For words alone are certain good:
Sing, then, for this is also sooth.

(William Butler Yeats)

The written word is first; always will be. Not belittling the music, but it really is a backdrop. To convey the meaning of a song, you need to look at the lyric and understand.

(Francis Albert Sinatra)

Francis Albert Sinatra

The poet's name has eighteen letters, while the saloon singer's name has twenty letters. In-between is nineteen, the favorite number of another magical person, Bob Longhi, who taught me so much about life also applicable to music.

Kinda tying all this together, Bob may well have been descended from Venetian painter, Pietro Longhi, named in a Yeats poem, including Bob and Pietro having similar very distinctive eyebrows.

the Venetian lady
Who had seemed to glide to some intrigue in her red shoes,
Her domino, her panniered skirt copied from Longhi

Bob especially enjoyed playing Francis Albert Sinatra albums on Christmas Day.

- Michael Robinson, December 2022, Los Angeles

© 2022 Michael Robinson All rights reserved

Michael Robinson is a Los Angeles-based composer, programmer, jazz pianist and musicologist. His 198 albums include 151 albums for meruvina and 47 albums of piano improvisations. Robinson has been a lecturer at UCLA, Bard College and California State University Long Beach and Dominguez Hills.