I just woke up with this idea — all because I had a song running through my brain.  At first it was to give my own imaginary award for the Top 3 Inspirational songs or pieces of music of my own life.

It rapidly expanded to the following:  Here they are by category.

TOP 3 CLASSICAL
1. Third Symphony, Symphony of Sorrowful Songs by Henryk Górecki

Górecki said of this, “Perhaps people find something they need in this piece of music […] somehow I hit the right note, something they were missing. Something somewhere had been lost to them. I feel that I instinctively knew what they needed.”

Why this first?  Because with it, I was inspired to fall in love with my wife.  An easy pick.

2. Le Sacre du Printemps (The Rite of Spring) by Igor Stravinsky

Composer and conductor Leonard Bernstein said of one passage, “That page is sixty years old, but it’s never been topped for sophisticated handling of primitive rhythms…”, and of the work as a whole, “…it’s also got the best dissonances anyone ever thought up, and the best asymmetries and polytonalities and polyrhythms and whatever else you care to name.”

I agree.  This piece of music, more than any other in my life, changed the way I conceived music.  It took the endeavor, for me, completely out of the technical and placed it smack dab in the middle of the drama of the subject, in this case nature.

3. Adagio For Strings by Samuel Barber

In January 1938 Barber sent the piece to Arturo Toscanini. The conductor returned the score without comment, and Barber was annoyed and avoided the conductor. Subsequently Toscanini sent word through a friend that he was planning to perform the piece and had returned it simply because he had already memorized it.

At a time of deep grieving, so deep that I was immobilized beyond action of any kind, I lay on my living room floor and listened to this piece over and over and over again for three days.  It enabled me to finally get up again and face life.  I was the music; the music was me.

TOP 3 ROCK
1. Rock Around The Clock – Bill Haley and the Comets

“Rock Around the Clock” is a 12-bar-blues-based song from 1952, written by Max C. Freedman and James E. Myers (the latter under the pseudonym “Jimmy De Knight”).   Although it was probably not the first rock and roll record, nor was it the first successful record of the genre, it is considered by many to be the song that put rock and roll on the map in America and around the world.

In 1955, when “Rock Around the Clock” was used under the opening credits of the film Blackboard Jungle, I was there sitting in the Osage Theater on a Friday night in Kirkwood, Missouri.  We’d never heard rock n’ roll music (our music) played in a movie.  When it came on at the beginning of the movie everyone in the movie theater (90% kids) immediately got up and started dancing in their seats and in the aisles.  It was so wild and untamed, they had to start the movie all over again and it all happened again.  I’ll never forget the moment.  It was a root moment in my love of music.

2. What’d I Say – Ray Charles

The song was improvised one evening late in 1958 when Ray Charles, his orchestra, and backup singers had played their entire set list at a show and still had time left; the response from multiple audiences was so enthusiastic that Charles announced to his producer that he was going to record it. It earned Ray Charles his first gold record and has been influential on many legendary musical acts that followed him in rock and roll. It was ranked at #10 in Rolling Stone’s 500 Greatest Songs of All Time.

I grew up a drummer.  It was the song I most loved to play along with.  Later, it was always my band’s closer.  It never failed to rock the house.

3. A Day In The Life – The Beatles / John Lennon & Paul McCartney

The orchestral part was recorded on 10 February 1967, with McCartney and producer George Martin conducting a 40-piece orchestra. The recording session was completed at a total cost of £367 for the players, an extravagance at the time. Martin later described explaining his improvised score to the puzzled orchestra:

“What I did there was to write … the lowest possible note for each of the instruments in the orchestra. At the end of the twenty-four bars, I wrote the highest note…near a chord of E major. Then I put a squiggly line right through the twenty-four bars, with reference points to tell them roughly what note they should have reached during each bar … Of course, they all looked at me as though I were completely mad.”

This song blew us all away.  It was the Beatles at their best – poetic, fascinatingly obtuse,  creative far beyond their time, and totally capturing the times and cultures of the age.  It broke the molds, but remained tough and commercial all at the same time – a perfect example of the genius of the Beatles.

Runners Up: “Hey Ya!” – OutKast,  “Roll Over Beethoven” – Chuck Berry,  “You Can’t Always Get What You Want” – The Rolling Stones

TOP 3 FOLK
1. If I Had My Way – Peter, Paul and Mary / The Reverend Gary Davis

Reverend Gary Davis, also Blind Gary Davis, (April 30, 1896 – May 5, 1972) was a blues and gospel singer and guitarist.  The folk revival of the 1960s re-invigorated Davis’ career, culminating in a performance at the Newport Folk Festival and the recording by Peter, Paul and Mary of “Samson and Delilah”, also known as “If I Had My Way”, originally a Blind Willie Johnson recording that Davis had popularized.

“What”, you’re probably thinking, “not If I Had A Hammer?”  No, for me, If I Had My Way was the song, feel and energy that I couldn’t get out of my head, out of my bones.  In my folkie days, if we opened with If I Had A Hammer, we closed with If I Had My Way.

2. The Times They are A-Changin’ – Bob Dylan

Dylan recalled writing the song as a deliberate attempt to create an anthem of change for the moment. In 1985, he said, ”This was definitely a song with a purpose. It was influenced of course by the Irish and Scottish ballads ‘Come All Ye Bold Highway Men’, ‘Come All Ye Tender Hearted Maidens’. I wanted to write a big song, with short concise verses that piled up on each other in a hypnotic way. The civil rights movement and the folk music movement were pretty close for a while and allied together at that time.”

For me, this is a song that has never stopped being relevant to present time.  Its melody is classic and its words simply the words of one of the great poets of our time.  Still, after all these years, every time I hear it, I’m thrilled by its majesty.

3. Tie – A Case Of You and Both Sides Now – Joni Mitchell

Mitchell wrote and recorded A Case of You in 1971, during her early folk period. The song was first released on the 1971 album Blue. Some Mitchell biographers believe that the song was inspired by her love affair with Leonard Cohen.  It is also believed that it was her formal goodbye to her partner Graham Nash.

Judy Collins made the first commercially released recording of Both Sides Now in 1968 (shortly after Mitchell wrote it); Collins’s version reached #8 on the U.S. pop singles charts and won a 1968 Grammy Award for Best Folk Performance.

I loved the song (Both Sides Now) when Judy first sang it.  It was an instant classic, but where it really killed me was many years later when Joni re-recorded it on an album of the same name released in 2000. It is a concept album that traces the progress of the modern relationship through Mitchell’s orchestral renditions of classic jazz songs. Two of Mitchell’s own songs are also included, “A Case of You” and “Both Sides Now”. The orchestra was arranged and conducted by Vince Mendoza.

Again I lay on my living room floor, closed my eyes and fell deeply in love with Ms Mitchell and her two incredible songs.  I mention Vince Mendoza (above) because his arrangement of Both Sides Now on this later CD is simply one of the best things I’ve ever heard and Joni’s depth of soul and wisdom of age performance is astonishing.  One of my all time favorite pieces of music of any genre.  As for A Case Of You, well, it’s just a great great (that’s 2 ‘greats”) lyric and a hellava love song.

So there you have it.  Please keep in mind that these are not necessarily my favorite songs of these genres, but the most inspirational, although many of them fit both categories.

Tomorrow we’ll take a look at Top 3 Pop, R&B, Gospel and Broadway.