You wouldn't normally think of Akron, Ohio, an average Midwestern city, as the birthplace of a R&B group with a number-one hit in the 1960's, but that's exactly what happened when Ruby and the Romantics hit the top. Their 1963 recording of "Our Day Will Come" was a huge success, topping the charts in the … Continue reading Ruby And The Romantics – The Pride Of Akron
A recent news article about the FBI recovering Dorothy's famous ruby slippers, thirteen years after they were stolen from a Museum in Minnesota, got me to thinking about The Wizard Oz. And since my thoughts often revolve around music, I also began thinking about the music from the movie. Of course, the iconic song from … Continue reading Ruby Slippers And The Music Of The Wizard Of Oz
There are a lot of things that we found funny as kids just because of their odd and unusual names, and I can remember one of them being the glockenspiel. I'm pretty sure that I had no idea what it really was when I was growing up, but I seem to remember hearing the word … Continue reading Glockenspiels Are Not What They Used To Be
I always thought there were some similarities between "April In Paris" and "Autumn In New York" but I didn't realize until recently that both romantic ballads were written by the same guy, and his story is a good one. Born in Russia as Vladimir Aleksandrovich Dukelsky, a name that he continued using off and on … Continue reading From Russia With Love. . .Songs
The story of today's Anatomy Of A Song starts with its composer, Mexican legend Consuelo Velázquez (Torres), who was often called Consuelito. She was 88 when she died in 2005, and had spun out a long and successful career as a pianist, singer, and composer. Many of the songs she wrote are still loved and … Continue reading Anatomy Of A Song – Consuelito’s Mexican Classic
I'm not a TV snob. You know, one of those people who claim they don't own a television, or that they have a small one but keep it in the closet and just bring it out to watch butterfly documentaries on PBS. In fact, the definition of 'TV snob' might have changed now because so … Continue reading Observations From An Offbeat TV Viewer
Are you kidding me? The movie that scared me silly when I was a kid has been remade, and get this; it won the Oscar for best picture! Well, to be fair, maybe The Shape Of Water isn't exactly a remake of Creature From The Black Lagoon, but more later about that. Let's get into … Continue reading My 11-Year-Old Self Would Be Stunned
On this edition of the Squeaky Wheel, the GMC Special Feature that allows me to grumble about whatever is currently bugging me, we're going to tackle the question of why they keep trying to speed up the game of baseball. You can't help but see it discussed everywhere these days, and you might think it's … Continue reading Squeaky Wheel Says: Leave Baseball Alone!
How head-spinning would it have been for an unsophisticated Belgian nun in the 1960's to see herself portrayed on the movie screen by superstar Debbie Reynolds, after already experiencing the wonder of having a huge #1 hit record? We can only guess, but Soeur Sourire (Sister Smile) as she was known, would soon leave the … Continue reading The Sad Story Of The Singing Nun
Geezer Music Club 