"All Music is Folk Music....

Did you ever hear a horse sing?" - I got that one from a performer at the Wheatland Music Festival back in 1986, but of course I have forgotten his name.  Truth be known, it was not uncommon for classical composers to take a simple folk melody and elaborate on it, and that's also what progressive jazz is all about.

Some song writers start with a tune that seems to come to them out of the clear blue and then they add words to it, while others do it the other way around.  I was mostly a word man back in the day, and I often borrowed the tune from another song because it seemed to fit better than anything I could come up with.  Bob Dylan did a lot of that in his early days you know.  It's not considered plagiarism if the original author is either dead or unknown, although it's good form to give credit where credit is due.  Many folk singers introduce their songs with such background information and, occasionally, the introduction is longer than the song itself.

The most popular song I ever composed, although certainly not the one of which I am most proud, is "Porta-Potty Etiquette", which is on that tape I sent you some time ago.  The saga began when I complained to the executive director of the Bliss Fest about the condition of the porta-potties on the festival grounds, whereupon he immediately appointed me the porta-potty coordinator for next year's festival.  (Let that be a lesson to you!)  While working with the contractor who provided this service, I asked him what we could do to make his job easier.  I subsequently got up on the stage during the festival and relayed this information to the audience which, for some reason, found it amusing.  Somebody came up to me later and suggested that I put it to music.  I told him that I might have difficulty coming up with an appropriate tune, he suggested "Humoresque", and a song was born.
"Humoresque" is generally attributed to classical Czech composer Anton Dvorak, but it wouldn't surprise me if he borrowed the theme from a simple flute playing shepherd in the mountains of Bohemia.  I don't know if Dvorak wrote any words to it, but other people certainly have over the years.  The version with which I am most familiar goes something like this:

"Passengers will please refrain from using toilets while the train
Is standing in the station, I love you.
We encourage constipation while the train is in the station,
Hearing music makes me think of you.
If the ladies' room is taken, never feel a bit forsaken,
Never breathe a sigh of sad defeat.
Use the men's across the hall and, if some man is in the stall,
He'll courteously relinquish you his seat."

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That Corona thing is really getting to be a pain in the ass, isn't it.  I could say that it's just fake news that they are publishing to distract us from something else they're cooking up in those smoke filled rooms, but that would be just paranoid.  I was already doing what they recommend for us senior citizens, avoiding crowds and staying home as much as possible.  That's fine for a country mouse, but I understand how a city mouse might find it burdensome.  The only thing I can suggest is to spend more time on the phone and the internet.  Many young people have been doing that for years, and it seems to work for them.