I had planned on doing Johnny’s take on “Stand By Me” this year for my wife, but as our anniversary approached and I just couldn’t bring myself to practice as I needed to for it, I ended up doing What A Wonderful instead. I was already familiar with it, new it was pretty simple, and hoped that it would lift my spirits some, whereas I felt Stand By Me would have just frustrated me due to not having time to get it to a point I’d be happy enough with it to record it.
I wish I would have had time to do more with What A Wonderful World as well, but, at the same time, was really hesitant to do anything with it at all due to the song being so perfect just as Louie Armstrong recorded it.
That said, please do offer any feedback you have regarding the embellishments or improv I added into it. Sometimes I wonder if I’m serving the song well by doing that, particularly when it’s such an iconic and beautiful song that needs to be appreciated for what it is. Feedback good or bad. Just make it constructive.
I write the narrated monologues for the beginning of them so they will hopefully serve as kind of a time capsule 40 or 50 years from now. I’m making them where my wife, or our future kids, grandkids, etc. can watch it and get an idea of what was going on in our life at the time.
Thanks so much for taking the time to check it out y’all. Really need to be practicing more, but it did come out okay considering how much time I put into learning the song.
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