As a fan of a wide variety of popular (and not-so-popular) music from the 1950s (and sometimes even earlier) up through the present, one of my bucket list projects for years has been to put together a list of my 100 favorite songs of all time. At some point I decided that, once I got around to figuring that out, I could put it out on a blog, for the infinitesimally small proportion of the Internet world that might be interested. So, here we are. While the Top 100 will be a major focus, I also plan to post on a variety of other musical (and occasionally non-musical) topics, in which you may or may not be interested. (If a particular posting doesn’t ring your bell, you’re only a few clicks away from a dancing cat video on YouTube.)

Wednesday, November 15, 2017

#163 Stranger On The Shore – Mr. Acker Bilk (1962)


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7jzx664u5DA
 
That clarinet! Those strings!!!
 
I still miss the serendipity of going into a record store, browsing leisurely through the bins, and coming up with something I never expected to find. Sometime during the spring of 1974, when I was in DC for American University’s Washington Semester program, I was downtown in one of the local stores (Serenade?), found the album to which this is the title track, and promptly plunked down my 10 bucks (or whatever). The rest of the album is just OK, but this one is still a standout.
 
Unfortunately, Mr. Bilk apparently re-recorded this song several times, and when I decided I wanted a digital version I bought the wrong version at least twice before finding the original.
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