Samantha's first blog

Posted By markmyers on May 20, 2009

We played the last of my birthday records for little Sam last night. It was Ella Fitzgerald “Sings the Cole Porter Songbooks”. We were reminiscing last night, “The Complete Ella Fitzgerald Song Books” was the first music we ever purchased together. It was many years ago, I had wanted this box set of Ella recordings for some time but could never afford it. Pam was working at Suncoast at the time as a manager and got a special manager discount so she ordered them for me at Suncoast’s sister company Sam Goody. It was a crazy amount of money to spend at the time but worth every penny. Ella’s recordings of music by composers Cole Porter, George & Ira Gershwin, Jerome Kern, Harold Arlen, Rodgers & Hart, Johnny Mercer, Irving Berlin, and Duke Ellington were some of the best music ever made in my opinion.

I still remember the night we bought the big box set on CD and took it home to listen to at my parent’s house. We had to listen really low because they were asleep at the time.  I knew a lot of the music since I played in so many high school bands. Unless you were a band person though, not many kids our age knew this music; it wasn’t exactly “popular”. However, as we listened to one CD after another, I was shocked to hear Pam singing along to many of the songs! A lot of them are from musicals which she was really into and I was impressed with her musical knowledge.  We had a great time listening to these recordings and I think it was one of the first times we really felt a connection.

To this day, this box set remains our favorite set of recordings and we listen to it often. Now many of the recordings are available on new audiophile vinyl so we are buying them again to listen to on our record player. As good as they sound on CD, they sound even better in this “new” old format! We couldn’t wait for our little Sam to be born to start sharing our love for these recordings with her so we are getting an early start!

Categories: Sam's Soundtrack
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