Van Morrison – Northern Ireland – Born August 31, 1945
So last night as I was looking through old posts from Me, Myself, Music and Mysteries I kept seeing old morning music posts.When I first started blogging those posts were a staple of my blog. They were often just videos of musicians that I like, sometimes it was connected to the musicians birthday, while other times it was connected to a day in music or the artists birthday. When I looked down the list of jazz musicians who share birthdays today I saw Van Morrison’s name and thought that today would be a good day to re-introduce morning music!! The jukebox in my head immediately began to play Morrison’s “Tupelo Honey”. So I decided to make that today’s morning music! It could have been “Brown-Eyed Girl” for my brown-eyed girl, but hey “Tupelo Honey” works, too!
So Happy 70th Birthday Van Morrison and for those of you who may not be familiar with his music, you should be. Here’s some background from Wikipedia……
Sir George Ivan Morrison, OBE[1] (born 31 August 1945) is a Northern Irish singer, songwriter and musician. He has received six Grammy Awards, the 1994 Brit Award for Outstanding Contribution to Music, and has been inducted into both the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and the Songwriters Hall of Fame. In 2015 he was knighted for his services to popular music.
Known as “Van the Man” to his fans, Morrison started his professional career when, as a teenager in the late 1950s, he played a variety of instruments including guitar, harmonica, keyboards and saxophone for various Irish showbands covering the popular hits of the day. He rose to prominence in the mid-1960s as the lead singer of the Northern Irish R&B band Them, with whom he recorded the garage band classic “Gloria”. His solo career began under the pop-hit oriented guidance of Bert Berns with the release of the hit single “Brown Eyed Girl” in 1967. After Berns’ death, Warner Bros. Records bought out his contract and allowed him three sessions to record Astral Weeks in 1968.[2] Even though this album would gradually garner high praise, it was initially a poor seller; however, the next one, Moondance, established Morrison as a major artist,[3] and throughout the 1970s he built on his reputation with a series of critically acclaimed albums and live performances. Morrison continues to record and tour, producing albums and live performances that sell well and are generally warmly received, sometimes collaborating with other artists, such as Georgie Fame and the Chieftains. In 2008 he performed Astral Weeks live for the first time since 1968. Read More
Links for the Exploration of the Music of Van Morrison
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Here’s a video of the song and again Happy Birtday Van Morrison!!
