Well, we just passed through the Summer Solstice and into the first days of Summer. After this, the days will be getting shorter. We’ve turned the corner! Some also call today “Sunshine Appreciation Day” and that, of course, makes it easy for me to peruse my songbooks for a few appropriate tunes on which to muse. So let’s start with one that I have, shall we say, “taken a shine” to. And, it also has to do with politics! How timely!
The old chestnut “You Are My Sunshine” is a song that spans musical genres from “hillbilly,” to “country,” to “standard,” to “children’s.” We all evolve as we age, so why not songs?
First recorded in 1939, the song is credited to songwriters and performers Jimmie Davis and Charles Mitchell.
It has been declared one of the official “State Songs of Louisiana” because of its association with Davis, a popular country singer and governor of the state in the years 1944–1948 and 1960–1964.
The song has been covered numerous times — so often, in fact, that it is one of the most commercially programmed numbers in American popular music. Early versions by Gene Autry, Bing Crosby, and Wayne King reached the US charts of the day. Click or tap on the triangle in the next image for an iconic treatment by:
Davis (1899-2000) performed and wrote both sacred and popular songs, as well as being a politician. As Governor of his native Louisiana, he ran his campaigns as a controversial advocate for impoverished and rural white Louisianans—alas, today seen as a segregationist platform.
When he ran for governor of Louisiana in 1944, he used “You Are My Sunshine” as his campaign theme, singing it during stump speeches and at fundraisers, often while riding a horse he had named “Sunshine.” Ah, the sweet old days of political campaigns!
Despite its rather maudlin verses, “You Are My Sunshine” became even more famous when, in 2013, a tornado hit Moore, Oklahoma, and teachers in the local grade school rushed their students into the bathrooms — the safest places in their small building.
To keep their charges from panicking, teachers led songs including rounds of “You Are My Sunshine”—a gently defiant gesture given the dangerous weather all around them. While the building was destroyed, not one of those singing children was hurt. Ah, the power of music, and the subsequent honor of a presidential visit!
To make you feel safe, click or tap on the triangle in the following image to hear a soothing version.
But, gentle readers, this is too shiny a theme not to touch on a few other sunny musical chestnuts roasting in the heat out there. Lets make hay while the sun shines!
Click or tap on the triangle in the next image to ride along with Lesley.
Click or tap on the triangle in the next image to bounce along with Miss Blaine:
Click or tap on the triangle in the next image and get ready to powder your nose!
And of course, here is the alpha and omega of a sunny day. Here’s a musical metaphor not just for the swift and visible movement of the sun through the day but for the nearly imperceptible movement of the days through the years.
Click or tap on the triangle in the next image to reflect.
So, as we live with the heatwave on this year’s “Sunshine Appreciation Day,”
STAY TUNED,
appreciate the sunshine,
and remember, if nothing else, to WEAR THOSE SUNHATS!
NOHOBANJO OF NORTHAMPTON, AND NOW EASTHAMPTON, "MUSICAL MUSINGS" 