The Les Paul and Mary Ford cover of “How High the Moon” came out in the year of my birth. It became a number-one hit.

I loved the song because Mary Ford’s overdubbed vocals made little-kid-me laugh. A whole lot. Which was important because my household wasn’t humor-driven. At all. Mine was a dark, Dickensian world, ruled by dour dullards.

No wonder I flipped over Mary Ford’s vocals. They sounded funny, in the way that “The Chipmunk Song” by Alvin and the Chipmunks would when I was a man-of-the-world second-grader in P.S. 86.

I also liked the lyrics to “How High”. This song first came out in 1940, and was a “serious” song, but for the little guy that was me, this version was “up” and aspirational:
“Somewhere there’s music / How faint the tune / Somewhere there’s heaven / How high the moon?”

I learned, however, that life is always one step forward/two steps back. As the Dead sang “…’cause when life looks like easy street, there is danger at your door…”

Still, I hoped that, somewhere, there might be a “heaven”: better things ahead, with music, and laughter, and love, and — dare I say it — FUN!

The mindless movies of the era told me that my teen years would be a hoot. Cars. Girls. Beer on the beach. Life told me otherwise. My teen years were marinated in “uh-oh-the-draft” Viet Nam panic. The sixties exploded, as I nearly did.

I held on tight to the thought that “somewhere there’s music, how faint the tune…” Every week, the Village Voice print ads — and radio spots on WNEW-FM — offered a smorgasbord of music. I feasted as best I could.

The Fillmore. Vanguard, Bottom Line, Sweet Basil, Cookery, Blue Note, Max’s, Cedar Tavern, West Boondocks, Schaefer Festival. (Never made it to Corso on 86th to see Hector Lavoe.)

The music was excellent, plentiful, and affordable. And logistically simple. For the Fillmore, and Schaefer concerts, I’d march down to Cousin’s on Fordham Road, and the clerk would pull a stack of printed tickets held by a thick red rubber-band from a counter drawer and peel off my ducats.

Live music was ubiquitous. It was fun. And it provided the sense of generational community that helped us hold it together during daunting periods of history. I think about those days now when ticket prices for the Stones at MetLife Stadium next spring start at $199 and reach $1,700 (plus fees). That would be $25 to $230 in 1970 dollars. My 1970 CSN&Y tickets were $5.50, no fees.

I am reminded of the New York music scene and its power by today’s edition of Lucian Truscott Newsletter, https://luciantruscott.substack.com/. I urge you to check it out and subscribe. Lucian is the man.

Music is more important than ever, especially in these times of tension. It’s too bad that live performance tix for major artists are so pricey.

The good news is that so much quality music, by uber-talented though lesser-known acts, is available at intimate venues. My 2024 hope is to get out more and thrill to the sound of the snare and bass just before the leader counts down and the fun begins. GOOSEBUMPS!!!

Les Paul and Mary Ford were right: “Somewhere there’s music/How faint the tune/Somewhere there’s heaven/How high the moon” .

The young couple moved into our tired apartment house off Fordham Road one humid Bronx summer, just about the time the twelve-year old me and my friend Larry started worshipping the publicity still of Sophia Loren in “Boy On a Dolphin”.

The husband of this couple was a trim, pleasant-enough guy in the Dick York-as-Darrin-in-“Bewitched” mode. But his wife! THAT WIFE!

Larry and I fell in love with this juicy peach of a person. The woman had fire in her eyes, wore fishnet stockings, high heeled pumps and tight skirts. A beehive hairdo completed her look. We were very confused: what was a woman LIKE THAT doing with a nothing like HIM????

She was our queen. We were two goobers ever-eager to please her. We held the door for her and smiled. We held her groceries as she fumbled for her keys. We looked at each other after she closed her apartment door behind her and widened our eyes. Did you see what she was wearing today??? OH MY GOD!!!

By Thanksgiving we saw her baby bump. The entire building was enthralled. A new neighbor was coming! By Easter the couple was wheeling their baby boy around the neighborhood. Yes, she was now a mommy. But “Darrin’s” wife still was our heartthrob.

By summer there was another baby bump. Then, another kid. Then, another baby bump. Then, another kid. One of the building’s wits said she wasn’t raising a family, she was feeding her litter. By the time I was a freshman in college, there were five or them. Or, was it six? It became hard to keep count, especially since I was distracted by my seventeen-credit course load.

Fast forward to New Year’s Day of my senior year. I hadn’t seen that “new couple” and their brood for what seemed like years. And I was never a fan of this time of the year — “the holidays” — and the pressure to spend extravagantly on over-priced, forced “gaiety”. That year, money was especially tight, since I was saving for my big move out of that west Bronx dump.

There I was, in front of the private house just south of my old apartment building, washing and waxing my very used, Earl Scheib-painted, ’66 VW Karmann-Ghia. I wore a sweatshirt, for the temperature had moderated to the low fifties, and all of the Bronx’s yellow and poop-studded snow had melted. Perfect car washing weather.

I paused to admire my work. There, trudging up the hill from the Jerome Avenue EL train, was the “new couple”. Clearly, they had had a rough night, but…my pre-teen heart-throb was not looking too good. It was like she’d aged fifty years since I’d last seen her. Oh my darling, what has become of you? Can six kids in less than eight years do that to a person? I guess so!

He, “Darrin”, forced a nod of acknowledgement as he passed. She, on the other hand, recognized the college-aged, now-athletic me and gave me a big wide smile. I gave her a big smile and a “happy New Year, guys!” But my heart sank. What happened to my dream girl? Her ravaged teeth, her complexion, her figure — how could this be?

I continued to detail my car and thought about how Larry and I once long ago carried on about our dream girl, in-between furtive glances at Sophia Loren’s poster taped to my friend’s bedroom wall. The promise of the new year and a new apartment stabilized my wobbling interior gyroscope, set off-kilter by the sight of the once-glamorous woman staggering into the building.

I vowed then and there, as I polished the chromed VW hubcaps, that should I be lucky enough to woo a woman like THAT, I would make darn sure that she was treated right, not — as the building’s super later commented — “like a horse ridden hard and put away wet.”

My work that day was finished, and my local drinking establishment — Durty Nellie’s, on Kingsbridge Road — awaited. Life goes on, I learned, as it will two weeks from now, when a new generation of revelers — or, alternatively, car washers — makes stories of their own to tell, and retell.

Wishing you all better things for 2024!