Amidst the chill of a world seeming to spiral ever deeper into an abyss, with spring making its usual valiant effort to overcome the darkness, could we maybe help it with an exquisite extra dollop of light?
In the words of a certain ex-president: “Yes, we can!”
So we will, in this uncustomarily short (!!) blog post I will soon turn over to the Swiss street cellist who bills himself as “Jodoc Cello” (real surname, “Vuill”).
A few notes in, he is joined by an unknown violinist seemingly strolling by and inspired to create an ad hoc duo. (Though I suspect—and am not at all bothered by—the young woman making the song request and the violinist are both part of the performance that Mr. Cello put together with the loving attention he does to his 1.11 million You Tube followers (of which I am likely the most recent).
For the quick record: “I Can’t Help Falling in Love” was written by American songwriters Hugo Peretti, Luigi Creatore, and George David Weiss in 1961 and made famous by Elvis Presley for his album, “Blue Hawaii.”
Its gorgeous melody is based on “Plaisir d’amour” (“Pleasure of Love”), a popular French love song composed in 1784 by Jean-Paul-Égide Martini. (Which was in turn taken from a poem by Jean-Pierre Claris de Florian, the poem having appeared in his story, “Célestine.” Demonstrating once again the endless interplay between all art forms, the benefits of “borrowing” from one to the other, and the open-ended possibility that just like spring, everything old and worthy can become new again, if we persist in patience and resolve…)
There have been covers galore, “I Can’t Help Falling in Love” being the irresistible force of beautiful music with a love theme that it is. But leave it to a cello and the sonorous, wordless voice its master gives it in the rare treatment we get here, where sheer loveliness holds the line against all that would impinge on its truth.
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Greek singer and later UNICEF spokesperson and politician Nana Maskouri, still alive at age 90, mines the melody of the 1784 predecessor here…
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Just in case you’d like to drop Mr. Cello a line of appreciation, you can reach him here: jodok.cello@gmail.com
For a list of all songs in this series, most recent first, see https://andrewhidas.com/?s=brilliant+cover+songs
Comments, questions, attaboys or arguments, suggestions for future posts, songs, poems? Scroll on down below, and/or on Facebook, where you can Follow my public posts and find regular 1-minute snippets of wisdom and other musings from the world’s great thinkers and artists, accompanied always by lovely photography. https://www.facebook.com/andrew.hidas/
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After the staggering events of these first months of Trump’s second presidency, I need all the comfort I can get, and my new best friend Jodoc has delivered. Thank you!
Haha, glad to help, Deanna. It’s good to have best friends in high creative places!
Artists borrowing from other artists is a compliment to the original. Elvis’s “Now or Never” borrowed more than a little from popular Neapolitan song “O Sole Mio”; the melodies are identical twins. Rudyard Kipling’s “If” and Polonius’s advice to his son Laertes in Hamlet are first cousins. Edouard Manet’s famous canvas “Déjeuner sur l’herbe” drew heavily from a not so well-known Renaissance print. I’ll close with three personal notes: Thanks for including the cello rendition of “I Can’t Help Falling in Love”; one of my father’s favorite songs was Nana Maskouri’s “Plaisir d’amour”; for all us baby boomers “I Can’t Help Falling in Love” is gold. All others are silver or bronze.
Knew next to nothing about Nana M. before now, so pretty enthused about pursuing some more listening. Meanwhile, the instances of creative “borrowing” you cite are just more grist for my favorite quote about that phenomenon from T.S. Eliot, which you’re no-doubt familiar with and I’ve cited here before (though its always worth revisiting): “Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal…”
Less often cited is the tail-end of that compound sentence: “bad poets deface what they take, and good poets make it into something better, or at least something different.” I think it applies to all the arts, really, and has helped me more than once in trying to liven up a given piece of text.
Definitely be here now music. Thanks for introducing two artists I knew nothing about and their tie to a timeless melody:)