My Favorite Things

Musical things, that is.

“Beat Me, Daddy, Eight To The Bar.” It’s a Will Bradley / Ray McKinley piece, suggesting (eight to the bar) a boogie-woogie style. “Daddy” most likely refers to the girl’s sugar daddy. I love the long version, which most of this blog’s readers most likely haven’t heard. It just goes on and on.

“The Java Jive,” sometimes thought of as “I love coffee, I love tea, I love the java jive and it loves me.” My favorite lyric: “Waiter, waiter, percolator.”

“Celery Stalks At Midnight” is another great Bradley/McKinley piece and the only lyric, said only once during a break, is “Celery stalks along the highway!”

“Ain’t Misbehavin’,” by Fats Waller and His Rhythm. Zutty Singleton has a very nice drum “solo,” if you can call it that. Smooth interlude, almost like the smoothest bridge you’d like to see between one chorus and another.

Anything by violinist Stephane Grappelli. I can tell it’s him from the first stroke of his bow: long and loving. Nobody does it quite like that.

Likewise, anything by Ray Conniff. I still have his Christmas albums in my Pandora online music service during the summer.