“The Baptistown Crawl” is a delightful and catchy tune, recorded by “Hitch’s Happy Harmonists” in 1924.  Historians remember the band as the first that Hoagy Carmichael recorded with.  This tune, however, seems to have been written by the leader, Curtis Hitch.  I transcribed it, and arranged it for viola and piano, in which form David […]

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“The Hand Without the Fingers Is Just a Spoon” was one of the pieces I wrote as a student at Oberlin Conservatory.  It was a piano suite, made up of diatonic motifs, repeated and varied within a rhythmic structure.  In keeping with its diatonic foundation, it was structured mostly around the number 7. I have […]

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I think this was back in 1972.  At any rate, I was still in high school when I wrote string and flute arrangements for this local 45.  Jan Ince sang two of her songs, and Caltrick Simone (whose real name I’ve forgotten) produced.  I also played ‘cello on it.  An internet search reveals that copies […]

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A song about aging, always a crowd-pleasing subject.  This is the first verse.

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I joined Them Keener Boys for their debut CD in 1999, contributing trombone to “How’s It Going Mary?”, and backup vocals to “My Booty Cost a Dollah” and “Whores.”  If I recall correctly, I also played uke on “My Booty.”

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I think everyone can appreciate the sentiments of this song.  I recorded it for my CD That Regrettable Weekend, then later arranged it for uke, voice, and viola.

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When I was sixteen, I wrote a piece for string orchestra, which was played by the high school orchestra.  It was not a particularly sophisticated piece, relying heavily on tritones, but I learned a lot doing it.  And I can still remember the thrill of hearing it for the first time.  I apologize for the […]

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For Virginia Matthews’s dance “Check Mate,” I provided piano music (severe, contrapuntal, and diatonic), a spoken text (scrambled chess instructions), and chess pieces with bells in them.  This was all back in 1980, in San Francisco.

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“Clowns” was an orchestration exercise I did in high school, back when I was sixteen. Fortunately, the public school I went to in D.C. had an orchestra, so I was able to hear what I did. My subject was a piano piece by Joaquin Turina, chosen simply because it was short and suitable. I had […]

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On December 17, 2011, I did my bit for the annual “Filthy Song Night,” at the Jalopy Theater in Brooklyn.  I brought out my baritone horn, which I seldom play in public, and offered a traditional variant of the hymn tune “Old 100th.”  You can listen to it here. Addendum: No, I guess you can’t.  […]

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