As of yesterday, I now feature a bunch of tunes I've purchased legally and showcased them in a Shockwave player playlist located at the bottom of the website. I would have put it on the side bar, but considering the amount of information offered by the player's script, I opted to place it down below so as to give the listener a clear visual of what some of my favorite songs are and the albums they come from.
My current favorite genre for at least the past several years has been Country music. It brings out my patriotic love for what's good and right in our nation. It also appeals to my roots and my upbringing in what used to be a close knit farming community. My folks were produce farmers in the well know Black Dirt region (onion country) in western Orange County, New York (approx. 2hrs NW of NYC). I now live about half an hour away in Montgomery, New York, home to the world famous Orange County Choppers ...but that's a subject better left for another time.
In addition to Country, I also like some of just about everything else except that I cannot tolerate Rap, Hip-Hop, Disco and/or Urban Beat. As I learn more about how to categorize the playlists for the Shockwave player, I'll expand my collection. Looking at the current selection you might be a little surprised to find one song that stands out from the rest. It's been a favorite of mine since I was a kid and saw it played in an old cartoon. The song was originally done Al Jolson and Cab Calloway in early 1936 in the movie "The Singing Kid" and later that year was adapted to cartoon by the famous "Merrie Melodies" director Tex Avery.
The cartoon capitalized on what was already a hugely successful song at the time and also wove together with it a storyline loosely based on Jolson's famous movie "The Jazz Singer" which just so happened to be a storyline loosely based on Al Jolson's struggle and rise to fame itself. It's quite an interesting piece of history and if it wasn't for the racist segregationist D.W. Griffith's box office smash "Rise of a Nation" twenty years earlier which helped birthed the black rights movement known as the NAACP, there might exist more public respect and admiration today for what was then the earth shattering talent of the great black-faced minstrel Al Jolson. Here first is the cartoon I so loved so much growing up and below that is a clip from the original motion picture "The Singing Kid". Enjoy!
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