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Christmas Elvis Stuff

Elvis Christmas Music

A friend requested a post about the top Elvis Christmas songs.  During his lifetime, Elvis recorded two Christmas albums and only 19 Christmas songs.  The first, Elvis’ Christmas Album, was released on October 15, 1957.  Side one has 6 secular Christmas songs while side two has two Christmas carols and four hymns that don’t have anything to do with Christmas other than appearing on a Christmas album.  The second album, Elvis Sings the Wonderful World of Christmas, was released on October 20, 1971.  It originally consisted of 11 Christmas songs, with Blue Christmas being added to reissues.

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Music Education

Mom’s Ukulele

My mom had a ukulele that sat in a shelf the headboard of my parent’s bed.  The headboard had the shelf and two sliding doors on either side of this shelf for storage.  I thought of it as a little guitar decoration for their bedroom and not a legitimate musical instrument.  At some point when I was in elementary school, I found out what it was. Mom showed me how to play the C, F and G7 chords and how to play Little Brown Jug. Soon she would buy me a song book that had chords and lyrics for over 100 simple songs.

Categories
Music Education

Seeing Sammy on TV

In my previous posts, I talked about singing with my cousin Sammy and that he was an outstanding singer.  He won the youth talent contest at the Mid-South Fair in Memphis one year singing How Great Thou Art.  Because he won this contest, he got to travel to New York City and perform on a television show called the Ted Mack Amateur Hour

Categories
Music Education

Singing with Sammy

My cousin Sammy lived next door to us.  Sammy has an outstanding voice.  I mentioned in an earlier post that Sammy and I sang together around the house and occasionally at church.  Sammy was several years older than me.  When we first started singing together, my mom played piano for us.  In a few years, Sammy started playing for us to sing.  Sammy attended a Baptist church, and I went to a Methodist church.  People contacted Sammy to sing at church services and revivals and I started out more as a tag along. 

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Music Education

Playing Folsom Prison Blues

I was 6 years old when Johnny Cash’s live album At Folsom Prison was released. While it was my parents’ album, I listened to it almost all the time.  Folsom Prison Blues isn’t a kid’s song, but it became one of my favorites. At the time, I wasn’t playing the piano.  Mom might have started me on lessons a couple of times by then, but I never practiced and didn’t retain enough to say that I knew anything about playing piano. 

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Halloween Scary Stories

Why Casey Kasem Scares Me

A lot of the time when people hear the title of the movie The Incredible Two-Headed Transplant, people think you are talking about The Thing with Two HeadsThe Thing with Two Heads was the film that gets more attention and is more familiar to the general public.  But The Incredible Two-Headed Transplant has its own two-headed monster movie thing going own that you can argue make it just as entertaining or maybe even more. The absence of any known actors as either of the heads of the monster is probably the reason this film gets less attention.  But having Bruce Dern as a mad scientist more than makes up for it.

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Halloween Scary Stories

Why Ray Milland and Rosey Grier Scare Me

On the June 28, 1969, episode of The Rosey Grier Show, he sang a cover version of the Temptations song Get Ready. Around that same time, I was in the audience at a telethon in Jackson, Tennessee where saw Rosey Grier perform the song live.  I really liked his performance of the song, and I didn’t realize that anyone else had ever recorded it.  I also didn’t know that Rosey had ever played football.  I thought he was primarily famous for singing.  I never thought that an ex-football player would be the host of his own variety show. By the time I saw commercials for The Thing with Two Heads, I knew he had played football and was into needlepoint. From the looks of the commercials, I thought this would be a fun film to see.

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Halloween Scary Stories

Why Zsa Zsa Gabor Scares Me

After seeing Cat-Women of the Moon and Missile to the Moon, why would anyone need to see Queen of Outer Space?  After all it’s just a variation of the same story that I had already seen twice.  What could possibly make a difference to make this one worth watching?  First, I think they are all worth watching in spite of their quality.  In this one, the spaceship is drawn to Venus instead of the moon.  So they were expanding the universe where this film happens.  They also expand the frame of the film since it is the first widescreen film in this genre.  It is also in color.  It also has the feel of being a bigger budget film. Maybe it seems like a bigger movie because it stars Zsa Zsa Gabor.

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Halloween Scary Stories

Why Cat Women Scare Me

In my previous blog post, I talked about the film Missile to the Moon, which is a remake of this week’s subject, Cat-Women of the Moon. I first heard of Cat-Women of the Moon when reading the book, Son of the Golden Turkey Awards where it was another nominee in the “Most Primitive Male Chauvinist Fantasy” category. In this one, a spacecraft ends up on the moon where they find a civilization of black leotard wearing women with beehive hairdos. The Cat-women had practiced mind control over the female navigator of the spacecraft to get it to the moon. They tried to used mind control to overtake the men, but their minds were too strong. They want to take over the spacecraft to go to earth because they cannot live on the moon anymore. After some fighting, the crew overpowers the Cat-Women. Then they board their spacecraft and go home.

Categories
Halloween Scary Stories

Why Moon Maidens Scare Me

Back in the days of the home video revolution, I picked up an inexpensive VHS set of low budget sci-fi films.  It included The Hideous Sun Demon and Missile to the Moon. When I watched Missile to the Moon, I realized that it was one of those films where space explorers land on a planet where the entire population is women.  In the book, Son of the Golden Turkey Awards, they devote a whole section to this type of movie with a category called “Most Primitive Male Chauvinist Fantasy”.