CKNW Editorial
for August 14, 2000

I love lists. The ten best whatever it may be --- golfers, movies, places to eat and so on. They are meaningless except for one thing … they’re all controversial.

Recently there was a list of the 10 best songs of all time and I must confess I was utterly unfamiliar with most of them … I might recognize some without knowing their name but while the lists’ proponents will no doubt claim that I’m an old fogie, I don’t see how you can list the ten best songs without letting other generations make their nominations. So I propose that when the final great list is made, as we inch closer to the new millennium which starts on January 1, 2001, some consideration be given to the following.

Here are mine in no particular order.

Beautiful Dreamer by the wonderful 19^th century song writer Stephen Foster … the man who wrote about the Southern States without ever having lived there.

White Christmas by Irving Berlin, the Bing Crosby version. This has made it into the hearts of all who celebrate Christmas. (It was close here with The Christmas Song by Mel Torme as sung by Nat King Cole but I thought one Christmas song is enough and Berlin must get the nod.)

Stardust by Hoagy Carmichael and for the vocal it’s Bing Crosby again, for the instrumental Artie Shaw. I can’t believe that any list would miss this one.

I’ll Be Seeing You – this great wartime classic has two great contenders as vocalist – I pick Jo Stafford by a whisker over Frank Sinatra if only because Sinatra was such a jerk.

Dream a Little Dream of Me sung my Mamma Cass Elliot of the Mommas and the Poppas – easily in the top ten if only because of the way the tragic Momma Cass sung it.

Old Friends, by ABBA. This amazing group made Rock palatable to all generations and this song is so haunting that I defy anyone to hear it without flipping back to hear it again.

Skylark, another Hoagy Carmichael and though there are several nice versions the haunting muted trumpet of Harry James introducing Helen Forrest is by far the best. This is probably my all-time favourite …

Mona Lisa, by Nat King Cole. Although I vastly prefer Cole in his Trio days no list of songs could be without him, commercial or not, and this one sounds as good today as it did 50 years ago. Indeed Nat sounds as good in all things he did even though he’s been gone for 35 years.

Moonlight Serenade – there are vocal renditions of this but the Glenn Miller instrumental is the classic. Ballroom dancing has been described as the vertical expression of a horizontal desire and so this song was when played, for so many, as the home waltz.

My Happiness – Ella Fitzgerald made this famous and she hated the song because she generally hated ballads. Connie Francis also did a version but if you can get a copy of Ella’s version – and it can be found on her 75^th birthday collection – it’s a dandy.

If I could add an honourable mention it might be Mario Lanza’s The Loveliest Night of the Year.

What I found so interesting about compiling the foregoing is that I’m sure I could easily have run it to 50 or 100 … perhaps even much higher … without being able to really pick ten favourites. In any event, there you have the ten plus a bonus that first came to my mind when I thought of the ten best songs of all time.