SATURDAY NIGHT MEMORIES, LONG LONG AGO

It's Saturday night & for me that means 'Big Band' music.  Years ago radio station AM 740 out of Toronto had a program called Big Band Saturday Night.  (it is now on Sunday night's) We lived in the old farm house at that time & I remember warm summer Saturday nights with the sounds of Glen Miller, Benny Goodman, & the Mills Brothers rolling out of the radio & filling the old 1920's farm house we lived in with a feeling good music that I had grown up with as a small boy in the late 40's.  A young Frank Sinatra singing, 'Blue Skies along with Tommy Dorsey's 'Blue Moon' remain with me today.  I still find myself frequently humming & singing those tunes all these years later.  It was the age of music that made you feel good.  It was another age so very long ago that many people will never know.  And, how truly sad that is.

Over the years I have gathered together 76 pieces of music from the Big Band era & have them here on our computer.  It is the music that takes me back to a different world & a different time.  It takes me to a little boy's world of wonderment, of laughter & playing.  To a world that no longer exists except for in the music & the mind of this little boy.  It is a world I momentarily retreat to from time to time in search of a lost age, a lost boy, a simpler time, playing catch with my Mother outside on warm summer nights.  My Uncle Fred taking me for rides in the parcel carrier of his bicycle.  Memories of the big puffing steam locomotives stopping at the train station picking up & dropping off passengers & freight only a few hundred yards from our house.  Memories of Saturday night ice cream cones at our small town's only restaurant, Joe's Place.  My favorite was Butterscotch & my Mother's was Maple Walnut.  I remember the tall tales my Grandfather would spin & I remember the night my Grandmother died.  I sometimes remember the turmoil in our house but it is the pleasant memories I search out, & I cast away the others.   

Tonight as I sit here at the computer it is the long ago tunes of Vaughn Monroe's 'It's Only A Paper Moon,' Vera Lynn's 'We'll Meet Again,' the Mills Brothers singing 'Stardust' & Bunny Berigan's 'Marie,' that once again, if only for a few moments, take away the difficulties & saddened times of the past few months, the lost years & the people who are no longer here.  As I type this, Billie Holliday & Louis Armstrong are singing, 'Summertime.'  Next, Tony Bennett will sing, 'Willow Weep For Me,' followed by Tommy Dorsey's, 'Moonlight In Vermont.'   And the song that brings back my warmest memories of that bygone era?   Vic Damone singing, 'Flamingo.'

Aw yes, it is another Saturday night, long long ago & far far away, as this little boy quietly sheds a tear & remembers those times with family members who have so long ago gone before him.................................

GROANER'S CORNER:((  It's frustrating when you know all the answers, but nobody bothers to ask you the questions.

------------------------------------------------------------

EMAIL THE BAYFIELD BUNCH:))
stargeezerguy@gmail.com
The only thing better than right now will someday be the memories of right
now...... AL.