Art is the music we make from the bewildered cry of being alive. ~Maria Popova
25 May 2025 Leave a comment
in Video of the Week Tags: dad i need a motorbike
25 May 2025 Leave a comment
in Songs You May Have Missed Tags: rolf harris, two little boys
Rolf Harris: “Two Little Boys” (1969)
From an American perspective, Rolf Harris and his 1960 novelty top ten “Tie Me Kangaroo Down, Sport” were a one-hit wonder and a footnote in pop history. Something akin to Tiny Tim.
But like Tiny Tim, whose extensive catalogue and encyclopedic expertise on early 20th century pop music are overlooked by most, Rolf Harris was–outside the US–much more than a guy with the proverbial 15 minutes of ephemeral fame.
With 30 studio albums, 48 singles and multiple long-running TV shows to his credit, Harris was a bona fide international star.
And his biggest success in terms of record sales was not that kangaroo song, but rather one that never sniffed the top 40–or even cracked the top 100 for that matter–in America.
That would be the American Civil War song “Two Little Boys”.
Originally written in 1902 and recorded in 1903, the song had a special sentimental attachment for Rolf. Its story of two boys who grew up to be soldiers evoked his own father’s World War I experience and the fact that his father’s younger brother Carl died at age 19 due to wounds received in a battle in France.
Harris’s version of “Two Little Boys” spent 6 weeks at the number one spot on the UK chart during the Christmas holidays in 1969. It earned a gold disc and sold a million copies, actually performing better there than in his native Australia, where it peaked at #7.
It was England’s last #1 of the 60’s and first of the 70’s.
As for the song’s origins, according to Wikipedia:
The song appears to have its origins in the fiction of the Victorian children’s writer Juliana Horatia Ewing, whose book Jackanapes was a story about the eponymous hero and his friend Tom, who having ridden wooden horses as two little boys end up together on a battlefield. There Jackanapes rides to the rescue of the wounded and dismounted Tom. Jackanapes nobly replies to Tom’s entreaties to save himself, “Leave you”? “To save my skin”? “No, Tom, not to save my soul”. And unfortunately takes a fatal bullet in the process.
Rolf Harris worked with producer George Martin prior to Martin’s pairing with the Beatles, and Harris and the Beatles performed together during the Fab Four’s 16-night run of Christmas shows in London in 1963.
From the Beatles’ first From Us to You BBC radio show in December of ’63 comes this performance of “Tie Me Kangaroo Down, Sport” with Rolf adjusting the song’s lyrics in tribute to the Beatles, who sing backup vocals. The “whoop-whoop” sound that begins the tune? That’s Rolf providing percussion on an instrument of his own invention, the wobble board.
24 May 2025 Leave a comment
in Video of the Week Tags: trio mandili
Trio Mandili have established the charitable organization “Mandili Cares”, to aid Ukrainian citizens who have lost or left their homes.
To help and donate: PAYPAL: paypal.me/mandilicares Bank Transfer: Mandili Cares, IBAN: GE42TB7819336180100002, Swift: TBCBGE22
See also: https://edcyphers.com/2025/05/18/video-of-the-week-trio-mandili-chemi-iknebi-you-will-be-mine/
See also: https://edcyphers.com/2024/06/30/video-of-the-week-trio-mandili-kikile/
See also: https://edcyphers.com/2021/04/19/video-of-the-week-trio-mandili-kakhuri/
See also: https://edcyphers.com/2021/06/04/songs-you-may-have-missed-695/
24 May 2025 Leave a comment
in Songs You May Have Missed Tags: he punahele no 'oe, keola beamer
Keola Beamer: “He Punahele No ‘Oe” (1995)
Keola Beamer is a fifth-generation musician and master of the Hawaiian slack key guitar style. He’s also the composer of “Honolulu City Lights”, one of Hawaii’s biggest-selling songs of all time.
Moe’uhane Kika: Tales from the Dream Guitar was produced by George Winston and distributed by Windham Hill subsidiary Dancing Cat Records, so it might be mistaken for New Age music.
But the album is mostly comprised of tranquil instrumental versions of familiar Hawaiian songs–or songs that would be familiar to Hawaiians.
This isn’t New Age, but it is World Music. It isn’t wimpy, but it is serene. It isn’t steel guitar and ukulele, but it is music with deep Hawaiian roots.
And it’s gorgeous.
20 May 2025 Leave a comment
in General Posts Tags: connie francis, pretty little baby
(via Billboard and People) by Steve Knopper/Rachel DeSantis
Connie Francis is having a moment six decades in the making.
If not for TikTok, Connie Francis‘ 1962 tinkly organ bop “Pretty Little Baby” may have been forever obscure. It was never a hit, and Francis, reached by phone at her Parkland, Fla., home, barely remembers recording it. “I had to listen to it to identify it,” admits the 87-year-old pop legend, who became the first woman to top the Billboard Hot 100 as a solo act in July 1960 with “Everybody’s Somebody’s Fool,” one of her three Hot 100 No. 1s.
“Then, of course, I recognized the fact that I had done it in seven languages.”
A friend recently informed Francis that “Pretty Little Baby” had turned up on TikTok as a “viral hit,” an upbeat soundtrack for people (including Kylie Jenner and Kim Kardashian) showing off babies, puppies, kittens and – befitting the lyric “you can ask the flowers” – flowers. Francis responded: “What’s that?” In a sense, TikTok is just a technological update of American Bandstand in the ’60s, when Dick Clark’s TV countdown regularly drew 8 million viewers and automatically turned songs into hits. “Without Dick Clark, there would have been no Connie Francis,” Francis says.
“Pretty Little Baby” was one of 40 songs Francis recorded during several recording sessions over four days in August 1961, according to her 2017 autobiography Among My Souvenirs: The Real Story Vol. 1. The track landed on her Connie Francis Sings Second Hand Love & Other Hits album.
Francis was 23 years old when the song came out as a B-side to the single “I’m Gonna Be Warm This Winter.”
On April 10, “Pretty Little Baby” was streaming 17,000 times per week in the U.S.; a month later, it was streaming 2.4 million times, an increase of more than 7,000%. The track has 10 billion TikTok views, hitting No. 1 on the app’s Viral 50 and Top 50 charts, and recently crossed over to streaming success, with 14 million global streams, landing at No. 67 on Spotify’s Global Top 100. Francis’ label, Universal Music, recently reissued the versions Francis had sung in Swedish, Japanese and other languages in 1962, when her label, MGM, hoped to score hits in regions outside the U.S.
Of her newfound virality, she tells Billboard: “I’m getting calls from everywhere: ‘You’re a TikTok phenomenon.'”
Editor’s note: This story parallels that of a tune called “Ladyfingers”, from Herb Alpert & the Tijuana Brass’ 1965 Whipped Cream & Other Delights album, which the 90-year-old Alpert reports has generated over two billion views on TikTok. And like Connie Francis’ “Pretty Little Baby”, “Ladyfingers” wasn’t a hit, or even a single.
And to put Connie Francis’ 10 billion TikTok views for “Pretty Little Baby” into perspective, the number is roughly 3 times the world’s population in the year the song came out.
Connie on recording her first hit, “Who’s Sorry Now”:
I didn’t want to record the song. My father insisted that I record “Who’s Sorry Now.” I did three other songs at the session first, in the hopes of not being able to get to “Who’s Sorry Now” in the four-hour time allotted to me. I had 16 minutes left in the session and I said, “That’s a wrap, fellas, there’s no time for ‘Who’s Sorry Now.'” My father said, “If I have to nail you to that microphone, you’re going to do at least one take of ‘Who’s Sorry Now.'” So that’s what I did – one take of “Who’s Sorry Now.” And I didn’t try to imitate anybody else, as I always had on my recordings. By the time I was 14, I did demonstration records, and a publisher would say, “Connie, give us some of that great Patti Page sound, give me some of that great Kay Starr sound, give me some of that great Teresa Brewer sound.” I didn’t have a style of my own yet. But on “Who’s Sorry Now,” I was so turned off on the song that I didn’t try to imitate anybody else. I just sounded like myself for the first time. And it was a hit.
The New Jersey native dealt with a number of tragedies over the years, including mental health struggles. She is now retired and lives in Florida, where she regularly posts photos of her day-to-day life.
Read more: https://people.com/connie-francis-reacts-pretty-little-baby-being-tiktok-hit-11737737
18 May 2025 Leave a comment
in Video of the Week Tags: chemi iknebi, trio mandili
Since they first uploaded the video for a Georgian folk song called “Apareka” and it gathered 8 million views, Trio Mandili hasn’t strayed much from the formula.
They still wander the Georgian countryside singing regional music–when their international concert and recording schedules permit.
See also: https://edcyphers.com/2025/05/24/video-of-the-week-trio-mandili-galoba-the-prayer/
See also: https://edcyphers.com/2024/06/30/video-of-the-week-trio-mandili-kikile/
See also: https://edcyphers.com/2021/04/19/video-of-the-week-trio-mandili-kakhuri/
See also: https://edcyphers.com/2021/06/04/songs-you-may-have-missed-695/
Every Moment Has A Song 