Carla Thomas - Sugar late 60s-early 70s Stax recordings from the rhythm and blues sensation collected for the first time on CD
Yma Sumac - The Sun Virgin a collection of exotic lounge music from the Inca Princess on my favorite music label, Living Era
New Seekers - I'd LIke To Teach The World To Sing a re-issue of the 1973 album featuring the title tune and their hit cover of Melanie's The Nickel Song
The Editors - B Sides and Rarities 5 excellent songs on one extended play that tops the British band's full-length players in quality and listenability
When I got home, I immediately played I'd LIke to Teach the World to Sing. Memories came to the fore as I remembered how I sang this song at my Bar Mitzvah. A Bar Mitzvah is a Jewish rite of passage in which a boy becomes a man. My family, being Long Island Jews, threw a huge party. Anyone who was anyone was there: the Goldbergs, the Goldsteins, the Goldschmidts, the other Goldbergs.
My Bar Mitzvah was the first place I sang in public. Not only did I have to sing the Haftorah (a Hebrew rite of passage prayer) during the Saturday morning temple service but I also practiced for weeks so I could sing I'd Like to Teach The World To Sing with the band at the Saturday evening party. Saturday morning finally arrived and I was so nervous that, in temple, I sang my Haftorah to the tune of I'd Like to Teach The World To Sing.
But, Saturday night I got a standing ovation when, in a blue velvet tuxedo, I sang I'd Like to Teach The World To Sing in Mishnaic Hebrew with a disco beat provided by the Bar Mitzvah band.
So that's how this Jew became a man - by teaching the world to sing. Though judging from what's been going on lately I'm not so sure I'd like to do that again.
And now check out the real thing:
Yea. It all started as a commercial and turned into a pop phenom:
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