3SP: Plum Puzzled

Can you musically connect Tin Pan Alley (New York City) to Montreux, Switzerland to the San Fernando Valley in California? How about connecting piano and big band to heavy metal to art rock?

Here’s my answer:
In 1933 pianist Peter DeRose published a composition called Deep Purple. He worked in Tin Pan Alley and broadcast on NBC. It became a popular big band hit for Paul Whiteman. Lyricist Mitchell Parrish [also lyricist on Star Dust, Stars Fell on Alabama, Moonlight Serenade, and many others] added lyrics in 1938:

When the deep purple falls over sleepy garden walls
And the stars begin to twinkle in the sky—
In the mist of a memory you wander back to me
Breathing my name with a sigh…

The song was recorded by several artists over the years. The version I know best was by brother-and-sister act Nino Tempo & April Stevens in 1963.

The song [I don't know which version] was a favorite of the grandmother of guitarist Ritchie Blackmore. After she kept asking if his band would play the song he named his band Deep Purple. One of that band’s biggest hits is Smoke on the Water. The lyrics in that song refer to a fire that burned down a casino in Montreux during a concert by Frank Zappa and the Mothers. [Someone in the audience fired a flair gun at the ceiling!] Deep Purple was in Montreux at the time for a recording session on Machine Head, their best-selling album.

Frank Zappa was an eclectic artist that wrote rock, jazz, electronic, and orchestral music. One of his best-known songs [about which, he apparently was not happy] is Valley Girl. In that song his daughter, Moon Unit, provided “Valspeak” from California’s San Fernando Valley and made the slang more popular and wide-spread than ever.

Uncontested

Here are the No Contest answers. [Does that make them non-answers?] In context they all make perfect sense [to me].

In An Hour Away from Ridin’ on Your Prayers Up in the Sky I wrote about traveling between my homes in central Florida and Louisville. The line comes from Back Home Again by John Denver.

In I’d study elephant and eagle, buffalo and beagle, alligator, guinea pig, and flea! I wrote about the onomatopoetic Bzzzpeak. The line is from Talk to the Animals which I know from Dr. Doolittle, but is performed here by Roger Moore and the Muppets

In Ah, but Who Would Want to Listen to You, Kissing his Existence Good Night I ranted about jaywalkers encountered on my morning commute. The line is from Walking Man by James Taylor.

In The Doctor Say He’s Comin’, but You Gotta Pay Him Cash I joked, slowly, about getting new ceiling tiles in my classroom. The line is from Life in the Fast Lane by Eagles.

In As They Struggle with the Undertaking of Simple Thought I coined the words idiopathy and idiopathetic in my rant over stupidity during exams week. The line is from You’re With Stupid by Aimee Mann. [I LOVE her!]

In The Vagueness in Your Eyes I gave the most obvious of references. The line is from the song Insensitive by Jann Arden which was in that post.

Lest you think this post is just bragging about my cleverness, I have to say it’s really more about explaining my obtuseness. Sometimes even I don’t get me. But really, it’s because I had nothing else that I could post this week.

No Contest

For months I have had a post rattling around in my head. Apparently, it is not yet ready to be posted because it remains half-formed, un-typed, not yet transferred from cerebral-space to cyber-space. But I know what I plan to use for the title if when I finally write it:

The Morning Sun, When it’s In Your Face.

[Sometimes a title comes to me like this along with the bones of the post. Sometimes I start to write with no idea what the title will be but one becomes obvious as I write. Rarely do I struggle to find a title for a post that I think is already done otherwise. But good, bad, or indifferent, I never post without a title. Not that it matters to anyone but me.]

These words, “The Morning Sun, When it’s In Your Face,” are from a song [Maggie May]. Certain lines fill my head with pictures. This is one. And even though that post resists being written it got me on a kick of using lines from songs as post titles. I’ve done so before, of course, but I don’t think I have ever done so many so close to each other — six times this month.

If I didn’t think my readership is too small and my references too obscure I would make it a contest to identify the songs from which I have pulled those lines. [I would even put a hint somewhere as to which six posts have those titles.] But, while I have never thrown a party that no one attended, I have posted questions that no one answered. [Wow, I just had the most incredible feeling of deja-vu typing that line!] I would even offer an i-Tunes gift card as a prize. Or something.

All Wet

For no particular reason, I’ve been making a list:

bay
bayou
bog
brook
canal
cape
cataract
creek
drip
drizzle
drop
estuary
falls
flood
inlet
lagoon
lake
mist
ocean
pool
puddle
rain
rapids
rill
river
rivulet
sea
shower
sound
spray
sprinkle
straight
stream
swamp
tide
water
waterspout
waterfall
wet

Noam More

Playing with words is cheap entertainment. [And, trust me, I'm cheap ...but not easy!.] After observing the similar phoneme pattern of /j/ vowel /n/ in many names, I began to wonder if there are any two consonants that form common English words if you place any vowel sound in between them?

I don’t know whether someone has to think of these things, but if so, you’re welcome. I’ll take the hit for the team. More likely, it’s just that my brain tends to wander in weird directions. After exhaustive research mulling and doodling, I came up with two pairs of consonants that are fairly… um promiscuous. /b/ vowel /t/ and /m/ vowel /t/ make a remarkable [well, I'm remarking on it, anyway] number of words.

bat
bait
bet
beat
bit
bite
bot
boat
boot
but
butte

mat
mate
met
meet
mitt
mite
mot
moat
moot
mutt
mute

Remember my Noam

After noticing the similarities in the sounds of certain names, I began to wonder if there are any two consonants that form common English words if you place any vowel sound in between them?

I’ll Smile When I Call You This

Back here I said:

Here’s another puzzle. The last one was really difficult. I don’t think this one is. I could be wrong — maybe I just don’t explain it well….

There are two letters that form names when they sandwich seven different vowel sounds: long A, short A, long E, short E, long O, short O, and double OO. [Again, those are the sounds, not necessarily the spelling.]

Who are all these people?

Maybe I didn’t explain it well…

The two letters are J and N which gives us Jane, Jan, Jean, Jen, Joan, John, and June.

Smile When You Call Me That

Here’s another puzzle. The last one was really difficult. I don’t think this one is. I could be wrong — maybe I just don’t explain it well….

There are two letters that form names when they sandwich seven different vowel sounds: long A, short A, long E, short E, long O, short O, and double OO. [Again, those are the sounds, not necessarily the spelling.]

Who are all these people?

Letter Perfect Answer

Without knowing the story behind this puzzle, I think it is pretty difficult. So I’ll explain.

To review — I said these letters share a unique characteristic:

c
g
q
w
y

Any guesses?

The explanation: During a word game [Scrabble maybe -- not that it matters really] someone played a word like “ess” [although it easily could have been any of several others besides ess -- again, not that it matters]. “Ess” may refer to anything that is shaped liked the letter S but it also refers to the actual letter S and to the way the letter S is pronounced. One of my nephews objected that spelling the pronunciation of the letter S using the letter S is the same as using a word in the definition of itself [which we have all been taught not to do].

While I understand his point, it got me thinking that most letters are used in spelling how to pronounce themselves. In fact, there are several letters I can’t think of any way not to use the letter in pronouncing itself. [Can you think how to describe the pronunciation of "B," for example, without using "B" in pronouncing it? We only get the "B" sound with a "B"....] So I decided to look them all up. [Using a different authority might provide slightly different results, but I rather doubt it.]

I used the Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary just because that’s the one I use most often. According to that source, these are the only five letters for which spelling the pronunciation does not include the letter itself:

c = ˈsē
g = ˈjē
q = ˈkyü
w = ˈdə-bəl-(ˌ)yü, ˈdə-bə-; ˈdəb-(ˌ)yü, -yə; ˈdəb-yē
y = ˈwī

Letter Perfect

These letters share a unique characteristic:

c
g
q
w
y

Any guesses?