Music Saturday - What A Lucky Man

I had decided, after one last post in late March, to discontinue Music Mondays.  What began as a weekly feature to share some good musical memories had become a weekly obituary column.

But, after hearing of the death of keyboardist Keith Emerson yesterday, I knew I had to continue the feature.

Emerson founded the group Emerson, Lake and Palmer. He was a pioneer instrumental (no pun intended) in the adaptation of the Moog synthesizer into rock/progressive music.  The Moog was developed in part by Bob Moog, who graduated from my high school the year I was born.  The Moog was further developed in Trumansburg, New York, a little more than an hour where I live. (If you are interested in the history of the Moog, this lecture has a lot of interesting information.)

Normally, my Saturday feature is a Local Saturday, and you can't get much more local (for me) than that.

Today, for a few minutes, I want to go back into my late teenage years in New York City.

I occasionally baby-sat for a family with three children during those years.  The father had a tremendous collection of records (yes, I'm dating myself). One of them was an album by Emerson, Lake and Palmer.

I was immediately (as we said in those days) blown away.

This, Fanfare for the Common Man, was not original to the group, but what a cover it was!

Perhaps my favorite of their songs was Lucky Man.  Enjoy the Moog solo at the end.

And here, Keith Emerson explains the Moog.

How sad that we are learning that Emerson's death may have been suicide, a result of him developing a disorder that would have increasingly made it difficult to play his beloved keyboard.

Once again, we mourn the loss of a musical great.  Maybe calling him a "lucky man" may not be totally appropriate, but we were all lucky to have experienced what he had to offer.