I think John Prine has the perfect voice for a baby listening to his first songs. Who else is good?
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BooMan
Martin Longman a contributing editor at the Washington Monthly. He is also the founder of Booman Tribune and Progress Pond. He has a degree in philosophy from Western Michigan University.
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I thought I heard Iris Dement in the other room…who, by the way, I also adore.
Wow
Pete Seeger. You’ve got to start the little one off right.
Greg Brown
Good one!
I love that.
Can’t find a video of the song, but the song is magical. Lyrics here, and my favorite passage:
doc watson.
hazel dickens.
mr. rogers.
frank sinatra.
but especially doc watson and fred rogers.
Heh. Did you hear me saying earlier this week that it’s time to go some bluegrass festivals again?
Good choices. I would add Cat Stevens.
Strength in Numbers is good too.
How about a little upbeat Ralph Stanley? Might want to wait a few years for O Death, though.
there’s always PP&M’s classic, puff the magic dragon
also nancy griffith
I’ve been in a bit of a Luther mood lately…
Completely OT, but I thought I would remind Booman of what his Steelers did last year;
Oops,
Booman is a Giants fan. My bad.
I wonder who were the bigger losers this year … the Giants or the Steelers.
nalbar
My kids liked
Raffi when they were little tykes.
What, no Nine Inch Nails?
CBtE is already on that…
Johnathan Byrd
Johnny Cash
Flatt and Scruggs
Roy Acuff
Seth Austen
Bonnie Phipps
Antonio Carlos Jobim
Mozart
Wynton Marsalis
BeauSoleil
Joan Baez
Herbie Mann
Dave Brubeck Quartet
Duke Ellington
Karen Dreyfuss
Pablo Casals
Paula Robison and Elliot Fisk
The Delaware Water Gap
Jerry Reed Smith and Tom Fellenbaum
Ken Perlman, Harry Sapoznik, Robert Carlin, Andy Cahan, and Dana Loomis
Mayer Hawthorne
Bobbie McGee
Joe Glazer
John Handcox
Woody Guthrie
Sweet Honey and the Rock
Anoushka Shankar
The Chieftains
Frankie Yankovic
Nonesuch (World Music Label)
Putamayo (World Music Label)
Folkways (Folk Music Label)
Burl Ives
Sorry, I got carried away. We’re expecting our fifth grandkid in April.
http://www.thebostonchannel.com/video/22277500/index.html
and results here: http://www.boston.com/news/special/politics/2010/senate/results.html
We lost. We’re only winning with 68% in Somerville, and that’s more or less San Francisco. It also happens to be Capuano’s home town.
Coakley has conceded … ugh!!
I don’t get why we are discussing this on a night like this. But hey
Because, what’s to say? You want to focus on the negative waves?
Astral Weeks by Van Morrison is perfect for a baby. That whole album has one foot in this world and one in the dreamtime where your baby just came from.
Woody Guthrie.
Our family loved this one (Woody’s kid songs, sung by his family) http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/arloguthrie10
KamaKid really liked Punk…Nothing like swinging in the swing, listening to the Sex Pistols, at volume 11…
She never got into punk in later life, now she’s into J-Rock, but boy she sure loved loud, hard music as a babe. You just never know. :>)
She loved the Dead Kennedys…how ironic:
its 4:45 am and you made my day.
Of course the best Prine line is “I’ve got rug burns on my elbow, she’s got em on her knees” from I’m going steady with Iron Ore Betty (from my days in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula)
I think Dylan was right.
It takes a master lyricist to know one.
Nice cover from a dude on his bed.
May not be exactly baby music. or maybe it is
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TYRltmpwGIA
The best guitar lead ever. Period.
And a lesson about love any man needs to know
baby is listening right now. god bless roy buchanan.
My kids are adults now, but they both love music and seemed to like a lot of the things we listened to (and danced to and jumped around to) together.
You can’t go wrong with Raffi. Kids just naturally want to sing and dance along with his tunes.
Sweet Honey and the Rock
Woody Guthrie
Tom Paxton
Pete Seeger
Peter Paul and Mary
Leadbelly
Donovan
The Beatles
Tom Petty
Cat Stevens
Rosalie Sorrels
Tom Chapin
Songs like “The Lion Sleeps Tonight” and “The Monster Mash” and classics like “The Itsy-Bitsy Spider” and “You Are My Sunshine” and “All the Pretty Little Horses” which we sang together.
Classical:
Shorter Beethoven and Mozart pieces
A Night on Bald Mountain – Mussorgsky
Peter and the Wolf – Prokofiev
Rodeo; Billy the Kid; El Salon Mexico – Copland
Parts of The Nutcracker – Tchaikovsky
Selections from Fancy Free; Candide – Bernstein
Carnival of Animals – Saint-Saens
New Orleans style jazz
My daughter particularly liked “silly” songs. She had one record that she played over and over again with songs like “On Top of Spaghetti.” One of the songs was “What Do You Do With a Drunken Sailor?” Don’t ask. At any rate, to my great surprise and a little bit of consternation, that was the song she chose to sing on her first day at pre-school. They let me keep her.
Sorry to go on so long but I’m waxing nostalgic and obviously in need of grandchildren.
Brings back many happy memories of late nights, accordions, and old tugboat captains from when my older children were small…don’t ask. 😉
for me, it was lots of bolero-style music en español – anything by Trio Los Panchos, Los Tres Ases, Los Dandys, etc.
Here’s Eydie Gorme singing Sabor a Mí with Trio Los Panchos, one of my all-time favorite songs:
Does that mean “my flavor” or “my likes” or what?
it doesn’t really translate well to English… more like “essence” ? it’s about sharing so deeply with another person that a part of you will always remain with each other
no wonder I didn’t quite get the gist of it. Sounds really great.
Don’t depend on canned music, Boo. Break out the golden pipes, and sing a lullaby. I did that a lot. Now, I happen to have an excellent voice, but that does not matter. For a baby of your child’s age, the parent singing is a comforting thing.
Sing yourself. Your momma sang to you, and your daddy did as well. You should sing to your child. Get your wife to sing too.
The rule in my house: Anyone can sing at any time. ANYONE.
I am APPALLED that I am the first to suggest Mommy and Daddy singing. What are we, a nation of music consumers? SING TO YOUR KID YOURSELF!!
I do that…and FWIW, our family lullaby is Joni Mitchell’s Circle Game. My older boys still refer to it as the ‘dragonfly song’, though. 🙂
and most of them are quite familiar to many persons.
I wonder if there are “lullaby karaoke” CDs out there. There should be.
I did not mean that no one sings. Many persons sing. No one on this thread SUGGESTED singing, however.
That is kind of funny.
sing along to the music on the stereo.
One of my earliest memories is of hearing Nat King Cole on the radio. Always loved hearing that voice as a child. Also loved Sam Cooke.