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I am a great fan of the TED website, (http://www.ted.com/). TED is an annual gathering of smart people, like Al Gore and Bill Gates who give talks to each other about all the very cool things they are doing, each of which will change the world for the better. It’s a mystery to me why we are not all living in paradise already, with all these smart people doing their thing.

Yesterday I watched this video of 2009 TED Prize winner, José Antonio Abreu, the founder of the Foundation for the National Network of Youth and Children Orchestras of Venezuela AKA “El Sistema.” Abreau explains (in Spanish with English subtitles) his philosophy of music education and makes his TED wish, a wish granted by the good faeries of the TED organization, that the goals and methods of El Sistema would be adopted by more countries around the world.

I would like to see music education, not to mention art education, theater education, dance, creative writing and other neglected pursuits, given a much higher profile in U.S. public schools, so I’m posting Abreau’s video here. If we stop beating up our kids with mind numbing drills and worksheets aimed at preparing them for useless high stakes testing, we will have the time money and interest to give them and education again. Incidentally, if Argentina can do this, don’t tell me that we can’t afford it in the U.S.

Carol Moxley, who writes the blog Bass-ically Speaking turned me on to a book on music theory that is available in a free, downloadable and printable (if you want to use a whole ream of paper) PDF, Basic Music Theory by Jonathat Harnum. The e-book is pretty comprehensive, starting with a tutorial on the history of music notation. It’s an easy read, however and you can skip the parts you don’t need, if you don’t need them.

Just for fun, and to keep the vidoes going, here are Larry Simms and Janet Burston in the 1941 film Blondie Goes Latin, singing We Hate Music Lessons. Music lessons are your friend. What they really hate is practicing. One thing that Harnum recommends in his e-book is that your always play and never practice. This includes doing your scales and arpeggios, though. It’s about attitude. I wish I had learned that when I was 9.

Larry Simms had a long career as a child actor, playing the part of Alexander (Baby Dumpling) Bumstead in 29 Blondie movies. He was also in It’s A Wonderful Life and Mr. Smith Goes To Washington with Jimmy Stewart. After appearing in Blondie Goes Latin, Janet Burston replace Darla Hood as Alfalfa’s love interest for the last season or two of Our Gang, AKA The Little Rascals. She also appeared in twenty some movies as a child actor.

The song El Paso had such an effect on country music and on Marty Robbins’ career that it is practically a genre of music all by itself. Robbins wrote the song in 1957 and recorded it as part of his 1959 album Gunfighter Ballads and Trail Songs, which also included Bob Nolan’s Cool Water (originally recorded by The Sons of the Pioneers), several traditional cowboy songs and three other Marty Robbins originals. At 4:45, El Paso was considered too long for radio airplay by the executives at Columbia Records, so an edited version was included as the B side of the single. This is one of the very few times that a song was released as it’s own B side. By January of 1960 the long version of El Paso was the number one song on both the country and pop charts.

Robbins wrote two sequels to El Paso. One, Faleena filled in the story of the evil heroine of El Paso, her hard life and her death by suicide after the shooting of the narrator/hero of El Paso. The other, El Paso City was a fantasy about a character flying over the city of El Paso in an airliner and having a past life regression/daydream about being that character in the original song.

Marty Robbins lived a short but eventful life. In addition to a successful career as a country singer and songwriter, he began driving in NASCAR races in the mid 1960s. In 1969 he underwent a, then experimental, triple cardiac bypass operation. One website went so far as to claim that he was the worlds first triple bypass patient. Robbins continued to perform until his death in 1982 following a second, this time quadruple, bypass operation. He was only 57 years old.

This piece of film was made some time in 1960. I believe it may be from a film made that year called Country Music Jamboree. It may have also been included in the 1967 documentary The Road to Nashville.

Later in life Robbins had lost the baby fat and the comfortable boy next door look, in favor of fancy spangle suits, lots of hair and a kind of in your face performance style. He kept the little 3/4 size guitar, however. Here is a performance of the same song from some time in the 1970s.