Every Thing I Do?

DISCOVERY: How I came to find Van Morrison

 Now, I’m 74 going on 75 and it took me much of this time to discover a true wonder  and new addition to my life. What it is and how I found it goes this way:

 I’m really into Music and been preoccupied with it all my life long. I have what I call a “phono-graphic memory” that perhaps started in pre-natality. I can remember listening at age one or two to Grandpa’s wind up Victrola playing “Yes, We Have No Bananas!” My Father played the Mandolin and Mom always had a radio on playing music. In 1947 my mother bought a Wilcox-Gay Recordette and I started recording and cutting records. In those days novelty songs were the rage and I can still remember “I’m My Own Grandpa,” “The Thing” and “Goodnight Irene” and hundreds of songs I stashed away on wax disks.

In 1950, I auditioned for and was accepted as a first tenor, with near perfect or “relative” pitch, to New York City Board of Ed.’s “All City High School Chorus” led by the great Peter J. Wilhowski and performed with them in Carnegie Hall and on early TV; we even made records for the US Armed Forces stationed abroad. Loved it and was proud of this accomplishment! Sharing and singing songs with 200 talented kids was a blast; like the movie Fame, we sang everywhere in subways and in the streets on the way to rehearsals in Julia Richmond H.S in Manhattan.

 Later won some talent shows in the US Air Force as an “Oleo” singer and a few year’s later picked up a Guitar learned three basic chords and I was on my way to a failed professional musical career; oh well played in bars for drinks and tips and patrons loved it. My highest accolade was if they got up to dance. I took that Guitar everywhere especially on vacations; in Hawaii; they loved me and taught me some fantastic Hawaiian music. In Switzerland they taught me I guess it was German Music. A Guitar is a wonder as an ice breaker and the best way I know to bring peace and harmony (no pun intended) to peoples. On a plane trip to Club Med started playing the Guitar on the plane and so many gathered around my seat that the pilot came on the intercom to tell us that the plane was listing heavily to one side but to continue to have fun because he would make corrections: “Ladies and Gentlemen, off to one side Sam Diego (my stage name when I worked my act in Dean Martin’s Night Club on the Hollywood Strip) is playing his guitar—just return to your seats when we begin our landing in a half hour—Enjoy!!!”

 In these, my “ Solid Gold Years”  I  stay young at heart with five of the latest iPods and MP3 players, an LG Chocolate VX 8550 Cell Phone with Stereo Bluetooth Music Player and tons of electronic equipment! But, about a month ago I heard this song which I thought was sung by a Black Blues Singer called “Everything I Do Reminds Me Of You!” Baby, that song started digging deeper and deeper into my very core-- deeply into my soul like nothing has done in years and nothing like anything in my collection of thousands of songs! I had to find out who that singer was so I Googled the title and “Up Jumped the Devil” Holy Moly and Jelly Rolls too the singer was a “White Boy” and Irish from Belfast to boot. But, as we say in Brooklyn, other male singers, “forgeddaboudit” the man is “The Man” who in my mind ranks or tops musical genius of all time and as deep as Herman Hesse  and St. Exupre were as writers. That cat is deep, deep, down and dirty honey child and when he sings Hank Williams, Hank himself would cry and every, dig it, country and blues singer in the world would drool enviously!

 Anyone who buys music from any service is mostly wasting money; I went to the Library and took out two Van “The Man” Morrison CD’s this past weekend; didn’t even read the titles—just slapped them into my Window Media Player and went diving into musical paradise and played “bouncy bally” with genius and listened to musical magic with sounds that I don’t think that even the Angels can make until he becomes one with them… Run on-- there stands the glass your cheating heart half as much as I love you my bucket has a hole in it blue diamond everyday and everything I do reminds me of you…

 I sing along, get goose bumps, spine tingles and wonder if the same girl that broke his heart was the sister of the girl, I can never forget, who broke mine…

 

Asta Dido

PS,  In my opinion men are worse than women when it comes to a broken heart; we suffer harder and longer. If you disagree let me know your opinion by signing in!!!