Orange Blossom Special

Yesterday evening (after performing a Thankless Volunteer Task) I came home, flopped down, and switched on the tv.

PBS happened to be running a documentary on the song, "Orange Blossom Special." I didn't pay total attention - I had to cook dinner and do laundry so I kind of wandered in and out of the room, but it looked pretty interesting.

The man who wrote the song apparently suffered from some mental illness (a couple of the commentators said schizophrenia). As he got older, he coped (I suppose these were pre-good-medication times, or he didn't want to/couldn't afford taking medication) by moving deep into the Everglades and only hanging out with the "characters" there.

His life was pretty sad, I guess, in some ways.

One thing I always enjoy about programs like this are all the different VERSIONS you get to hear. (If I had a free-form radio program on, say, a jazz station? One of my regular features, I think, would be to pick one song, or one well-known songwriter's work, and just take a whole hour and do nothing but play all the different versions I could find, both the "straight" serious versions, and the more "novelty" versions, if they existed).

At the very end - over the closing credits - they had a Mariachi band playing the song. That kind of thing makes me laugh with delight because it's so unexpected and yet it works. (The main changes I heard were that the "train whistle" part was done by a short burst from the trumpeters, the violin sections was maybe a little less virtuoso than, say Vassar Smith's version, and they all thumped the heels of their boots in time to give it rhythm).

Another thing that struck me was one of the bluegrass fiddlers - it was, I think, Vassar Smith - making the comment that, "People see us playing this stuff and they think it's simple." Huh? I see them playing "this stuff" and I go "Man, that must take skill" because it looks hard to me. (I used to play the clarinet and the piano - was never very good at either - so maybe that's my reaction as someone with a tiny bit of musical training.) Well, it looks like it takes skill but it also looks fun - fun in the sense of being satisfying, because it's something challenging but like most things that are challenging, it's a joy to do well.

At any rate - it was interesting (what I got to see of it) and it made me pull out my copy of "Will the Circle Be Unbroken" (which turns out to be the only thing close to "true" bluegrass in my collection) and listen to it a little again.

Interesting stuff.