Scotch Required Beyond This Point: My Top 12 Favorite Jazz and Big Band Numbers

I was a band geek in high school.

I don’t want that fact to imply I had any musical ability. As former Bristol Eastern High School band directors will tell you, I had virtually no inherent talent and no desire to work hard to make the most of the minuscule talent I had. We had to play a piece of music from memory at the beginning of marching band season my freshman year. I may have gotten the first couple of notes right and then I pretty much wept in shame to the senior administering the test.

But I loved every minute I was a member of that band. I may have not been any good, but nearly every other musician surrounding me was excellent. The concert band was top notch, but the highlight of our winter and spring concerts was our jazz band. That ensemble was other worldly. I remember hearing them play at the Old U.S. Postal Pavilion in Washington D.C. Thunder and lightning were coming out of those instruments. No musical soul was untouched whenever that jazz band innovatively tore into a piece of music.

The big band and jazz genres continue to be a major part of my life. It doesn't get much better than pouring a glass of single malt scotch, sliding on the fedora my good friend Bill Furman gave me, and sitting down at a keyboard and writing something profound and inspiring (at the very least coherent and pleasing).

I recently went to see The Rat Pack is Back at the Wilbur Theatre in Boston. My girlfriend’s grandmother perfectly summed up my thoughts on why this kind of music still resonates today:

“All these guys have been dead and buried for years, but they are still alive today because of the quality of the music.”

#Amen.

Without further comment, enjoy 10 of my favorite jazz numbers, preferably with a stiff drink, nice suit, and a significant other wearing a red dress.
 

“I’ll Never Smile Again” by Frank Sinatra & the Tommy Dorsey Orchestra

“Birdland” by Maynard Ferguson

“Rhapsody in Blue” by George Gershwin

“All of Me” by Benny Goodman

“Sing, Sing, Sing” by Benny Goodman

“Little Brown Jug” by Glenn Miller Orchestra

“All or Nothing at All” by Frank Sinatra with the Harry James Orchestra

"The Very Thought of You" by Nat King Cole

“Sleigh Ride” by the Boston Pops

“In A Sentimental Mood” Duke Ellington & His Orchestra

“Better Git It In Your Soul” by Charles Mingus

“Spain” by Chick Corea

 

 

For more music, check out:

 

• 10 Songs My Parent’s Taught Me to Love
• 10 Songs That Define Me

Cafe Rouge: 5 Poems to Enjoy a Drink With at the Hotel Pennsylvania

I wrote the majority of my poetry during my sophomore and junior years of high school. During one productive stretch, I was pumping out five poems a day.

If you've read any of my previous poetry posts, you know I hadn't lived through anything yet, so they read exactly like you'd imagine a sensitive 16-year-old boy's poetry to read. However, my classmates back then believed I could make a career as a poet. This one critique from a classmate says it all:

Not so much...

Alas, the poetry career, and the aduring harem that comes with it, were not to be (what reality presented to me was much more satisfying in the end). Maybe I'll one day write a novel about a rock star poet and live vicariously through my degenerate, but kind-hearted, protagonist.

Pennsylvania 6-5000

This song doesn’t go with any of the poetry you’re about to read, but I figured you could use something uplifting before things get grim. My high school jazz band did a rendition of this song that would knock your socks into George Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue. I find myself tapping my foot to the rhythm of that ensemble’s superior musical skill even when I don’t hear music playing. Grandma Ford loved attending my high school band’s performances because it brought her back to when she was hotel bar hopping in New York City in the 1940s.

The headline of this blog refers to the lounge the Glenn Miller Orchestra played at the Hotel Pennsylvania in New York City. The phone number for that hotel back in the day? 6-5000. So swill a single malt scotch, get your heart rate up, and enjoy yourself before reading the inner demons of a white high school suburbanite. I’d also encourage shouting throughout the song in the most public place possible as nature intended.
 

Home

Come in if you like.
Remember to wipe your feet,
I don’t have a vacuum yet.

Have a seat if you like.
There’s plenty of room
on the matching sofa and chair.

Care for a drink?
Sorry,
the fridge is empty.

I’d ask you to spend the night,
but there isn’t even a
bed for me.

Feel free to use the bathroom.
You might want to close
the windows and draw the blinds.

I’d cook you something,
but the stove doesn’t work,
and you wouldn’t want anything that was cooked on it.

I’ll admit it’s not much now,
but just you wait.
In no time at all I’ll having looking like my home!
 

No Tears to Cry

I have no tears to cry;
no tears to tenderly wipe away.

I have no tears to cry;
no tears to wash away the pain.

I have no tears to cry;
no tears to tickle my cheek.

I have no tears to cry;
no tears to cloud my weary eyes.

I have no tears to cry;
no tears to mask my fears.

I have no tears to cry;
no tears to match your own.

I have no tears to cry;
no tears to share your burden.

Lend me your tears,
so you have no tears to cry.
 

This Night

My blond beauty empties her heart this night.
On this night, her red rose petals die.
My blond beauty cries in my arms in fright.

On this night, for the rebel she cries.
On this night, in her music she hides.
My blond beauty empties her heart this night.

On this night, for the creatures she strives.
On this night, her beauty knows no pride.
My blond beauty cries in my arms in fright.

On this night, she has no room for lies.
On this night, she has no wings to fly.
My blond beauty empties her heart this night.

On this night, despair fills both eyes.
On this night, the bitter winds sigh.
My blond beauty cries in my arms in fright.

On this night, the angels weep on high.
On this night, she waves her world goodbye.
My blond beauty empties her heart this night.
My blond beauty cries in my arms in fright.

More inspirational notes from high school English class.

Her Word Say to Me, “I Love You”

Her words of compassion fill
my night with wonderful worries,
as they say to me, “I love you.”

They abandon all that she
has fought so hard to retain,
just to say to me, “I love you.”

They spell out the fabric of her gentleness and strength,
vanquishing any thoughts of misery and dank drips,
with a simple, “I love you.”

Her words cascade, cool and clear,
down the folded page of recaptured dreams of fate,
with the words, “I love you.”

Her dazzling blue baby’s find rest in the late evening,
her anxious mind uncoils around my loving touch,
as my words say to her, “I love you, too.”
 

On the Edge of Heaven

Those storm laden clouds are rushing down
and clash with that sun streaked blaze of sky
and form a nothing….and then a nothingness.

I watch those cherubs cry out loud
and met those demons groans,
both merging into a song silent.

Those divine doves toil
with deadly assassin crows
in biting air of hostile tranquility.

I feel that pleasant prairie breeze
collide with scalding typhoons
that reach in and seduce the breath of lifeless souls.

Here, the edge of heaven waits for me,
losing the virtuous on the backs of the wicked,
long waiting to be saved.

When you’re done snapping your fingers, check out:

• Good Friday: Take 5 Poems to Bed With You This Weekend  

• Birth of the Cool: 3 Poems You Can Rest Your Moon Dreams On

• From the Archives: Summer Poetry

10 Songs That Define Me

I’m approaching 15,000 songs in my iTunes music collection.

I’m not trying to show off. I have a genuine love of music that compels me to collect as many different songs and albums in every conceivable genre as humanly possible.

After putting myself in a contemplative mood by consuming a rather full glass of Oban single malt scotch one night last week, I tried to choose the 10 songs in my entire library that defined who I am.

Let’s just say that process didn’t take an evening. It was the worst kind of torture, the self-inflicted kind. My heart ached for the songs I had to eliminate from the list in order to get to the musical heart of my being.

Of course it was worth it, not only because it gave me an excuse to listen to some righteous, inspiring, rocking, soul affirming, get-up-off-your-ass-and-fucking-loosen-up-your-damn-hips tunes, but also because I got to reminisce about why these songs became so essential to my life.
  
”String of Pearls” and “In the Mood”

Let’s travel back to the 1940s for a moment.

The world is at war and one newly wedded bride from Baldwin, N.Y.,  is waiting for her husband to come back to her in New York City. She distracts herself by hotel bar hoping around the city, enjoying a couple of stiff manhattans, or dining with her father-in-law who people assumed was her sugar daddy. “String of Pearls” and “In the Mood” by the Glenn Miller Orchestra provides the soundtrack to many of those nights.

Lucky for me, Grandpa Ford would come back from World War II—a few pounds heavier thanks to devouring any C-ration other soldiers refused to eat—and be married to my grandmother for 54 years.

My grandmother loved when my high school jazz band performed these two tunes because it reminded her of a time when she was young, in love, and in New York City awaiting for her soul mate to return all at the same time. I couldn’t in good conscience choose just one. Here’s hoping she joins me in spirit for a drink in Manhattan sometime soon.

“Lost in the Fifties”

When I was a teenager, I compiled my favorite songs on cassette tapes. I’ll pause briefly for the youngun’s to Google what a cassette tape is.

Welcome back. Ronnie Milsap is one of the first country artists I remember following religiously as a kid. “Lost in the Fifties” is the first song on Volume 1 of Daniel Ford’s Favorite Songs Anthology (there were 20 volumes in total).

Listening to Milsap today reminds me of running errands with my mother on the weekends, having family dance parties in the living room, and not knowing enough about the world to care about anything else but having fun.

I don’t give my mother enough credit for sparking my love of music. The country singers she turned me on to are still an important part of my collection and I wouldn’t be the same guy without exclusively listening to country music the first 13 years of my life.

Including this song is my way of saying “I love you” and “thank you.”

“Everybody Knows This is Nowhere”

Odds are good that when I get into my father’s car there will be a Neil Young song playing.

Young’s discography has been on nearly every car ride I’ve taken with him, from the time he used to pick me up from elementary school to our reunions at the Waterbury train station. I had to choose something from the legendary “Everybody Knows This is Nowhere” album because it marked my father’s musical birth and is one of the records he remembers wearing out as a teenager.

The album’s title track has comforted me during my darker moments in New York City. It served as a reminder that when I did indeed escape nowhere that someone who loved me would be waiting to pick me up with never-ending guitar solos and cowgirls in the sand.

“Something in the Way She Moves”

When Neil Young isn’t playing in my father’s car, James Taylor probably is.

My father says that his generation would listen to Taylor to “come down” from listening to acts like Jimmy Hendrix. The man hasn’t deviated from his laid-back, melodic style and the world is a much richer place because of it.

Pretty sure my father and I wore out the cassette tape of Taylor’s first greatest hits album. This song in particular is one of our favorites because it sums up perfectly what being in love should be like for a man.

There’s not a bad version of this tune. And I think someone I know will appreciate the “Go Red Sox” shout out at the beginning of this clip.

“Mississippi”

Attending Bob Dylan concerts is what my brothers and I do to bond.

We’ve seen him at a variety of venues across New England and New York in varying states of inebriation. There was the show in Augusta, Maine, where my younger brother bought a slim-fitting women’s concert T-shirt; the one at UMASS where we had front row seats and completely ignored the gaggle of attractive, blond college girls in the second row; and the show in Boston we almost didn’t make because of a handful of tall Guinness pints at the Bell in Hand Tavern.

Since Dylan is hell-bent on trotting out the same playlist every time we see him live together—if I hear “Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll” one more time Bob, I’m charging the stage—my brothers and I will probably never get to hear this song live. This clip will have to do.

“I’ve Got the World on a String”

Listening to Frank Sinatra in high school confirmed in my mind that I was going to be a writer and live in New York City. “I’ve Got the World on a String” is how I thought I’d feel every day waking up in my apartment before I stepped foot in the city I was born to reside in.

Ten years here and it’s exactly how I feel.

“Superstition”

I want to believe this Stevie Wonder song is what my writing process sounds like: energetic, inspired, loose, free flowing, and adventurous.

For those that know me, my process doesn’t sound this beautiful.

I also can’t resist dancing to this song whenever it comes on. I was once at a wedding and everyone had just sat down to enjoy dessert. The DJ decided that it was a good time to play “Superstition.” I alone bolted for the dance floor.

Was I helped by several gin and tonics made with top shelf gin? Sure, but it wouldn’t have changed my reaction in the least. Best part was I remained completely alone on the dance floor. Not even my date made a move to join me.

I didn’t care. And I never will when it comes to this tune.

“She’s the One”

I usually start every half marathon I run with Bruce Springsteen’s “Born to Run,” but “She’s the One” ends up saving me at some point during the race.

I’ll feel my body start to fatigue and thoughts of slowing down will pop into my head when the opening keyboard and guitar riffs start pounding into my ears. My energy level and the belief I can make it to the finish line are re-filled instantly. The line “that thunder in your heart” that leads the second stanza makes my whole being thunder as my sneakers hit the blacktop at a faster pace. This song has a permanent spot on my ever-changing running mix.

Unrelated to running,  I’ll also add that if James Taylor’s “Something in the Way She Moves” sounds like how a man should be in love, than this song sounds like how he should make love.

 

“The Way You Do the Things You Do”

For being alive, young, and in love in New York City all at the same time.