For November 18, 2015 it is time to do the daily outgoing phone message. Scrolling down the list of events and birthdays, here it is the historic birthday of Johnny Mercer, and music is a good avenue to pursue.

A list of song titles will furnish one victim for a potentially excruciating pun, so the site selected is of a total song listing. Here on page one is a title which will do just fine, "Accentuate The Positive", and it's the one on the service today. Still and all, it's so gauche to grab the first one seen so at least it's time to look a little more and therefore try the adoring brother of the first method, going to the last page.

From radio show announcers and one of my research-accomplished band directors it is known a lot of well-known show titles comes from obscure, often equaling failed, shows. Then there is a song from the impressive accomplishment of reaching 34 pages: "The Yogi Who Lost His Will Power". It led me to look up a video of Orrin Tucker and his orchestra performing it about 1941, which is from the film "You're The One".

It's a production number, to little surprise, and a sumptuous to be sure. But is it exotic? For 1941, it is quite predictable. Did I think I was going to suss out a prelude to the album "Plastic Ono Band" and its anguish over exposed gurus? No, a Yogi is a man who thinks and thinks, seldom has time for forty winks----and is always from Rangoon. Considering the stories right now in 2015, on campus and out in the world graduates have to navigate, not surprising for 1941.

Our man abandons his high-satori course for the hand of a princess, to complete the easy summation.


Yes, there are the dancing ladies, the perennial go-to quasi-eastern drum rhythm, oboe obbligato's (double and triple, we reed players have long been advised), and turbans. No turbines, but plenty of hot air. And that has to be Jerry Colonna as the eye-rolling Yogi. Affirmative. The bed of nails is mentioned, Jerry throws a switch and the spikes come up. But of course there will be no further laying down on the job.

Oh, I like it, with reservations, to use a term by the Legion Of Decency for their A-IV rating. Today marks the 1978 anniversary of the Jonestown massacre, and for many years anything associated with ashrams, eastern philosophy and other lumped in phenomena was what was wrong with the world. Never mind the overthrow of Mossadegh 14 years after the film and 23 before Mr. Jones, don't dare mention the misogyny of a favored free thinker and/or sports figure, never mind many atrocities----it was those damned cults!

Oh, where was I? That question is asked about the Yogi near the end of the song that after he proposed to the princess----and dad----and seemed to disappear. At the end of the song Mr. Colonna, and yes he charms a prop snake along the way, "climbs" a rope. Yes, it seems too often we are up a trope.