Friday, May 22, 2009

Teresa Brewer

I got this CD at a record store -- mostly a used record store -- a couple weeks ago.

I haven't listened to it since I've been home, but I listened to part of it in our motel on a portable CD player.

It's different from Teresa's ordinary songs, which were pop with a lot of playfulness. These are more the teenage, light rock sound of the late '50s.

20 songs. My favorite song on the CD is one I've had the 45 rpm record to for many years. It was my Mom's actually but one we played to virtual death as kids, "It's The Same Old Jazz." I believe I still have that copy, as bad looking as ever but it still plays. Then one day I got what looked like a mint copy at an antique store for $3. Then I got it home and it skipped on my record player. So that's weird, the beat to death copy plays through, but the mint looking copy doesn't.

In its place, though, I had a download of questionable origin. But now I have the CD, so everything is good and proper.

This song I believe is fully entitled, "It's The Same Old Jazz Momma." The theme of the song is a daughter's justification of the rock era and '50s teenage sensibilities to her mother by comparing all that to the mother's memories of the '20s. With the great conclusion that it's the same thing, the same old jazz, Momma!

Lyrics including this: "Remember back in '22, the shimmy shake you used to do. Remember how you'd 'Bump and Meet.' Well, bump and jump keep company." And "Rudy Vallee had a megaphone, and Clara Bow had 'It.' Now Bill Haley has a microphone, and Mary Lou's a hit. And Daddy, Daddy, Daddy wore a raccoon coat. And drove a Plymouth too. Now leather jackets are the fashion note, and motorcycles too." But you can see, "It's the same old jazz, Momma!"

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