Nows and Forevers

For nearly 30 years, I’ve begun the year listening to Artie Shaw’s version of “Begin the Beguine.” I know it’s odd, but you could do worse than begin 2023 by listening to Artie Shaw.

I didn’t expect to start my year with this song. It just sort of happened, one of those funny little traditions that you start with yourself but you don’t really know why and you don’t make a big deal about it. I would doubt that anyone I’ve lived with since 1995 would have any idea I did that. It’s just something that I like to do for myself.

And it’s not an expression of luck, like eating pork and sauerkraut on New Year’s Day or throwing salt over your shoulder. God knows, “Begin the Beguine” have started both good and bad years. I can’t even say why I did this.

I just did.

I can say how I discovered the song and the music of Artie Shaw: In my late grandfather’s record collection when I was visiting my aunt in Newton, Massachusetts, in the summer of 1994. My grandmother had died a few months before and my aunt was cleaning out things that hadn’t been sifted through since my grandfather had died in 1976. My grandmother, who wasn’t very sentimental, didn’t want to give up any trace of her husband in the 18 years that she lived past him. The family respected that.

My aunt asked me if I wanted to go through Grandpa’s records. She was going to send them to Goodwill.

So I went down into the basement, and looked.

There were about two dozen records from the 1940s through the 1960s: Burl Ives, Roger Miller, Ray Conniff, Lawrence Welk, and other albums. This was early in the reign of the CD and even though I stopped buying albums years before, I still had a record player. We all did. I spotted a compilation of big band music that had a few songs and artists that I recognized and more I didn’t.

One I recognized the songwriter (Cole Porter) but not the song or the performer, Artie Shaw and his Orchestra. I picked that one up, one of the only ones I did take.

I drove home and broke out the record, placed it on the turntable and began to play. I was instantly hooked by “Begin the Beguine.”

My other grandparents had introduced me to big band music, what they had grown up to in the 1930s and 1940s, and I went from humoring them to actually liking it a lot. That was mostly Glenn Miller and Benny Goodman and Tommy Dorsey. I hadn’t heard about Artie Shaw, who grew up decades earlier where I had (New Haven, Connecticut) and who, in 1994, was still active as a musician and one of the few people from that era to still be alive.

And I loved the song.

I don’t know why I began 1995 by listening to “Begin the Beguine.” Maybe it’s in the title. There are no lyrics in Shaw’s version which came out in the summer of 1938 and quickly became his signature song. Apparently to his chagrin after a while. It was a long time before I listened to the lyrics on other versions. I still go back to Artie Shaw’s version.

I couldn’t say much about the lyrics at the time, although reading them over on the web right now, it hits a lot harder than I would have expected. It’s about wanting a second chance with a lover you had taken for granted before:

What moments divine, what rapture serene,
Till clouds came along to disperse the joys we had tasted,
And now when I hear people curse the chance that was wasted,
I know but too well what they mean;

I also know too well what they mean. But that’s another story. And one that can never be. I wasted my chance.

So in 2023, I began the year like I have with all the others since 1995. But this year, it had more meaning than I expected.