Category Archives: Music

M Is for the Many Things She Gave Me

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Flowers for Mom

The original lyrics were written in 1915 by Howard Johnson and the song is titled Mother: It turns out that Howard Johnson also wrote, “I Scream, You Scream, We All Scream for Ice Cream”.

M Is for the Many things she gave me,
O Means only that she’s growing Old.
T Is for the Tears she shed to save me,
H Is for her Heart of purest gold.
E Is for her Eyes with love light shining,
R Means Right and Right she’ll always be.

Put them all together, They spell MOTHER

A word that means the world to me.

The picture with this post is of some flowers for Mother.

This is a repost of a post that was written several years ago. It was written for my mother, but also for my mother-in-law. My mother had passed away, and now recently, so has my mother-in-law. Actually, Gene, my mother-in-law really owns this post. Her three lovely daughters grew up singing this song to her, much to her chagrin. Maybe this parody of the Mother song that I found on the internet, is closer to what she hears when the original lyrics are sung:

M is for the many things she gave me
O is for the other things she gave me
T is for the things she gave me
H is for her things, which she gave me
E is for everything she gave me
R is for the rest of the things she gave me

Anne asked me not to originally post this post for fear of the pain that it might cause her mother. I only heard her childhood guilt speaking. In truth it is I who should feel guilty, because it is my naked ambition that drives this post. My informed readers might ask, how is this different? Since, ’09 this post has been a gold mine of blog hits. Every April it begins. In May, it begins to crest and come Sunday, interest will peak and then crash. That is why now is when I should act. I just did a google search looking for the author of this song. I typed in, “M is for the many things she gave me lyrics” and RegenAxe is the number one website returned. I feel lucky. Thank you, Mother.

To all of the forlorn sons and daughters that have found the previous post, the poem MOTHER is in the public domain. It is an old troupe, much copied, but it is free to use. If you are emailing your mom, I cannot compete with the simple cut and paste. If you are willing to go the extra mile, I offer this advice. Say, “I love you Mom.” Praise her. Say she looks nice, say she said something interesting. Tell her something you did that would make her proud. This last is the toughest, but is the one that will make her the happiest on Mother’s Day.

I’ve Been to the Mountaintop

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Beale Street—Photo by Heidi Kaden on Unsplash

Joanie and Anne are subscribers to the Dance Saint Louis series. At the end of the season, they each get a free ticket. Last night, Anne invited me. Using her extra ticket, Joanie invited Elieen, one of her and Anne’s Friday knitting friends. The show was by Memphis’s Collage Dance Collective, but before the show there was dinner at the Olympia. We of course shared saganaki, “Opa!”

Opa!

Collage Dance Collective performed three dances. The first, Rise, features a voiceover of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. giving his final speech, his I’ve Been to the Mountaintop speech that he gave the day before his murder in Memphis. The sight of these young people silently dancing to his stirring and prophetic words made for a powerful and moving combination that lifted my soul.

Enemy Behind the Gates is part of a larger work, Their Eyes Were Watching God and is inspired by the life of Janie Crawford, who defied societal expectations in the 1930s South to pursue true love. Its title is derived from an African proverb, “When there are no enemies within, the enemies outside cannot hurt you.”

The last dance, Bluff City Blues is pure Beale Street. Set to the music of Muddy Waters, B.B. King, Bobby “Blue” Bland and Koko Taylor it was a toe-tapping delight and guaranteed to pitch a wang dang doodle all night long. Afterwards, I was hoping for an encore, but this was ballet, and they do not do that stuff there.

Beale Street—Photo by Nikolay Loubet on Unsplash

Finally, Joy in Mudville!

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Boeing

The home team finally won one! I am not speaking of the Cards, but instead Boeing. Yesterday, it was announced that Saint Louis would be building the next generation fighter. This has been a long time coming, ending quite a dry spell. A spell that spanned the length of my career. So many times, while I worked there, we came in second. Always a bridesmaid, never the bride, but that has ended.

Announced as the F-47, in a wise nod to Trump’s presidency, this new military aircraft will rejuvenate Saint Louis’s flagging aircraft industry. In the nineties, when I began working for what was then McDonnell Douglas there were 40K Saint Louis employees. Today, there are little more than 15K, most subsisting off of legacy programs like the F-15 and F-18. Programs that sustained my career.

I retired over eight years ago, but this new fighter was already being developed. I could have worked this program then, but I had already drawn tired of chasing pipe dreams that I would never see any conclusion from. I was already headed towards the door by then. Slated to replace the F-22, this new plane probably began development the moment that that one first took off. The aggressive schedule for the F-47 has its first flight occurring before Trump leaves office, but since he has no plans to ever leave that does not really say much.

So, the new plane has a number (47), but it does not yet have a proper name. Much like the F-22 is the Raptor, the F-18 is the Hornet, and the F-15 is the Eagle, each type of aircraft gets a name. The name for this new aircraft is yet to be announced. The government used to allow the contractor to pick this name, but JS McDonnell’s phantasmagorical bent ruined that. He named his various planes the Phantom, Banshee, Voodoo, Demon and the Goblin. Finally, the Air Force said enough and picked Eagle or the F-15. I doubt that they will give anyone in Saint Louis that kind of authority ever again.

This morning, we took Declan to his weekly music lesson, Bach & Boogie. This class is a hoot! Watch a half-dozen toddlers interact with each other, while trying to respond to the music is precious. Pictured in the chaos is Alex, performing today’s piece, Prokofiev’s Peter and the Wolf. In this music, various instruments are paired with characters from the story. Giving each one its own theme. I love the pairing of the cat with the clarinet, especially Garrison Keillor’s one-off version for Bertha’s Kitty Boutique. There are changes ahead in this program. Alex’s wife was accepted at Brown as a resident, and they will be moving soon.

Bach & Boogie

Bach & Boogie

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Alex and His Little Boogies

Maren has left the country, headed to Panama, with only one baby in tow, the player to be named later. Declan woke missing her but seemed to be adjusting to the new abnormal by the time Bach & Boogie began. We all attended this event and enjoyed it much. This being spring break week here, this show was somewhat lightly attended. At least by the juveniles. The residents of the senior center where this class is held were all out in force and enjoyed the music and the kids immensely. For me, David stole the show, when he played Ode to Joy on the piano. I did not know that he could even tickle the ivories.

We got a text warning us that last night was a dark and stormy night in the Lou. I monitored the radar or a while but went to bed way before the storms hit town. There was something like six tornadoes reported in the area. The house did not lose power, even though a tree limb fell near the lateral. Still waiting to hear about possible hail damage. I hope that the skylights survived.

I-N-F-L-U-E-N-Z-A Blues

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This 1919 sheet music cover for I-N-F-L-U-E-N-Z-A Blues, by white songwriters Happy Klark and Arthur C. Brown, features racist minstrel stereotypes widely used in American entertainment in the 19th and early 20th centuries. “Minstrel shows” of white performers in blackface dominated early vaudeville and radio programs, mocking Black culture in offensive caricatures. Like the one featured on this cover, tropical settings evoked white supremacist notions of an uncivilized culture, equating the music with a “primitive” sensibility. In addition to spreading harmful stereotypes, minstrelsy set demeaning expectations for Black performers, as audiences expected Black artists to meet the vulgarized standards of minstrel performance. The music recording and publishing industries adhered to these racist trends in popular culture, and this imagery is often associated with early “race records” and Ragtime “Blues” compositions.

Please consider this post an example of my DEI antidote to the torrent of racist rhetoric that is spewing daily now from our nation’s capital. Afterall, it is February, Black History month. At least I think that it still is. They have not changed that yet, or have they? It is still early. I am sure that they will get to it.

This song commemorated the 1919 epidemic, the so-called Spanish flu. The one before the 2020 pandemic. Its lyrics rail against this plague. Explaining that this disease affects both the rich and poor, “It killed the rich, killed the poor.” Unlike Covid, which was more deadly to the old, that flu tended to kill the young and healthy. The tune views this malady as God’s judgement upon our land, but as the cover sheet claims, it still makes for wonderful dance music. We are both vaccinated and have so far escaped getting sick this winter. Knock on wood.