Creativity and Imitation

I ‘ve been looking for Mary Well’s version of Ferry Cross the Mersey. for some years now.  But with no luck and so I wrote yesterday to her biographer who suggested it may have been Mary Wilson.  Either way, it was by far the best version I remember of the original’s era.

I have trouble finding a lot of great music that came across years ago, like Dolly Parton's early, early TV appearance singing I will always love you.  What's interesting is that while that performance was head and shoulders above any other rendition of her song, touching and almost amateurish in simplicity, I also remember being shown an unedited tape of another group of her later works and the finished product and the editing in that case took her from anyone-could-sing-this to this-is-really-good.  

Another is Michael Martin Murphey, for here called Michael Martin, performing a slowed down version of his Close to My Heart for a Ralph Lauren video.  And it seems that the commercial producers know to use the slow paced, rare and alt versions of songs, that they are more wonderful.  I've noticed it with Frank Sinatra and Maurice Chevalier commercials.

Also can't find any aural traces of the Greek singer's pre-Yesterday song that sounded like Yesterday by Paul McCarthy.  She was popular in England and had radio play, I believe.  Nothing new, Pachelbel was so proud of his cannon but sounded like me to be a variation of an earlier violin chaconne by another composer.  None of this takes away from McCartney or Pachelbel, but either their thinking on creativity or their perception of the public's thinking on what creativity is caused denial.  Contrast this to Bach whose Goldberg Variations had the same ground that Handel used earlier for his variations, probably to show he was the better composer.  It was best put by Philip Glass (? I'd have to check) that we composers take the music we've heard in our childhood (and I would add, heard later also) and just play it a little wrongly.  Everything is a variation.  

And reading Charles Schulz's bio now, I see that he so strongly denied that any of his cartoon ideas came anywhere but from his head (except for one cartoon).  A motif of his I loved was when, in strip after strip, Linus would run through backyards and over fences until it became absurd and catch a baseball.  The earlier Bugs Bunny did the same, even taking a cab.  Or most ridiculously, but for money reasons, Disney Corp. said that none of the many cartoonists or writers of their Lion King ever heard of Kimba the White Lion, though it was on TV each week for a good stretch when they were growing up.

We make small variations, but creativity and imitation are intertwined.  Oversimplifying, all music is in love with those three rock chords, other musics just make the journey between the chords more complex and interesting.  

I think my son may have summed it up best.  I told him that if I simplify my cartoons, they have the round heads of Peanuts' characters and I wanted to make mine different.  He said, "Dad, all cartoons have round heads."