I don’t believe there’s much worthy of adding to this Encore Musings, which is not already written below. Yet, it was an honor to be endowed and gifted with an intuitive sense of how to program music, which brought joy and comfort to tens of thousands of radio listeners, and I have the privilege of spending much of my working life doing so. Over the years, I received hundreds of E-mails and notes from listeners who simply loved songs they’d never heard before to others who listened to a station while commuting to and from work because the music reduced the stress of driving in heavy traffic!
It’s an art and a science. It’s a universal language. It stirs the senses, kindles the fires of memory, and soothes the troubled soul. The gift of music … a divine mystery, a blessing for mankind!
Aldous Huxley, a 20th-century English writer and philosopher (who could be a story unto itself) wrote:
After silence, that which comes nearest to expressing the inexpressible is music!
This story, appearing on a single page that had been saved by my wife Alicia, is from a small magazine likely dating to the 1990s:
In Wales, the music of men’s chorus groups is deeply engrained in the culture. Prior to World War II, one Welsh glee club had a friendly yet competitive rivalry with a German glee club, but that bond was replaced with animosity during and after the war. The tension was gradually overcome, though, by the message on the trophy shared by the two choruses: “Speak with me, and you’re my friend. Sing with me, and you’re my brother.”
Speaking of my wife Alicia, not only did we have a deep admiration and abiding love for each other, we had the added bond that our lives were tied together by our individual professional connection to music … she as a professional singer, I who had no performing talent or skills whatsoever, was somehow gifted with an ear and sensitivity for listening to musical selections and judging based on what others would enjoy and appreciate hearing — I would describe myself as a professional listener.
As an aside, we didn’t necessarily have exactly the same musical tastes … hers tended more toward the traditional, classical side musical compositions … mine are likely centered much in the realm of the three genres which I programmed in satellite radio: 1940s/Big Band Swing, instrumentally-based Easy Listening and Southern Gospel … and maybe throw in a little Country, Folk, and Blues.
The point I really wanted to make related to Alicia was that, while her tastes were as I described, take her to a live performance of most any genre within the musical spectrum, she’d be into it and quickly become exhilarated!
In another short article which was published in another small magazine sometime in the mid-1990s, author Woodie W. White led off with this story:
“In Europe a little bird called the chaffinch is very popular. It looks much like the American male robin, yet it sings like a canary. Many people buy chaffinches for their homes, only to discover that these birds have a peculiar characteristic. Unlike the canary, the chaffinch can forget how to sing. A chaffinch owner must take his bird back into the woods two or three times a year so it can hear other chaffinches sing. If it does not hear its own kind singing, it may mope and mope and eventually die, because it has forgotten how to sing.”
So, as our old friend, the one-and-only Louis Armstrong said …
Music is Life itself!
Now — as the one-and-only Doris Day sings, as accompanied by the great Harry James and his Orchestra — go forth…
And, may that be a key to harmony, to happiness, to love, and to peace in your life this day! Plus, find a way to share some of this with others who do have a need for some or all of this to brighten, to strengthen their lives!
Please… take your melody, your smile, your kindness and caring, and pass it on to at least one other this day — I have faith that one by one, we can make this world a better place! The opportunity to make a difference awaits!
So beautiful. I'd forgotten the swing era!