One fun thing about working on “Huckabee” on TBN was that it was a throwback to the great variety shows of the ‘50s-’70s, so we booked the kind of acts you seldom saw on TV anymore. So let’s revisit one of the most astounding “stunt” acts we ever presented, Anna Dangerous and her amazing crossbow skills.
Weekend Music Picks
By HP pop culture guru Pat Reeder
As music lovers, Laura and I are lucky to live in the DFW Metroplex, where at least four cities/suburbs all around us have their own top-quality symphony orchestras. Thursday night, we attended a concert called “Gershwin Fest” by the Arlington Symphony, and it was incredible hearing that gorgeous music played by a full symphony. It inspired me to pick three Gershwin compositions to share this week. You’re welcome.
Every singer worth the term has recorded Gershwin, and there are countless famous ones I could pick, but I like to share things you might not have heard a thousand times. So...
- The Arlington Symphony played the famous overture from “Girl Crazy,” but I thought I’d share a similar orchestral piece that’s more obscure. Nonesuch did a series of cool recordings that recreated the full original scores of Gershwin shows as they might have been performed in the 1920s, complete with songs that didn’t become standards and that time sadly forgot. Some of them are kind of silly or dated, but they’re still Gershwin songs you’ve never heard. As a pop culture historian, that rings all my bells.
Here, just as the 1926 opening night audience heard it, is the original overture from the Gershwins’ show, “Oh Kay,” which gave us “Do, Do, Do” and “Someone to Watch Over Me.” FYI: The entire album is on YouTube, so you can also hear such lost tunes as “Ain’t It Romantic” and “Fidgety Feet.”
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