit of a swipe at her former lover, Bob Dylan. Baez has always denied that. Why let the facts stand in the way of a good story. A rather beautiful noise.
