The band is back together! Aria joins me for a little fun with Puerto Rican singer Jose Feliciano’s macaronic Christmas pop song, Feliz Navidad, from 1970. It continues to receive an enormous amount of radio airplay during the holiday season and is one of the top 25 most played Christmas songs in the world. Not bad for something he wrote in 10 minutes that only has 19 words.
Strange how our version isn’t on any radio playlists, but it’s a good start to our holiday music season, nonetheless:
On the way is another collaboration, featuring a Wham song that has been covered many times and is a Christmas staple.
It has been a long time since the last ukulele installment, which was a performance of an old Shaker song. I’ve worked on a number of pieces since then. Some I didn’t record…yet. As mentioned before, the music I’m learning is more complicated and requires more practice time than what I was doing a couple years ago. (Every music teacher reading this is thinking, “I would hope so!”) A lot of times I’m on to the next song when my uke teacher feels I’ve learned what I needed to from the current one. But sometimes the piece isn’t quite ready for recording.
This song I really wanted to get out before starting the Christmas music season. It’s called Autumn Leaves and was composed by Joseph Kosma in 1945. The French lyrics were penned by Jacques Pré vert with English lyrics coming later from Johnny Mercer. It has been recorded hundreds of times. Autumn Leaves is a jazz standard and also a pop song; my absolute favorite version is by Eva Cassidy, recorded live in 1996. She approached the piece from a singer-songwriter angle. Perfectly melancholic.
I was given a lead sheet by my teacher and asked to create an intro and a solo. I went with a wistful feeling instructed by the lyrics:
The falling leaves drift by my window The autumn leaves of red and gold I see your lips, the summer kisses The sunburned hands I used to hold
Since you went away the days grow long And soon I’ll hear old winter’s song But I miss you most of all my darling When autumn leaves start to fall
This brings a whole new level of seasonal affective disorder! I had a lot of fun with this one, building from a simple lead sheet:
Coming soon, something French! I hope to have that out sometime early next year.
Today I follow up the Carpenters with something a little less complex, Simple Gifts. This is an old Shaker song from the mid-1800s, written by Joseph Brackett Jr. It was used in Shaker worship services and has an American folk music sound to it.
In more recent times, there have been arrangements by Aaron Copland and John Williams. Simple Gifts was also played in the presidential inaugurations of Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton, and Barack Obama. The arrangement I’m performing is from my teacher, Trevor Fischer.
The whole song is played on the A string with movement up and down the fretboard. I’ve recently tackled classical repertoire, and this is Trevor’s attempt to get me something much easier to play between complex pieces, as well as music that can be used as a warm-up exercise. My young daughter loves this song and comments how pretty and peaceful it sounds every time she hears it:
By the way, that canvas art to the right in the video was painted by my little girl. It was a beautiful and simple gift for Father’s Day. Up next, a jazz-pop song from the 1940s!
