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Please critique. Fresh ink.


When I Count My Blessings

When I count my blessings,
I name them one by one.
I find I’ve slipped off to sleep
Long before they’re done.
I’ve always cause for thankfulness,
Come cloudy skies, or blue.
When I count my blessings,
I count you.

When I count my blessings,
I find there’s always more.
They gather ‘round my table,
They crowd in through the door.
Riches wrap each moment
With more than is my due.
When I count my blessings,
I count you.

Spring time brings bright blossoms,
Summer—cool, green shade.
Autumn dons her golden gown,
When harvest has been laid.
Winter shivers holly,
And snowflakes pure and white.
Any season I’m with you
Is lovely in my sight.

When I count my blessings,
I name them one by one.
I find I’ve slipped off to sleep
Long before they’re done.
I’ve always cause for thankfulness,
Come cloudy skies, or blue.
When I count my blessings,
I count you.
When I count my blessings,
I count you
When I count my many blessings,
I count you.

c2005 Skip Johnson

Note: I wrote this for my wife, Judi. I just finished setting it to music during some slow office hours over at the church this afternoon. Kind of an easy jazz feel to it with quite a few diminished 7ths, major 7ths, 9th, minor 9ths, minor 7ths, ect. (26 different chords total, which is quite a few for so short a piece.)

Bing Crosby had a somewhat similar hook/title in a song he recorded back in 1954 for the White Christmas production, which was nominated for an academy award. When Judi pointed that out to me, I looked up the lyrics, and will post them below for comparison's sake. Maybe I can find the Irving Berlin music, and see how he set it, too.


I Count My Blessings

When I'm worried and I can't sleep,
I count my blessings instead of sheep--
And I fall asleep counting my blessings.

When my bankroll is getting small,
I think of when I had none at all--
And I fall asleep counting my blessings.

I think about a nursery and I picture curly heads,
And one by one I count them as they slumber in their beds.

If you're worried and you can't sleep,
Just count your blessings instead of sheep--
And you'll fall asleep counting your blessings.

I think about a nursery and I picture curly heads,
And one by one I count them as they slumber in their beds.

If you're worried and you can't sleep,
Just count your blessings instead of sheep--
And you'll fall asleep counting your blessings.

Looks like Crosby's lyric is an AABABA format. Mine is AABAtag. End line rhymes differ too. Still, there are some similarities in themes. I think my "I count you" has a bit more punch in the payoff. Overall, "When I Count My Blessings" is a bit more complex of a lyric. Which, of course, doesn't make it any better necessarily.



[This message has been edited by Skip Johnson (edited 12-27-2005).]

Very interesting to compare. Thanks for posting the Bing Crosby song. It is fun to note that even though I remember well the verses I never even knew what he said in the bridge. Did he really sing the nursery and curly heads part? Wonder why I never hear that part. It even played on the radio the other day and I sang along...well, not the bridge part, obviously!

vanessa

Vanessa,

I find I've been playing this quite a lot since I've written it. Its a fairly simple piece lyrically, and easy to sing. But the jazz sound results from 25 separate chords.

The Bing Crosby piece was part of the White Christmas movie, which also featured that classic title song. I recall the scene where "When I Count My Blessings" was sung. Bing sang it to one of the two performing ladies who had teamed up with he and his partner to put on a major musical on behalf of a general whose hotel ballroom was about to go under.

The lady was fearful for how things would go, and Bing sang her this number. I seem to recall the bit about the curly heads. Both guys married both girls before the end of the piece--so the domestic touch was fitting.

After the first "date on our own" in college, when I took Judi down to Fisherman's Wharf in San Fransisco to Ghirradelli Square for chocolate and to see the street performers and puppet show, I wrote her a piece called, "I'm Hugging My Pillow (And Wishing That It Was You)". I wrote it because that's what I found myself doing. Later I found a group called the Ink Spots had recorded a song by exactly the same title back when my mother was a girl.

Thanks for taking a look.

Skip

Howdy Skip

was wondering if slipped off into a dream, would be more romantic, as slipping off to sleep could have negative connotations???

here's some poetry along the same lines to ponder

Let Me Count The Ways

Elizabeth Barrett Browning

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
For the ends of Being and ideal Grace.
I love thee to the level of every day's
Most quiet need, by sun and candlelight.
I love thee freely, as men strive for Right;
I love thee purely, as they turn from Praise.
I love thee with a passion put to use
In my old griefs, and with my childhood's faith.
I love thee with a love I seemed to lose
With my lost saints, -- I love thee with the breath,
Smiles, tears, of all my life! -- and, if God choose,
I shall but love thee better after death.


Shall I compare thee to a summers day
Sonnet 18
William Shakespeare

Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate.
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer's lease hath all too short a date.
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimmed;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance, or nature's changing course untrimmed.
But thy eternal summer shall not fade
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow'st;
Nor shall death brag thou wand'rest in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou grow'st,
So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

Sweet Joyce,

When I was in high school, my younger sister asked my father what love was. The first Elizabeth Barret Browning piece you quote here was what he gave her to read to understand the concept. He was an English teacher in a girls' reform school. Literature was part of his way of seeing the world, and he passed on that love to all of us through reading aloud in a home where we had no T.V.

I'll consider that shift in the line you noted.

Skip