My Life in Music: Day 3

children's choir, seated. In the front are three white guys in suits, playing a banjo and guitar.

Music can move us

I was given the task by a friend of choosing 10 songs that greatly influenced me. I will post one song per day, for 10 consecutive days. Each song draws the picture more clearly, showing what has inspired me or just given me solace.


“Move Over” (from “Through Children’s Eyes,” The Limelighters). I grew up in the 50s and early 60s. Before there was rock and roll, before there was an explosion of tightly produced music that you listened to, there was folk music. You sang along with folk music.

The entire album was led by the Limelighters, a popular folk music trio, but behind them was the children’s choir — mischievous, restless, prone to disruption, and staying quiet only after they were shushed numerous times. But it’s a marvelous live album.

It’s full of the crazy songs that kids like — some of them downright nonsensical, some of them just fun to sing, and maybe to imagine doing as a skit.

But this song is the one that epitomizes the album for me. And the meaning of folk songs. And why we do things like sing and have fun — because these things are done with each other.

We are more alike than we are different. Let’s build bigger tables so everyone can join.

The theme is beginning to take shape here.

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