Pleasure to the Planet

 Song 700: This week on the playlist you can hear Joy to the World by Three Dog Night, written by Hoyt Axton, and you can find a YouTube video of it by clicking on the title. About halfway through my college sophomore year at N.U., in the middle of the frigid Windy City winter months, a certain canine evening trio got a lot of notice with a tune that might have originally seemed like a belated holiday anthem. While I didn't listen to the radio as much at that point as I had in my HS years, I did still give it some attention, and I liked hearing this expression of happiness. During that second month of 1971, I took a train trip downstate to visit a just friends female correspondent. As we strolled around her university campus, surprisingly, at some point our two lips touched, and that sure felt like Joy to the World. In addition, it brought Joy to… me, particularly since that was her name. The sudden romance turned me into a rainbow rider, but around six weeks later things took another turn, and after that, Joy would no longer enlighten the world where I took a spin. Shortly after the affair ended, I wrote a song about it, adding a d to her name, and I included Jody in my 1985 cassette Going My Way, which I released a CD version of in February of 2023. You can see and hear a YouTube lyric video of that song by clicking on the title.

Matching Audible Perceptions

 Song 699: This week the playlist puts the spotlight on Do You Hear What I Hear? by Jim Nabors, written by Gloria Shayne and Noël Regney, and you can find a YouTube video of it by clicking on the title. A few years after the group who did last week's song got a lot of folks to start applauding a young male percussionist in late November, those singers also got people to begin asking a particular simple question around then as well. As the 1960s unfolded, I regularly watched the Andy Griffith Show, which at a certain point introduced its audience to a character named Gomer Pyle. The actor who portrayed that fellow soon got a lot of notice, and five years after the Harry Simone Chorale had sold a quarter-million copies of their 45 of this song, which had originally gotten crafted as a plea for peace during the Cuban Missile Crisis, Jim Nabors put out his own rendition of the tune, and I thought it sounded good. It was a song, high above the trees with a voice as big as the sea - do you hear what I heard? The message applies to today as much as it did six decades ago - Pray for peace, people everywhere!

Small Male Percussionist

 Song 698: This week the playlist applauds Little Drummer Boy by Harry Simone Chorale, written by Harry Simeone, Katherine Kennicott Davis and Henry Onorati, and you can find a YouTube video of it by clicking on the title. I started hearing this Yuletide carol regularly around this time of year, back during my single-digit stretch in the late 1950s. While I don't recall seeing the 1959 segment from the Ed Sullivan Show that appears in the YouTube video, I may very well have done so because during that era, the family and I usually watched that show on Sunday nights. Back in the late 1950s and early 1960s, as December unfolded, I would join friends and schoolmates to mouth favorite noel anthems, and this one became part of the collection. A few months before that 1959 holiday season, I had become a little violin boy, and I could enjoy fiddling Christmas melodies, but because I was a poor boy too, I also had no gift to bring that would have been fit to give the King. However, I would have happily played my best for Him, even though I could have never made any pa rum pum pum pum sounds with my strings.

Savory Urban Female

 Song 697: This week the playlist comes around to Sweet City Woman by The Stampeders, written by Rich Dodson, and you can find a cool YouTube video of it by clicking on the title. As the warmer weather months arrived in the course of my sophomore college year in May of 1971, so did an enjoyable romantic anthem about a sugary urban dame. Even though I spent my school year time living in the city, I still considered myself a country guy. During the previous summer, I had given up on the possibility of a romance with a gal from my semirural hometown, and then, between February and April I had a brief fling with a young female who I had formerly been just friends with, and who I would again become just friends with. While I really liked The Stampeders piece, and I enjoyed singing along with the chorus, I expected at the time that I would eventually hook up with a rural young lady. I did appreciate getting to see lots of attractive metropolitan chicks, on campus and nearby, but I did not expect then that when I returned to the Chicago area at the end of the summer that I would meet and soon start embracing a Sweet City Woman. She had a pretty face that would shine her light on the city nights, and before long, I knew for certain that she had a way to make me feel shiny and new.

Kris Kringle Thief

 Song 696: Seven weeks after my previous personal friend song post, this week's humorous spin Pick-Pocket Santa comes from one of my closest Fast Folk buddies Jeff Tareila, written by Jeff Tareila and Christian Bauman, and you can find a YouTube video of it by clicking on the title. Surprisingly, this marks Jeff’s first appearance in this collection - I thought I had included one of his tunes earlier and just found out that I didn't do that. With the Claus guy due to arrive 3 weeks from tonight, this seems like the right moment to share JT’s caution about a certain fancy-dressed thief. I had connected with the FF circle not long after moving to Brooklyn in September of 1988, and I quickly became close friends with Jeff, so when this funny piece graced FF Volume 6 Number 8 in December of 1992, it soon got me chuckling. Having resided for a decade in CA before I got to Brooklyn, I understood that California smells like popcorn and that New York smells like a beer. In different places where I've lived, I've also seen the lights of Christmas time upon my neighbor's lawn, but no matter where I've been, Santa NEVER bumped into me on the corner.