The Columbia Album of Irving Berlin Volume One

So today is the first day of my new habit. Blogging and listening to records. I figured if you combine two things one you love and one you don't into an activity perhaps you will be able to create a new habit one you like. I sorted my records today and I have in the neighborhood of four hundred. This year it is my goal to listen to one record a day and review the experience here for any and all to read.

My records are divided by genera. Big Band/Classical, Children's, Country, and Rock of all sorts as well as holiday music but you have a whole year to wait for those since they will be the last I review. Each day I will take an album from a different genera and work our way through them systematically. Today I started with Big Band/Classical since it was on the top shelf. The first record I chose was " The Columbia Album of Irving Berlin Volume One" Below is the list of songs on the record.

• 1. It's a lovely day
• 2. Maybe its because i love you to much
• 3. You'd be surprised
• 4. Always
• 5. Shakin the blues away
• 6. There's no business like show business
• 7. Say it with music
• 8. It's a lovely Day tomorrow
• 9. This year's kisses
• 10. Lady of the Evening
• 11. Steppin out with my baby
• 12. Let's face the music and Dance

The strings started the first song It's a Lovely Day and i was transported. It was a mix of lovely day and Blue skies. Instantly made me smile all instrumental of course. Dark chocolate eyes closed and I was in a time long lost where girls wore big dresses, think Mary Poppins not Scarlett O'Hara here. Julie Andrews and Dick Vandyke were dancing their way through a lush green meadow. A waltz of course. Dancing, ballroom that is, seemed to be a lost art form until it became main stream with Dancing with the Stars again. I have never been to light on my feet how i made it through years of dancing in high school musicals is beyond me. Somehow our theater "mom" Ms. A always found my step, her and a whole host of the Shoestring Community Directors. I have been telling myself for years that i was going to take ballroom dancing lessons. Mayhap this year i will be inspired to actually find a class and pay for it at one of the community learning centers here in town.

Just when i am about to get lost in the land of melancholy the beat suddenly picks up with song number five Shakin the Blues Away. Quite an appropriate name for the feeling of gladness that suddenly erupts in my heart and I can't help but chair dance feet tapping and fingers flying across the keyboard, head bopping wishing I was Ginger Rogers dancing with Fred Astaire. I was once in a musical at the Warren Baptist Church called Antsillvania. There was a song that sounded very much like this one and I remember always grinning when that song came up in rehearsal. I hardly remembered even doing anything for the choir of that church since i was never a member there. I wonder how I got started in all of that. -laughs- I remember that is where i met Bart, he was the music director for the show. I must have been about nine maybe ten i would think.

Side two starts with Say it to Music which streams into Dancing Cheek to Cheek. When was the last time you danced cheek to cheek with someone? I think the last time was at my wedding two years ago and we stumbled our way through it but what a nice way to be close to someone. Even if you can't dance well just being held in the safety of someone's embrace makes a person feel treasured and loved in a way very few things can. My great grandparents loved to dance. Right up until the end of their sixty-seven year marriage they were dancing like they were made only to glide across the floor in each other's arms.

Overall really great record and I highly recommend it. It's a good way to remind yourselves of a simpler time. Though I suspect if you asked people alive during that time, when it was happening, they may not have agreed it was a simpler time. Things get harder and harder it seems but when you're in the midst of it it's hard to see the forest through the trees. Everything feels like it's the worst it's going to get but as each generation reflects back things suddenly seem easier and simpler. Does that mean the world is getting crazier and we as humans keep coming up with new ways to torment ourselves and each other? Maybe, one thing is certain though as long as we preserve our music we can be transported to a time when things did not seem so hard and all you had to worry about was stepping on your partners toes.