I Haven't Forgotten This Blog, and Happy Birthday, Anne Murray!

No, I didn't get sick and die from you-know-what! I was waiting for baseball to get underway to have a new Opening Day for this blog. But it hasn't happened and may not happen this year. So I will try to write again starting now. Plus, I'm spending a lot of the time I would have been spending on this blog doing some household projects. I've thrown away a lot of stuff lately. Some days there was so much that the trash can I was using began to split apart. A big package came from Wal Mart today. Someone surprised me with a new trash can! I can't wait to get started on tonight's project in about 45 minutes so I can put it to good use!

I missed so many singer birthdays. Paul Davis on April 21 (and I had salvaged something from my only other attempt at writing a blog to post about him), Glen Campbell (I watched his documentary "I'll Be Me" that day to celebrate), Barbra Streisand on April 24, Tommy James on April 29, Tommy Roe on May 9, songwriter Burt Bacharach on May 12, Stevie Wonder and Ritchie Valens on May 13, Bob Dylan on May 24 (he may not be as interesting to me as Tommy James, but he is certainly worth writing about), John Fogerty (Creedence Clearwater Revival) on May 28, and Paul McCartney on June 18. And there may have been others that have slipped my mind for now. I will try to catch up with them in the following weeks with belated birthday posts.

Today, June 20, is Anne Murray's 75th birthday. She has been retired from performing for more than a decade, and I'm not sure she's still recording. She lives in her native Canada, in Toronto. I've thought about doing a post with pictures of street signs that make me think of songs, performers, and sports figures or events. Here's one to honor today's special occasion:

The first song I ever heard by her was "Snowbird", which is still one of my favorite songs by her. I think that the first time I ever heard it was on the morning of Monday, July 27, 1970 (an important date in my life because that night, I saw Neil Diamond in concert for the first time), played by Harv Moore, the morning disc jockey on WPGC in Washington, DC. Here it is:

Over the next few years, she had hits with two songs originally recorded by Loggins and Messina:

"Danny's Song":

And "A Love Song":

She remade a Beatles song, "You Won't See Me", which I read somewhere John Lennon thought was one of the best versions of one of the group's song he had ever heard:

And she remade a Monkees song, "Daydream Believer" (too bad she didn't think to also record their other "Believer" song, because she never did a song written by Neil Diamond):

I could go on posting more of my favorites, but this should be enough for now.