This one works for me. Grusin’s Mountain Dance. I think if I awoke to this song everyday, each morning would be a pleasure. It’s playing just now on the bookshop’s radio.

We all like different things, of course. Otherwise, there’d be just one song and we’d listen to it over and over. And we’d love it. We’d love it so much we wouldn’t need any other song. If we all liked the same things, we’d like the same book and would never have to read another – that’s how much we’d love that favorite one. We’d just read it until the pages fell out (or the Kindle went dead).

Naturally, I don’t expect everyone to have the same feelings about the music of Dave Grusin, but I know you know him – one way or another. If his name is unfamiliar, maybe his music isn’t. He won an Oscar for his musical score for the film The Milagro Beanfield War. He was nominated for his music for The Fabulous Baker Boys, The Firm, On Golden Pond, and others. His original song, “It Might Be You” for the Dustin Hoffman film Tootsie was nominated for an Academy Award. There was a TV show called St. Elsewhere that had a really catchy theme song. Dave Grusin was responsible for that one too.

There are nearly a dozen other movies that have his music as the soundtrack.

Mountain Dance – for me – is just a great, uplifting song; it’s one that has memories associated with it. Just hearing it reminds me of morning drive on 92.9 and that era when they let me run down to the music store and pick out songs to play during my shift.

It may be presumptuous to offer it here, but – should you feel curious – you can click HERE to give Mountain Dance a listen.

I was like a kid in a candy store. The Rippingtons. David Benoit (it was his music on those Charlie Brown animated TV specials, another feel-gooder…). Chet Atkins. Yellowjackets. Pat Metheny. Bob James. Some people called it Weather Channel jazz back then. It was never background music for me, though. I can play ol’ Dave front and center.

Those days are long gone, I assure you. Not just my time on that radio station, but the days when deejays could select their own music. It always had to fit in with the format, of course – but at that time Dave Grusin’s Mountain Dance fit – just fine.

You shouldn’t think that I sit around pining for those Good Old Days. Nah. I don’t have a lot of time for things like that. But those things that strike a genuine chord – like White Divinity (that’s another hardwired associated memory, but another story entirely) – there is no way to avoid the brain-splash.

And it’s nice when the sudden reflection evokes good memories.

Don’t have Dave, but there are scores and sheet music – along with some biographies – over in the music section…

Come visit!

McHuston

Booksellers & Irish Bistro
Rose District
122 South Main, Broken Arrow OK
918-252-3301