There’s nothing like music to elicit that sheer childlike joy that we sometimes fear has abandoned us forever.
So, as we say goodbye to summer, it’s time to revisit one of my most talked-about recent columns, featuring readers’ “happy songs” — the songs that cheer them up no matter how dour their mood.
For instance, I have been known to sing Petula Clark’s “My Love,” at the top of my lungs — luckily for the hapless public, when I’m in the car and there’s nobody in earshot: “My love is deeper than the deepest ocean/Wider than the sky/My love is brighter than the brightest star/That shines every night above/And there is nothing in this world/That can ever change my love.”
I thought I was the only weirdo, but, judging from the response, my readers and friends care more about this issue than the national debt and the world peace combined.
Everybody, it seems, has a happy song — in fact, an iPod full of them. It’s such a rich vein that I left out some of my own favorites in my June 24 column.
Numerous readers voted for The Beach Boys — just about everything — as well as Louis Armstrong’s “What A Wonderful World,” Cyndi Lauper’s “Girls Just Want to Have Fun,” “Build Me Up, Buttercup,” and Al Green’s “Let’s Stay Together.”
Linda Lipinski of Kettering has an eclectic playlist that includes the Loving Spoonful’s “Summer in the City,” Carole King’s “Smackwater Jack,” Smash Mouth’s “Walkin’ on the Sun.” But her favorite remains Katrina and the Wavs’ “Walkin’ on Sunshine,” because “it reminds me of happy days at Phillips Aquatic Club in Old North Dayton.”
Mollie King of Dayton said that “Dancing in September” by Earth Wind and Fire “just makes me day every time I hear it!”
Andrea Borchers of Miamisburg nominated “Crystal Blue Persuasion” as well as “Cotton-Eyed Joe” for an “impromptu dance party in the kitchen — or anywhere else I hear it!”
There’s a dance party at the home of Carol Self of Beavercreek whenever The Village People’s “YMCA” comes on the radio: “It always makes me want to get up and dance the goofy routine.”
Joyce Venys of Huber Heights gave the nod to “Aquarius/Let the Sunshine In” by the Fifth Dimension. “Just try not singing along,” she challenged.
“Summer Breeze” brings back the summers of her childhood for Brenda Hammond-Halk of Carlisle, while”Summer Nights” from Grease does the same for Lauren Boyd: “This song always makes me happy, plus gives me an excuse to break out in song! It reminds me of being little and watching the movie with my mom.”
Memories of his own children came back to Mike Amend of Mason: “The Carole King Tapestry set and the James Taylor JT album. I used to sing most of them to my kids to get them to sleep when they were young. Now I just annoy them and crank up everything and belt it out in the car.”
Confessing herself a “hopeless romantic,” Laura Shreffler of Greenville cited Jerome Kern’s “Long Ago and Far Away,” “Everything You Are,” and “The Way You Look Tonight” — or anything Kern, George Gershwin and Cole Porter. She also picked one of my all-time favorites, The Righteous Brothers’ “Unchained Melody,” which was Jim’s and my first dance at our wedding.
Dave Gulliver of Sarasota, Fla., a former Dayton Daily News reporter, urged me to revisit the column so he could profess his love for anything by Marshall Crenshaw: "I defy anyone to hold back the foot-tapping and singing-along to 'Girls,' 'Someday, Someway' and 'You're My Favorite Waste of Time' (an honor usually given to Mary's columns)." Thanks, Dave — I think.
So we bid farewell to summer — to the Fraze, to Crestwood Swim Club, and to songs that make us want to dance, just because.
Where can we find them again? Just ask Mavis Staples: “I know a place/Ain’t nobody crying/Ain’t nobody worried…”
She took us there, all right, and somewhere in Dayton, a banker is boogeying.
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