Time to Face the Juggling Music ( #BOTB Results )

  Sitting on the edge of your seat, the music starts to play.  Let the juggling begin!  Or at least the blogging. Let the blogging about juggling begin! Yay!...

Battle of the Bands Results

The Real Juggling Music

       My most recent post featured a Battle of the Bands segment with Xavier Cugat's "El Cumbanchero" going head to head with "This Could Be the Start of Something Big" by Les Brown and his Band Renown.  These were both songs that my father had chosen as part of the music backing our family juggling act and for this Battle I used two of the actual recordings we often used.  

       Let me set the scenario up with a description of how the songs were used in the act. Sometimes my family did a whole show where my father did some comedy, my mother or sister would do an acrobatic dance specialty, and then we closed the show with the entire family doing a fast paced juggling routine. That latter portion was what my father called "The Big Act" and often we were hired to perform that act in a show that included other acts.

       We opened the Big Act with the entire family entering the stage while juggling to the song "This Could Be the Start of Something Big" as played by Les Brown & His Band Renown.  Only recently did the significance of this song choice occur to me.  My father probably purposely used a song with this title to open the Big Act, or maybe he just used it because it was popular at the time.

         Our closing used various recorded versions of "El Cumbanchero" that was Cugat's version for a few years until we discovered a version by The Pepper Pots which had a lengthy percussion part that made for an exciting climax to the act.

       As many agreed in the post comments, "El Cumbanchero" is the better juggling song.  In fact, it's among the most commonly used songs by jugglers and other performers--or at least back in our day it was. My parents had been using "El Cumbanchero" in their act even before my sister and I joined. "Something Big" was added when we joined after 1960.  The song is not the greatest for juggling, but it made for a nice opening.  

         "Something Big" was written by the great Steve Allen who has written a ton of songs over the years.  Allen was one of my childhood heroes--a likeable personality who did some creative stuff on his TV shows.  That's pretty much why I'm going to give my vote to Allen's song in this Battle, but if I were picking out music for juggling then I'd probably cede to that Latin sound.

Final Vote Tally

Xavier Cugat       7 votes

Les Brown           4 votes

Next Battle on Sunday October 1st