"They'll say we made life here in Virginia..."

 

 ".....and we owe the commonwealth a thing or two. But if anyone here owes anyone here, Virginia should be owin' me and you!"

 ~Shenandoah 

 

    Have you ever discovered a musical or a movie, or even a book, and wondered "Where has this been all my life?!" Well, I have. Numerous times. The most recent being my discovery of the old musical Shenandoah. Is there any end to these classic old musicals? :-)

  It all started when I went to an audition and heard a man sing an excerpt from the "Meditation" from the musical Shenandoah. I had never heard of the musical at the time, but his performance amused me. A farm in Virginia? People being called traitors? Soldiers in a long gray line? Yes, ma'am! :-)

 

 

  So anyway, that was that. I thought to myself, well, that must be a nice old musical. I'd really like to learn more about it sometime. But I didn't look into it at all until I found this music book at the library with vocal selections from the musical. I opened the cover, and lo and behold, there was Holling from Northern Exposure. I nearly screamed. Which would not have been good at all, since I was in a library, and screaming in libraries is frowned upon in most societies.

 

Isn't it delightfully vintage? I'm nearly drooling.

 

   Well, I looked through the book with profound interest and discovered that the musical is right down my canyon. A musical about a family in Virginia during the Civil War with a Christian message? What could be better? I grinned broadly and decided to take the book. Er, that is, borrow it for a very long time. Whenever I get a piano book out from the library, I tend to keep it until I absolutely cannot renew it anymore and it has a bounty on its head and the librarians can scarcely remember that the library even owns it. Because they don't anymore. I do. Ahem. Anyway, my sister and I had an absolute BALL the other night playing the songs and singing as loud as we could (without even realizing that the windows were open and in all likelihood everyone on the street could hear us). The music is beautiful, people. We haven't played all the songs yet, and unfortunately YouTube doesn't have very much of this musical at all so I still don't know much of the music or the general storyline. But for sure I want to learn more about Shenandoah.

 

   One of Sadie's and my favorites so far is the 'Meditation'. Here's a video of John Cullum singing it on the original cast recording. I really had no idea Holling John Cullum could sing like this! He's really, really good.

 

 

 

  And here's a couple really old little commercials for the musical. The first one's great, the other two are....kinda weird. But you have to remember, it is from '75. ;-P

 



 

Have you ever heard of the musical Shenandoah?

What are some of your favorite songs from it?