One of the songs that i had chosen to sing for the OOAK 1950s American Music Fest is “Autumn Leaves”, popularized by Nat King Cole. Singing it in practice for the Fest, together with the obvious change in the leaves outside our house in late September to early October caused me to think about aging, and specifically about my aging brain, since such thoughts are often present in this part of my life.
I’m not totally happy with the resulting song, though i’ve become more accustomed to it as i’ve sung it and tweaked the lyrics. Drawing an analogy between the life of leaves and the life of one’s brain is pretty obvious, bordering on trite. To do it justice requires some powerful lyrics, which i obviously have not been able to produce. The tune is also pretty predictable — not surprising since that is true of most of my melodies. Nevertheless, i fully claim it, for it fits in the autobiographical theme that many of my non-political songs do.
When i started writing it, a recent song of David Wiseman’s came to mind. At one of our Saturday jams he described his song as dark blues (or something of the sort). I told him that he had actually moved into the “blacks”. I guess this is my one of own “blacks” songs.