Archive for the ‘Music Memories’ Category

Merry Christmas! “Baby, It’s Cold Outside” with Jase and Missy

I hope you all have a Very Merry Christmas!

Thanks to Footnote Maven of  http://www.footnotemaven.com/, Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/footnoteMaven?fref=photo for her Christmas Carol blogging challenge!  I have many, many favorite Christmas carols, and listening to all of them is a favorite part of Christmas for me.  Most all of the time, I love the old favorites by the original artists, but I add new favorites as they come along.

Two years ago, I added “Baby, It’s Cold Outside” by Kansas girl Martina McBride and Dean Martin to a favorite’s list on my iPod!  (And just so you know, my hubby got to meet her when she was still singing with her parents in different gigs around Kansas!)

He had truck trouble, and Martina’s folks were on their way to a gig and they picked him up and took him into town!  She was a beautiful young lady (still is), and he came home with stars in his eyes!

Here are photos and their version of this Christmas classic

And last year, I added a new couple, Missy and Jase Robertson, singing “Baby, It’s Cold Outside” to my iPod’s favorites’ list.  Missy has a lovely voice, and together they do such a cute job of singing this Christmas favorite.

And as for WHY is it one of my Christmas favorites.  Here my “why.”

My Mom and Dad got up at five a.m. every morning, EVERY morning, cold, rain, snow, sleet,  ice, didn’t matter, to milk the dairy cows.  After they finished milking, Dad  went out in the pasture to feed the cows, and Mom came in the house to start breakfast. (And wake me up if I wasn’t already.)

I have this wonderful memory of my dad coming in from a cold, snowy, early winter morning after feeding the cattle, all bundled up in overalls and a heavy flannel-lined coat, his face red from the cold, and that twinkle in his eye that was always there when he looked at my Mom, and he would sing “Baby, it’s Cold Outside” as he snuggled up to her, nuzzled her neck and gave her a chilly hug and kiss.  And there was always laughter between them when he did that, and usually a few more kisses.

My dad died when I was not quite 13, and I am thankful for such a special memory, and the love that my parents had for each other and for me, and  that still brings a smile to my face.

And as I sit here, playing these two songs, my mom, age nearly 103, has a big smile on her face, and she is singing along!

Thank God for the memories!

Music Monday – “We Wish You a Merry Christmas” in Sign Language

by Sherry Stocking Kline
December 4th, 201

I found this on the ‘net and thought that I sure needed to post a “Music Monday” even if I was several days late!

Recently, we were singing along to “I’m Dreaming of a White Christmas” and to my surprise, my little granddaughter began signing along with the words.

I didn’t know that she knew any sign language, and somehow, it made the song even more moving, so we’re going to try to brush up on a couple more songs before we go caroling with our church group in a couple of weeks.

We always leave the nursing homes and homes with “We Wish You a Merry Christmas” (and because there aren’t many different words!) this one will be a great one to learn!

I hope you enjoyed watching this as much as I did

Have a Very Merry Christmas!

Sherry

Happy Valentine’s Day – Martina McBride – Music Monday

by Sherry Stocking Kline
February 14th, 2010

It’s fun to follow folks on Twitter, and for the past several months, I’ve been following fellow Kansas girl, country singer Martina McBride (@martinamcbride on Twitter) and what more appropriate day to share her “Valentine” song with you!

May you have a special Valentine’s Day!

The Big Green Tractor… Music Monday

Sherry Stocking Kline
January 8, 2009

I grew up around tractors. Lots of them. Big ones. Little ones.  ‘Tricycle’ front end ones like my dad used to cultivate the cattle feed and squatty little red and green tractors with big wide fenders perfect for children to ride along with their parents.

I don’t remember my first tractor ride…

I don’t remember my first tractor ride. I was much too young for that to ‘stick’ in my memory.

I do remember countless hours riding on the fender, hanging on, then getting off when mom or dad stopped (yes, they had his and hers tractors) and running in the furrow behind the plow, my bare feet pounding the sun-warmed damp earth.

I watched out for fishing worms (and picked them up if there was any chance we might go fishing soon).  Little baby bunny rabbits ran to get away from the tractors (and me).

Back then,  the long, muley-eared jackrabbits were a common sight in Sumner County, Kansas.   Now, jackrabbits are pretty rare.  I’ve not seen one in a good, long, time, but I have it on good authority that they are still around.

Nowadays children would be taken to a baby sitter…

Nowadays children would be taken to a baby sitter while mom and dad worked, but mom was a ‘work at home’ (or in the field) mom, and I went along. Mom and Dad’s day began at 5:00 a.m. when Mom and our collie dog Lassie brought the dairy cattle in to be milked.

After they milked, dad took the truck with silage in it out to the pasture and the feed bunks to feed the cattle while mom came in and got ready to feed the people in our home, which in the time period I’ve got in mind included Dad, myself, and my brother, Gary.

After breakfast, if it was spring, summer, or fall, Dad and most often Mom would head to the field on a tractor.   Not the fancy ones like they have now with air conditioning and GPS, just plain red, then later yellow, and much later the green John Deere’s made their way onto our farm.

I always felt sorry for city kids…

Those were good days, and good memories.  I know some city kids would feel sorry for me, no swimming pool around the corner, and no park to go swinging in.

But I always felt sorry for city kids (like my own kids later on) who didn’t get to ride on tractors and combines each summer, who had to play in a postage-stamp-sized back yard instead of a quarter section with pasture and creeks full of pollywogs and crawdad, and who never got to watch baby chicks scurry around after the mama hen, and baby calves grow from awkward to adult.

Silent Night – in German, Gaelic, and English

Merry Christmas to All!

Stille Nacht (The original Silent Night – in German)

Click here to see both English and German lyrics side by side. German was the language of most of my husband’s ancestor’s.  Unfortunately,  the language and perhaps many of the food and customs have been lost.

Oiche Chiuin (Silent Night) by Enya

This was cool.  I know, if I go back far enough, my ancestors spoke Gaelic.  I just hope that soon I can find their exact origins.  Must get back to working on this branch!

Silent Night in English sung by Bing Crosby

It doesn’t get much better than listening to Bing Crosby sing “Silent Night”, unless you’re singing “Silent Night” while doing the annual Christmas Light car tour and you find out that your seven-year-old granddaughter learned the sign language for the song in school.  Now, that’s really cool.



Have a Very Merry Christmas! Blessings, Sherry

The Christmas Song – Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire – Music Monday

Sherry Stocking Kline
December 21st, 2009

I love Christmas songs!  There are so many wonderful ones, and there are so many great memories to go with each one!

This lovely version by Nat King Cole has been enhanced by great Christmas photographs!

I’ve never roasted chestnuts by a fire, but it sounds relaxing and fun. I Hope that you and yours have a wonderful Christmas!

Merry Christmas

Music Monday – Mary Did You Know?

by Sherry Stocking Kline
December 14th, 2009

The first time I heard Kathy Mattea singing this song written by Mark Lowery and Buddy Greene, it became one of my new Christmas favorites. And this version, sung by Mark Lowery himself and accompanied by Guy Penrod and David Phelps is beautiful.

Mary, Did You Know?

Lyrics by Mark Lowery, music by Buddy Greene

Mary Did you Know that your baby boy will one day walk on water?
Mary Did you Know that your baby boy will save our sons and daughters?
Did you know that your baby boy has come to make you new?
This child that you delivered will soon deliver you?

Mary did you know that your baby boy will give sight to a blind man
Mary did you know that your baby boy will calm a storm with his hand
Did you know that your baby boy has walked where angels trod?
When you kiss your little baby, you’ve kissed the face of God.
The blind will see, the deaf will hear, and the dead will live again
The lame will leap, the dumb will speak, the praises of the Lamb.

Mary, Did You Know that your Baby Boy is Lord of all creation?
Mary Did you Know that your Baby Boy will one day rule the nations?
Did you know that your Baby Boy is Heaven’s Perfect Lamb
This sleeping child you’re holding is the Great “I AM…..”

After watching “The Nativity Story” this past weekend with my family, it made me want to ask Mary some questions myself.

Mary, what did you think when shepherds began showing up at the stable? How amazed were you when the wise men came and brought gifts? And such expensive ones?

Did you use those gifts to keep Jesus safe from Herod when you had to hurry away from Bethlehem and stay in Egypt?

Did you ever think “oh, my gosh, what if I hadn’t listened to the dream that told Joseph to take the child to Egypt” to keep him safe?

What did you see when Jesus was young that made you certain he could turn the water into wine?

Mary, What Did You Know?

Merry Christmas to you and yours….

I’ll Be Home For Christmas – Bing Crosby

Sherry Stocking Kline
December 7th, 2009

If you asked me what my favorite Christmas song was, I’d have to hem and haw and then answer with about 20 different songs, all favorites, each in their own way.

But “I’ll Be Home for Christmas” has always tugged at my heartstrings. Every time I heard it, I’d tear up even when I still lived at home, even when all my family still lived close and all were still alive.

I grew up hearing Bing Crosby sing it, early version with the beautiful photo slide show is special.


We all want to be home for Christmas…


It seems no matter how old I get or what stage in life I am, this song still makes me teary.

Don’t we all want to be home for Christmas? And maybe at different times in our lives we’d like to really go back home and be a child again, when life was carefree, the worries were someone else’s, and in my case, when my family circle wasn’t missing my father.

When I was in college at K-State, though I loved college and my friends, I so looked forward to going home where my family would be at Christmas time.

Now, with my family grown and my brother’s families grown, there’s always an empty spot where one or another of the children weren’t able to make it home for Christmas, or others in the family went to celebrate with their in-laws.

There are More Empty Places in the family circle…

And in the past few years, there are more and more empty places in the family circle that will never be filled again.

And so, the words of this song “I’ll be home for Christmas, if only in my dreams” tug at my heartstrings more and more each year.

Hey there, “Lil Red Riding Hood”… More Adventures in Blogging

by Sherry Stocking Kline

November 14, 2009

One of Randy Seaver’s Saturday Night Genealogy Fun challenges for September was to blog about our favorite songs. See that SNGF post here.

That was a tough assignment!

I love music, and so many of my favorite songs are tied with memories, some good, some bad, some inspirational, and some sad.

There’s too many favorites to count, but Randy’s challenge brought to mind one song that we had such fun with while we were in high school because it brings back so many fun memories.  And of the time  right before high school graduation, before we went off to college, or to war, or for some to get married. It was a time when we had few responsibilities.

Sam the Sam and the Pharoah’s “Lil Red Riding Hood” was ‘the’ song to sing with a carload of teens dragging Main Street in the ’60’s.

You Could Howl Out the Window…

You could sing at the top of your lungs, howl out the window at passing cars and pedestrians, and in general, just act silly.

It was right before most cars had seat belts and there were no seat belt laws, so even my mom’s little white Ford Fairlane 500 might have six passengers.  (No alcohol was involved in our little group, it was just a bunch of silly teens having fun.)

Anyway, thanks to Twitter buddy @bonnie67, who read my “I don’t know how to embed a video” Tweet, and offered these instructions at Bonnie67’s Blog!

Thank you, Bonnie!

So here, thanks to Bonnie, are Sam the Sham and The Pharoah’s.

(And please – Feel free to sing along, and howl at the appropriate times….)

P.S. I had to go into my WordPress HTML tab to add in the coding for embedding the code.  I apologize, but I don’t know how any other blog hosts require it done!

Saturday Night Genealogy Fun – My Favorite Song(s)

Saturday Night Genealogy Fun – Your All-time Favorite Song

(I borrowed this first part from Randy Seaver’s blog at http://www.geneamusings.com/

It’s Saturday Night – time for some Genealogy, and Family History, Fun!

Here is your assignment for the evening – if you wish to participate in the Fun (cue the Mission Impossible music):

1. What is your all-time favorite song? Yep, number 1. It’s hard to choose sometimes. If you made your favorite all-time Top 40 music selections, what would be #1?

2. Tell us about it. Why is it a favorite? Do you have special memories attached to this song?

3. Write your own blog post about it, or make a comment on this post or on the Facebook entry.

Here’s my Favorite Songs – For Tonight Anyhow!
by Sherry Stocking Kline

This is much harder than last week’s blog where all I had to do was try to figure out how to make Family Tree Maker spit out an Ahnentafel report and then figure out which one was “the one” to write about. (by the way, I flunked that test, but did write about an interesting ancestor! Check that out here)

Well, I’m going to ‘flunk’ this week, too, because I can’t just write about one!

I was in high school in the 60’s, and grade school in the 50’s, so there’s a lot of great songs to choose from, and it seems like all have memories attached.

This isn’t my Number One song, but it is one with some great memories attached.

It’s “Li’l Red Riding Hood” by Sam the Sham and the Pharaohs, and if I’ve done it right, you can listen to a short clip by clicking on the title. (Well, I wasn’t able to pull that off..)

“Li’l Red Riding Hood” was one of those fun-to-sing-along-with songs, so picture if you can, me and three high-school girl partners in crime, some of us with our boyfriends (this was before seat belt law, and before all cars even had seat belts!) all crammed into a small, white, 63′ Ford Fairlane 500, dragging main street with the windows down singing this song and howling at all the appropriate times, and at some of our good friends in passing cars.

(This was back when you could drag main all night after a football game or movie for just $1, and you could stop at Dick’s Drive-In for 15 cent French Fries)

And no, no alcohol was involved or being consumed!  Just a lot of fun between friends who are still friends today.

The boyfriend with me became my husband, and that song was one we laughingly sang on road trips when our kids were little bitty, and they sing to their children today!  Memories don’t get any better than that.

My favorite number one song?  Toss-up between Ben E. King’s  “Stand By Me” in the 50’s and John Denver’s “Take Me Home Country Roads” in the late 60’s.

Raised on a wheat and dairy farm with a 160 acres of land to roam over, and lots of animal pets, I’m a country girl at heart, and whenever I hear “Take Me Home Country Roads” it takes me back home in memory. And whenever I hear “Stand By Me” I think of grade school, high school, sock hops and good friends.

Thanks for another SNGF of fun!

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