Search - Ringo Starr :: Sentimental Journey

Sentimental, The Second Time Around

Deborah S. Bruzzo | 12/10/2009

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Just seeing the cover of this takes me back... Back to 1970 when I was 8 years old and a sad little girl with divorced parents whose attention-seeking behavior led me to choose to play the tuba, smoke cigarettes, write tragic poetry and purchase a gigantic button that said "I LOVE RINGO" - just because I thought no one else did. I wore it all the time. I was already becoming a record collector - but my 45's included The Archie's and the 5th Dimension and LP's being 5 bucks, there was only the Partridge Family and The Monkees. Not a Beatles record in the bunch (I hated the singles played from Let it Be on top 40 radio). But I wore that button and took a lot of ribbing for it - and I suppose I brainwashed myself. So when Ringo released an album I had to have it..

I remember having to ask my mother what "sentimental" meant. And then those songs...I didn't get it and was disappointed but I had to do the Ringo thing so I listened over and over again alone in my finished basement. I'd never heard these songs or this music before. And being the great songs that they are, I soon knew every word to every song and sang them all the time. My father got a kick out of me singing "Bye Bye, Blackbird" and I remember being shocked that he knew the words! I sang "Stardust", "Night and Day",- all of them. "Whispering Grass" is probably still one of my favorite songs. I didn't know from "The Ink Spots".

Today, I am not only a true record collector, but a Juilliard alumn as well. When I stopped teaching I had more time to indulge in the freedom and folly of singing the jazz standards. I know a million of them, but these are the ones I heard first, though until this moment I'd forgotten from whom I learned them. A Beatle gave them to me - its too ironic.

I am now old enough (48) to have a very sentimental response to just the sight this record. Whew! Ringo certainly wasn't a "voice" and those horns & strings were so weird. So what was once something called "sentimental" at an age when I hadn't lived long enough to relate to the term, is now "a new old memory". This is delightful. I thank Ringo for feeding me songs that I only later realized were what are truly and universally known to be "cool". 'Had I written this review in 1970, it would have been titled "Journey Into the Un-cool". I would have found 'em eventually, but Ringo served me these standards and it is good to remember...

Who knew that what was once a bunch of weird and old-fashioned songs to me would be at the heart of my current repertoire, not to mention what made me "cool" among adult jazz musicians when I was too young to know them? I was able to sit in with anyone. Elvis Costello's Almost BlueAlmost Blue gave me country standards, and Ringo gave me jazz standards. Go figure...Its been quite a journey!

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