Stella By Starlight

Today's tune is Stella By Starlight, which was originally from a movie called The Uninvited. Today, I have put the sheet music that I use up for this tune. This is for educational purposes only...if you learn it, I'd love to see what you do with it. Like I said on the video, this is one of the hardest songs I've memorized lately. The ii-V progressions are definitely unusual in the first half.

Stella By Starlight

All In Love is Fair

Hey there. This is one of my favorite songs of all time, but for some reason, I hadn't played it on the uke until yesterday. Anyways, I thought I would share it with anyone reading this blog.

Stevie has had a most accomplished career, winning 26 Grammys (a record for a solo artist). But what is more relevant to us at the moment is that he endorsed Barack Obama, and "Obama responded to a Rolling Stone interview question that asked him who his musical heroes are by saying: 'If I had one, it would have to be Stevie Wonder. When I was just at that point where you start getting involved in music, Stevie had that run with Music of My Mind, Talking Book, Fulfillingness' First Finale and Innervisions, and then Songs in the Key of Life. Those are as brilliant a set of five albums as we've ever seen.'" (Wikipedia).

I'm glad my future president has excellent taste in music.

Dream a Little Dream of Me

It seems like we all know this tune due to the late and great Mama Cass, but it was actually first recorded over 30 years earlier, in 1931. This tune seems to beg for the ukulele, and it was the first uke song I ever recorded. If you're interested in hearing the "studio" recording (studio in quotes because the "studio" is actually my office), then go to my MySpace and listen. There are even more than the 6 regular recordings in my profile area. Anyways, have a good one.

Day Three, All of Me!

So, I did the third installment of 30. It's All of Me, written by Gerald Marks and Seymour Simons. This song has been around since 1931. In 1931 on this day, November 3rd, Monica Vitti (Italian actress) and Michael Fu Tieshan (Chinese bishop) were born.

So that was a Wikipedia tangent...where you're reading a Wikipedia article, and you end up clicking your way to something totally unrelated. I've heard a lot of my musician friends play this song, and one of my students said that "Everyone should know this song in every key!" I don't know if everyone needs to know this song in every key, but a jazz musician probably knows it well in at least three keys. It's a good tune, with a really solid chord progression, featuring falling-fifths sequences.