He's A Yankee Doodle Dandy...

[redthroatedloon]

You know, sometimes a song is so entrenched in your head with a certain voice that when you hear it with somebody else -- even when that somebody is more authentic -- it's a shock. For example, can you hear anybody else than Jimmy Cagney sing "Yankee Doodle Dandy"? In fact, since it's not a song that's in many repertoires these days, I doubt a whole lot of people have.

So I'm listening to our Whitburn collection for 1905, and we've got a guy named Billy Murray (who was apparently a wildly popular singer for several decades) doing Yankee Doodle, and it just sounds -- weird. Even though Jimmy Cagney was about six years old in 1905, and this guy is singing it when it's actually top of the charts -- it just sounded wrong. And now he's doing "Give My Regards To Broadway." Same problem...

Anyway, those are my thoughts for the day. I guess I should also comment on this week's Stargate, but I've got a date to watch "The Man Who Could Work Miracles." I'll try later, or just offer opinions on other's journals...

Comments

[jenlev.livejournal.com]

sounds a bit like the smithsonian folkways project that mickey hart is involved with. i so love that we are able to have the voices of these people. i read somewhere about the amount of books, and music that have been lost throughout history. *sigh*

makes me think that one of the good and fairly safe purposes for a time travel machine would be the ability to make a recording of people singing and telling stories say.....2700 years ago. imagine if we could get a recording of 'homer' telling the story of the iliad for example. or at any other time [insert historical period of choice here].

ps. i'm having a sunday filled with tangents. heh.