Mark Pentleton

We’re into the final few songs in my 365 collection and today I’ve decided to play this classic song from 1940. The piano part to the song is notoriously difficult to play, so I ended up doing a few takes of this and decided to do a full backing track with strings, kit and bass. [...]

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Written by Sammy Cahn and Jule Styne in 1945, Let it snow! (or to give it its proper title, Let it snow! Let it snow! Let it snow!) was first recorded by Vaughn Monroe and has subsequently been covered by many artists. The version I’m most familiar with is Dean Martin’s, but among the trivia [...]

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Given that most of the UK (with the exception of the southwest corner of Scotland where we live!) is still covered in snow, I thought I’d play White Christmas. There are probably many people at the moment who are far from dreaming of a White Christmas, but the scenes on the news each day look [...]

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As I’m at the Scottish Learning Festival today and tomorrow I was planning ahead a bit yesterday and recorded Autumn Leaves in advance of today. Looking out the window this morning I think September in the Rain may have made more sense… Autumn Leaves, or rather the French original Les Feuilles Mortes dates from 1945. [...]

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On its release in 1945, Sentimental Journey became a homecoming song for many veterans of WWII. First recorded by Doris Day, it was covered by many artists, including Ella Fitzgerald and Ringo Starr. I hope you enjoy today’s song.
Podcast: Download (Duration: 5:32 — 7.7MB)

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Sorry this is late – not just late in the day, but a day late! For the first time this year I completely forgot about publishing my song! Over the past week I’ve been working in France and the daily songs were preloaded and publishing automatically, so my song for Sunday completely slipped my mind. [...]

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A lovely romantic song today, first recorded in 1946 by Nat King Cole. Since then it has been covered by many different artists including Ella Fitzgerald, Dean Martin and in 1986 by Linda Ronstadt.
Podcast: Download (Duration: 6:23 — 8.8MB)

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And we’re over the hill! Today is the start of the second half of the year and my 365 songs project, so I’m on the way down! I chose today’s song from the 1940 musical Pal Joey by Rogers and Hart where it was performed by Gene Kelly and Leila Ernst. I first heard this [...]

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Today’s song is a bit late – sorry! I’ve had another really busy day in a school all day (working with a great bunch of five and six year-olds making video stories, soon to appear on the Radio Lingua Schools website) and then at a Parent Council meeting tonight, so I’ve not had much of [...]

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Here’s a nice easy song for a Sunday morning (not that one… I’ll need to remember to include Easy on a Sunday morning at some point!). Bewtiched, bothered and bewildered is from the 1940 Rodgers and Hart musical Pal Joey. It was always a favourite when I used to play on Sunday afternoons down in [...]

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Wales yesterday and Mexico today… Bésame mucho was written in 1940 by Mexican songwriter Consuelo Velázquez. For those of you who like singing along to my performances, here are the lyrics with a translation below. It somehow sounds so much better in Spanish, especially with that imperfect subjunctive in the second line!
Bésame, bésame mucho,
Como si [...]

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It’s day 50 on 365songs and  today’s performance is the classic 1942 song As time goes by from the film Casablanca. It was actually first written in 1931 and featured in the musical Everybody’s Welcome, but was made famous when it was performed by Sam  in Casablanca. This song was actually named as #2 in [...]

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Today’s song is the Duke Ellington classic Don’t Get Around Much Anymore. The last time I played this song was around 1am in the bar at the Crowne Plaza in Glasgow following the first day of the Scottish Learning Festival and I was joined by Derek Robertson from LTS who sang the song to the [...]

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I’m in London today for an Apple meeting at Hannover St so I wanted to play something appropriate. With yesterday’s snow I wasn’t even sure I’d get here, but one cancelled flight, one late flight, one late train which broke down and another train later I finally arrived last night.
According to Google Maps I’m a [...]

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