Love song: "If I Had My Way" - with a twist

Today's my birthday, and on Twitter I wisecracked to @MeredithGould "Yes. I am Queen of Everything today, and enjoying it. Step aside."

I happen to be on a plane to Las Vegas, with my wife - we both have conferences next week - and the queen reference made me remember a wonderful song sung by some great barbershop quartets: "If I Had My Way." Lyrics (from sing365.com):

I'd like to make your golden dreams come true, dear,
If I only had my way.
A paradise this world would seem to you, dear,
If only I had my way.

If I had my way, dear, forever there'd be
A garden of roses for you and for me,
A thousand and one things, dear, I would do,
Just for you, just for you, just for you.

If I had my way, we would never grow old,
And sunshine I'd bring every day,
You would reign all alone,
like a queen on a throne,
If I had my way.

Well, what a difference music and performance add to the words. Listen to this - a hallway pickup rendition at barbershop's Harmony College Northeast, 2009. It's a trademark song of world champion quartet "Gotcha!", which was the resident supergroup at this "HCNE." Part of the barbershop tradition is singing with strangers in the hobby, and this time a girl named Christina took the tenor part. Her dad - my chorus director - turned on his flipcam halfway through. Listen:



He says she'd just learned the song the night before. Both her parents direct championship-level choruses, so I suppose she has an unfair advantage.

But that's barbershop, folks, and that's why I love it. The incredible chords (note - it sounds like it's been Autotuned, but that's real and live - it takes skill), the often-emotional arrangements, and the incredible willingness of champion quartets to sing with you.

A Singing Valentine from a barbershop quartet

This is a commercial for one of the things that makes me happiest in life: singing barbershop harmony!

As this blog's "About me" page says, I sing in a men's barbershop harmony chorus, the Nashua Granite Statesmen. Most people don't know that there are barbershop choruses, but most do know about barbershop quartets. And indeed, as the photo shows, I'm in one, named "Route 5." It's loads of fun - there's a ton of tradition around this style of music - but the most fun is every February 14, when we hire ourselves out in quartets to do Singing Valentines, as a fundraiser.

The photo shows us with one of our "victims" - the head of the English department at a local high school. We ambushed her in front of a department meeting, claiming that our name is The Dangling Participles, and sang her a love song. A yearbook staffer was there, so next spring we'll be in print. How cool is that?

Next year you can order a Singing Valentine quartet (male or female) by going to www.SingingValentines.com. Or, if you're in the Nashua NH area, just contact me - next year I'm the local chairman. (Better yet, order now - why wait for the rush? :-)

If you're impatient, though, you're in luck - my chorus's annual show, with a superb women's barbershop chorus, is Saturday April 5. The featured quartet is named Rounders - we're flying them in from Fort Lauderdale, because they're good: they placed 8th in the world at last summer's championship. Here they are singing the Irving Berlin classic "They Say It's Wonderful":

11/27/08: Oops, that video was apparently not legal, because now it says "no longer available." YouTube took down a bunch of popular barbershop recordings earlier this year because they didn't have royalty arrangements. Well, the melody is gone but the snapshot lingers on....


As it happens, my chorus is currently recording that same song (a different arrangement) for our next CD, which will be out this fall - all Irving Berlin songs (Midnight Choo Choo, I Love a Piano, How Deep is the Ocean, and many more). When it's available for sale, you'll know it. :) But you can hear a preview, and much more singing, in Nashua NH on April 5. Tix: info -at- granitestatesmen.org (or me).