A Day with the Guitar Man
Spring 2003 Music
Ages: 2 - 10 yrs.
CD Price: $14.99
Review:
Ohio-based children's artist and multiple guitar master Jim McCutcheon
serves
as an irresistible ambassador for the instrument, celebrating its varied
styles and forms-acoustic and electric guitar, the ukulele, South America's
charango, the balalaika-in his own and others' playful and soulful songs.
There's William Parry's funny, military-inspired "Kindergarten
Cadence,"
as well as Bob King's "Sandwiches" and Tom Paxton's "The Marvelous Toy," two
perennial favorites. Other album highlights include Sarah Weeks'
spirit-nourishing "Let It Spin" and McCutcheon's own pieces, from "The
Guitar
Man Song" that gets listeners involved from the start and his deft "Wakin'
Up" morning song, to his ode to practicing, "Scales, Scales and More
Scales."
The latter is filled with such contagious enthusiasm that young musicians
may
well be inspired to follow his lead.
Throughout McCutcheon's lively, assured vocals and conversational
comments reach out with expressive warmth, humor and ease of delivery,
making
him sound as if he's a very talented friend who's come over for a visit-with
his entire "guitar zoo."
Lynne Heffley ©2003 Parents' Choice
A long-time Parents' Choice music critic, Lynne was a staff writer for 25 years at the Los Angeles Times where she established and maintained the paper's first weekly children's arts and entertainment beat and was a general arts reporter. Now a freelance writer, Lynne works in the areas of non-profit communications, the arts and family entertainment (specializing in children's theater, music, audio books and book illustration). In her spare time, when she's not reading, Lynne is likely to be found strumming American Songbook standards and Tin Pan Alley novelty songs on one of her seven ukuleles.
