Play Misty For Me...

[W2DR]

I'm sitting here watching my favorite movie. Play Misty For Me. It's my favorite for two reasons. It was filmed where I grew up, and it's a Clint Eastwood movie. This may ramble a bit but let me try to explain (maybe another glass of wine will help).

 

Way back almost 70 years ago I started to learn to play the piano. My teacher was a guy named Howard. He was a bar-room piano player who couldn't read music. He was married to a woman who was a trained concert pianist. What a pair. My mother would take me for lessons to their house in the Carmel Highlands - that's where many of the scenes in Play Misty For Me were filmed. What a place. They had added a music room onto the original house. 12 foot high windows overlooking the ocean below and two back-to-back Steinway 9-foot grand pianos.

 

Howard always told me it's not important to learn to read the music. What's important is to learn to feel the music. And how right he was. After a couple of years of learning to feel the music I found a song I really liked. Something by Eroll Garner called Play Misty For Me. I loved that song and played it almost every day. Fast forward 11 years.

 

I was going to college a couple of hours north and came home most weekends. Mainly to see the girls from "the old days". Sometime in 1962 I took my date (I still remember the night Debbie) to a place called the Mission Ranch. A great restaurant with an even better piano bar.

 

After that first night there I returned on many Friday nights to sit at the piano bar and listen to an incredible piano player. Her name was Jackie. And I really envied how she improvised almost any song requested. After many nights there she knew that what I wanted to hear most was Play Misty For Me. And she played it every time I walked into the bar.  Over the months we got to talking quite between sets. She knew I played. And one night she stood up to take a break, pointed to keyboard and said "Play Misty For Me". And I did.

 

Who could have imagined then that Clint Eastwood would not only make a movie called Play Misty For Me but would also own the Mission Ranch. And the piano bar where I played the title song from the film.

 

Life is, indeed, good.  And so are the memories.

Edited July 4, 2022 by W2DR
kant spel

[flyingleaf]

Here you go my friend. Lovely song and movie. 

 

[Rodger Pettichord]

Great story, Doug. Thanks for sharing it with us. PS: Me, too, RE movie and Eastwood.

[Ken Q]

I echo Rodge on this one, Doug.  A great story, and makes me nostalgic about a "4th" years ago.

 

But that's another story.

 

Ken

[wolfko]

And here's the song itself.

 

[boetie]

Thank you Doug, a great story. You are blessed

[wain71]

nice memories you have there Doug, I wish I was musical in one way or another but I would probably mess up the symbols.....