It’s another musical Monday, & time for our Alice in Wonder Band song of the month. This time around it’s a song called “Lullaby,” & it has an interesting back story.
Our good friend & sometime collaborator JudyAnderson gave Eberle a wonderful Christmas gift in 2002—a book called The Flower Festival, which is an English translation of a 1914 book by Swedish author & illustrator Elsa Beskow (the original is called Blomsterfesten).
It was Christmas evening, & we were both propped up in bed in the old (& cold!) farmhouse where we lived at the time. Eberle was looking thru the book, & I was playing the ukulele. Yes, that’s right—I used to play ukulele in bed quite often; it’s pretty much the ideal instrument for this, not only due to its size, but also its mellow “vibe.” In any case, Eberle read me the poem that concludes the book, & one or both of us decided it would make a good song. So I started to plunk & strum away, & came up with a chord progression. Meanwhile, Eberle got another uke & started to compose a melody to go with said chords—even now, when I don'tplay the uke much, I still say you can't have too many ukes! This actually wasn’t the first song we wrote in bed using two ukes—that was “The Owl & The Pussycat Samba,” which interested parties can hear in an earlier Robert Frost’s Banjo post here.
The song worked out nicelyfor the band, I think. I stated on uke (a concert-size Fluke I believe), while Eberle moved to marimba. Our oboist Art Troutner moved to tenor recorder, & our violinist Lois Fry switched to viola; singer Deadre Chase did a wonderful job with a lovely but difficult melody.
The song was recorded at the Alpine Playhouse in McCall, Idaho, I think during a show in February of 2003. Hope you enjoy it!
Pic is an image by Beskow from Blomsterfesten