SNGF-Favorite Song

My apologies to Randy, but I'm not going to play by the rules this time.  It would just be too difficult to try and come up with a favorite song.  To put this into perspective, I have over a thousand songs in my iTunes and just about all of them are favorites.  Name a genre, a decade, an era, and so on, and I'll name a favorite song.  In fact, it would be much easier if the challenge were to name your LEAST favorite song.

But what I can do is name the songs or groups that I have associated with different family members.

My grandmother is a classical pianist and organist and former singer (she even sang at the Geary) and choir director so obviously music is a huge part of her life.  The song I always associate with her would be Rhapsody on a Theme on Paganini (18th variation to be precise) by Rachmaninoff:


I remember hearing her play it vividly, though my mother has no recollection of listening to her ever play that.  Whenever I hear organ music it also makes me think of her, if only because she was an organist and it is one of her favorite instruments. 

For my great-grandmother, it isn't so much a song that I associate with her as a bandleader, John Philip Sousa.  In one of the only interviews anyone ever did of her when asked what he favorite music was, she said "Sousa's band" and I never forgot that. 



For my other grandmother (this time paternal) bluegrass always makes me think of her.  For a tiny Italian woman from Michigan, she LOVED bluegrass and country music.  Since she was the only one in the family who was really a fan of that type of music, I don't think anyone really paid attention to what her favorite musicians or songs were. She went to the Grand Ole Opry at least once that I remember though I honestly couldn't say what her favorite songs were. 

For my father, I always associated The Who and The Animals with him, though he was and is a fan of a lot of genres of music, like my mother.  This song in particular reminds me of him and I know it was one of his favorites from his youth:



My mother is little harder to pin down and I frankly can't think of any songs I associated strictly with her.  But both of my parents are HUGE fans of Puccini and I grew up listening to a lot of his work (which I think is why I have such a love/hate relationship with opera...) so I always associate him with my parents and childhood:



Since there are a lot of servicemen in my family (past and present), I always associate Taps with a lot of the men in my tree, especially my grandfathers who were both veterans.



Oh, and since it is Saturday, I just had to include a favorite of my father's which now is also a favorite of mine:



Thanks for the Saturday night fun, Randy (even if I didn't follow the challenge exactly this week)!

Comments

  1. I love how you put the YouTube videos in your blog post! I had no idea that could be done. Thanks for the example! :) Oh, and I love your songs!

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  2. What a fabulous way to "cheat" on Randy's prompt! I hadn't heard the Rachmaninoff piece in ages and it was a very pleasant way to start the morning.

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  3. What a fabulous collection! I finally figured out how to connect to Youtube videos today, so I'll probably go crazy with this! It's also great that you can connect particular types of music to various ancestors.

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