Plog Number 393
Hey Little Glow Worm
Hello Ploggers, how are you. Hoping you are well. Many of us are hanging on with gritted😠 teeth. Just like that cat 🐱from the Seventies poster who clung to a clotheslines with the line “Hang in there until Friday”. The difference being, for us Friday is four years away. But back in the present, this is still February, and that means Black History Month and have I got a black history moment for you guys? Lets get into it.
I am taking piano🎹 lessons for more than a year now. I truly love playing and I love my teacher. We have great talks, and since I am an adult we can actually talk about anything. He told me that literally “no one” ever picks the song I chose. The song is called The Glow Worm and it has a varied history, as songs often do. It started out is a 1902 adaptation from the German Operetta Lysistrata. Later it was recorded by Spike Jones, the City Slickers and the Mills Brothers in the 1940’s and 50’s. Since the song was new to me, and in lead sheet form I was intrigued. I did a You Tube search and found a super cute version of the song by the Mills Brothers. Then I started thinking about it.
I remember my parents talking about the Mills Brothers a little bit. My parents are long gone from this life. So things that they held dear are automatically dear to be. So since nobody else ever chooses the Mills Brothers Glow Worm song, I chose it. I am mastering it and paying homage to the four black men who made the song their own. I am sure that the Mills Brothers had a hard way to go back in their day, trying to make it big in Show business. In my research I learned that the guys were from Piqua, Ohio. Their musical genre was Jazz🎷 and Blues. Over their career they recorded over 2,000 songs, selling over fifty million copies of their albums and accomplished three dozen🏆 gold records. Famous artists like Louis🎺 Armstrong, Bing Cosby and Billie Holiday were all influenced by the Mills Brothers. In 1998 they were inducted into the Vocal Group Hall of Fame.
It wasn’t always easy for them. They faced significant challenges such as racial segregation, censorship, bias in the recording industry, legal battles and personal sacrifices for the sake of their careers. It had to have been hard for them with the country being openly racist and de jure segregated, but with a yen for smooth, black, jazz🎼 vocals. What was a country to do? I imagine the Mills Brothers utilized the “Greenbook” rules of performance etiquette. Where they could perform and where they could lodge were two completely different places. So my hat is off in salute👍 to the Mills Brothers. They did their thing. They were cute. Their four part harmony was out of this world like "Butta" Baby. My only question was why they chose to sing a song about a “Glow Worm”. Another question is what it means to “Glimmer, Glimmer”. RECLAIM!
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