This post is for my friend Stueve, who loves Christmas music and really wants to listen to it in our shared classroom (it’s really his room, but he lets me feel like I have a say, and for that I am grateful).

Well, Stueve, I’m okay with you listening to it starting tomorrow. Maybe you’ll lead off with this one?

I barely have words to describe how this song makes me feel. But I’ll try.

My first year at BYU, I met a boy. I met lots of boys actually, but there was this one…sigh…we connected on so many different levels, and before long, as is my wont, I was fallen pretty hard for him. Sometimes I wonder, if I hadn’t left BYU, and had still been there when he got back from his mission, I wonder…and I have to stop because it makes me too sad.

One night he brought over a VHS tape of Harry Connick, Jr. in concert so we could watch it together. I squealed with delight, as I had been converted to the Gospel of Harry Connick two years prior.

“How did you know I liked him?” I asked.

“I saw the ‘When Harry Met Sally’ Soundtrack in your Walkman and took a guess,” he replied.

So on a fall October night, we watched Harry sing a dozen or so songs, and I was a pretty happy girl. Harry still has that effect on me.

Not much to say today, except that if you don’t like Ella Fitzgerald, I don’t think we can be friends. That’s the extent of my friend test, part 1.

Most people think Mama Cass was the first to sing “Dream A Little Dream of Me.” Nope. For that matter, Ella probably wasn’t, either. But I love her, and I love this song, and I want to wrest away the image of it being a 60s tune.

It’s not.

(p.s. I’m a little cranky tonight. Please forgive my tone.)

Do you know what The Great American Songbook is? (If you clicked on the link, then now you know.) That’s essentially what Throw-Back Thursdays are going to be about.

I’ve been in love with the songs and artists of The Great American Songbook as long as I can remember. But the first cassette I bought that actually contained any of those songs was Harry Connick, Jr.’s album “20.” And while I tend to prefer originals to remakes, Harry is one artist who, in my mind, can do no wrong. Especially when he does something like this to a well-known tune.