Mr. Rogers' Music Was Way More Intricate Than You Remember

this video is brought to you by curiositystream right now when you sign up using the link in the description you'll also get access to nebula where you'll be able to find extended versions of my content including an extended long-form version of this video more about that in just a little bit [Music] mr rogers is probably widely regarded and i'm sure would still hold a title for the purest form of media that has ever been on television [Music] i don't think anybody needs me to explain to them who fred rogers was and what he did [Music] but one thing that i think we all sort of maybe know but goes criminally unnoticed in many cases is just how good the music of that world is it's a beautiful day in this neighborhood a beautiful day for a neighbor would you be mine could you be mine it's a neighbor we're all familiar with the theme song everybody knows the words it's one of the probably the most popular songs ever but it's easy for the intricacies to kind of go unnoticed after all at the beginning of every episode for the entire duration of the show it was the same song so let's make the most of this beautiful day since we're together we might as well say would you be mine could you be mine won't you be my neighbor but what a lot of people may not realize is that it was never the same iteration it's a beautiful day in this neighborhood a beautiful day for a neighbor would you be mine could you be mine whereas most tv shows have always had a pre-recorded intro and a theme song that was recorded once mr rogers set was a little bit different you see right from the beginning fred rogers approached a particular piano player with the offer to work on the show for next to no money would you do it for us he said how much money do you have i said i have for the music budget i have five thousand dollars and he said that's exactly what my son needs for this next year of college i'll do it that pianist was johnny costa [Music] [Music] and that might be a name that not a lot of people recognize we were certainly much more familiar with names like oscar peterson and art tatum wynton kelly thelonious monk bud powell these are all names in jazz that are completely legendary but johnny costa never winds up on those lists but ironically he very well might have had even more reach in terms of having his music heard by an audience day in and day out than all of the others combined oh sweet hoodie where'd it come from well the merch store which is in the description please feel free to check it out if you get a chance i really really appreciate the support johnny costa was put in the very unique position of being the musical director for this new show mr rogers neighborhood you can imagine that the idea of taking on a children's tv program was perhaps a little bit concerning you see johnny costa wanted to play music how he wanted to play music but there's perhaps somewhat of an obvious conflict there when we're talking about the level at which johnny played and the audience which this tv show was created for when i first started to work with fred i mean i was real and i mean a real jazzer you know and and i thought well i don't know joe's program i just wonder can i play the things that i'm i've been playing that i want to play you know and you might think that it's the wrong approach for the audience at which this show was aimed being so young an incredibly unbelievable jazz pianist playing insanely complicated stuff most people would have just said yeah we should probably make it a little more kid-oriented i didn't do it for the years of a child i didn't do it this way i wouldn't do that so i figured well [Music] fred loved it and i think the fact that mr rogers really loved it and didn't have any concerns about playing this type of music for a children's show it says a lot about what the show was and what he believed and you see this replicated in every aspect of the show they weren't afraid to tackle difficult topics they weren't afraid to discuss things with children that they weren't really hearing from other adults fred rogers did not look down upon the ability of a child to appreciate or interpret or or pay attention to extremely complex music and it turned out to be a brilliant decision because it created such a unique atmosphere that we all came to know and love and perhaps another reason that mr rogers was totally fine with having this type of music as the background for the program was because he was actually a really great pianist himself and he wrote the music for the show mr rogers not only recognized just how good a pianist like johnny costa was he thought it was important enough to place in front of the audience mostly made up of very young children because like the topics covered in the show it was important for them to be exposed to such things from an early age it's like why shouldn't a child be able to listen to john coltrane or be able to listen to bach or debbie c and ravel i don't know about you but when i hear some of this stuff like that is optimized for children music made for kids or even worse covers of popular songs made for kids bob oh my god i want to just throw myself out of a window it's so aggravating why can't we just say hey uh here's music check it out maybe you like it maybe you don't but it's real music so let's talk about johnny costa for a minute because as we mentioned before he's a name that doesn't get passed around along with the oscar petersons and the art tatums of the jazz world even though anybody that knows his playing would agree he absolutely deserves a seat at the table what i find incredible about johnny costa is that you can hear all the different influences that he has in fact there's a there's a story that art tatum literally called johnny costa the white tatum but i don't think he was wrong about that you can hear it in his playing it's incredible [Music] one of the things i love about johnny's playing is that while you can hear all these different influences you can hear oscar [Music] you even get components of say george [Music] shearing there's all of these things that that were clearly influences for johnny that he had integrated so fluidly into his playing but at the same time he also had his own voice and his own harmonic and melodic ideas that created some of the most inventive versions of maybe music from mr rogers neighborhood or just jazz standards in general [Music] within the show johnny costa and fred rogers worked together to create some really really incredible things that were based on fairly simple jazz standard harmony but just executed in a way that was just so good oh man it's just it's so beautiful and the melodies and the chord progressions written for these tunes were just they were just great not looking at them as like oh this is a great soundtrack for a kid's show no it was just good music there doesn't need to be a qualifier for that because they believed in a child's ability to appreciate things that are not dumbed down to the level of a child and check this out they would write these little just interlude brief mini songs for specific purposes like check this one out this is incredible i'm angry i'm angry and i can tell you why the reason i am angry is that somebody made me feel very small and all of a sudden i cry i almost lied and said i wasn't scared but i was scared and now i'm angry i'm angry did you ever feel like that what a beautiful just little interlude that didn't have to be that ornately written or or even just even that good but it was because it's just the caliber that mr rogers and johnny costa were as musicians but also mr rogers as the creator of this program thinking no we're gonna write good music for kids like they don't need something that's dumbed down there are so many examples of the just absolutely incredible writing of fred rogers and the execution of that by johnny costa throughout the show i mean there's so much to talk about but really the moral of the story is just that the music of mr rogers was and is absolutely incredible and it was written and executed by two people who were extremely proficient in music and decided that they were going to deliver incredible music to children regardless of age or their ability to understand it but rather simply as an opportunity for a child to hear something they might not hear otherwise and maybe develop a liking for it and i gotta wonder i mean i don't know how much of it i i necessarily paid attention to when i was a kid watching mr rogers but i'm sure that it helped the sound kind of get into my ears in such a way that when i finally discovered jazz properly it was kind of a little bit nostalgic maybe and who knows maybe that had a huge impact on driving me to to go to school to study it and to pursue the music in the way that i have i gotta think that experiencing the show as a very young child must have had some sort of even subliminal impact so i highly highly recommend going to check out johnny costa this guy was just i mean he was from another planet whatever planet that oscar and art tatum and all of those absolute greats beamed down from i'm guessing johnny costa's got to be from the same place because he was absolutely on that level and unfortunately he just never really got the same type of recognition but even still we were left with some of the great music and songs that we kind of all just knew and still know today and before i finish this video i'm gonna go ahead and take a whack at one of these because it's something i haven't done in a while and it's just such a great song before i do that i want to let you know that i'm going to do a significantly longer version going into a lot of the different songs from the mr rogers neighborhood show and i'm going to play through a bunch of them and maybe talk a little bit about their forms over on nebula and that is where i get to post things that just aren't really a great fit for youtube in that they maybe are going to get copyright claimed or they're just too long and this is why a group of creators that i'm absolutely honored to be a part of came together to create our own streaming platform where we can post things that are going to get buried by youtube for one reason or another i can't make a an hour long video and put it on youtube because youtube's gonna go oh but that's not what you normally post nobody wants to see that so nebula is the perfect place for me to be able to do expanded content where i don't have to worry about time limits and i can just talk about music and play music and go through a lot of these things that many of you might find extremely helpful or interesting with no limitations on how we can format it in fact a couple videos ago when we talked about cory henry and snarky puppy i was able to post a nearly hour-long video that supplemented that where i dove into a lot of the details surrounding cory henry's approach to that solo and we're really excited to be partnering with the sponsor of today's video curiosity stream curiosity stream of course is the home to the internet's best documentaries and being a service so focused on education curiosity stream loves educational content and educational content creators which is why we have teamed up so that if you currently use the link in my description to sign up for curiosity stream you're going to also get access to nebula for no additional cost and right now using the link you're going to get 26 off a one-year plan that's 26 off an annual subscription and you get free access to nebula through that we are incredibly grateful to curiositystream for facilitating this bundle to give you guys access to so much great content from so many awesome educational content creators like thomas frank or devin from legaleagle we are all able to create content for nebula without any of the same restrictions that we have here on youtube so i can focus on giving you guys content that i think or i hope is going to be the most helpful for you so once again be sure to check out that link in the description where you can get 26 off an annual subscription to curiosity stream which will also get you nebula for free so you can go check out the extended version of this video where we're going to break down a lot more of the mr rogers neighborhood world music in more detail thank you so much to curiositystream for sponsoring today's video and thank you guys for checking it out it really really helps to support the channel and i appreciate it so much [Music] it's you i like it's not the things you wear it's not the way you do your hair but it's you i like the way you are right now the way down deep inside you it's not the things that hide you not your toys they're just beside you it's you i like [Music] every part of you your skin your eyes your feelings whether old or new i hope that you'll remember even when you're feeling blue it's you i like it's you yourself it's you [Music] it's you i like [Music] you

Channel: Charles Cornell

Views: 623,229

Keywords: Charles, Charles Cornell, Charles Cornell Studios, Studios, Cornell, Piano, Piano Covers, Piano guy, beautiful, day, neighborhood, a beautiful day in the neighborhood, johnny costa, costa, fred, rogers, mr rogers, mr rogers neighborhood, mr rogers' neighborhood, mr rogers music, music of mr rogers, mr rogers jazz, mr rogers piano, mr rogers playing piano, mr rogers jazz tutorial, jazz lesson, jazz theory, music theory

Id: Z40SZ77CHK0

Length: 17min 45sec (1065 seconds)

Published: Fri Sep 11 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/Storm_Raider_007]

I just finished this video. Sometimes it's the small things that you take for granted, that are actually so complex, intricate and so much time and thought put into it. It takes someone else to point it out to you to really appreciate it for what it is.

[u/remainhappy]

Now I know the name, thank you!

[u/stevigino]

So cool, and also soothing.