About Me

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Lake Mathews (Perris), CA, United States
Born in Illinois, I grew up in Wilmette, a northern suburb of Chicago. I have one sibling, an older brother. I am married, for the 2nd time now, to Butch & got 4 children in the deal. They have gone on to make me grandmother 25 times over & great-grandmother to over 20!. After many years working in industry, I got my bachelors and masters degrees in speech communication, & was a professor in that field for 13 years. I retired in 2001 & returned to school & got my doctorate in folklore. Now I meld my two interests - folklore & genealogy - & add my teaching background, resulting in my current profession: speaker/author/entertainer of genealogically-related topics. I play many folk instruments, but my preference is guitar, which I have been playing since 1963. I write the "Aunty Jeff" column for the Informer, newsletter of the Jefferson County NY Gen. Soc. I work in partnership with Gena Philibert-Ortega & Sara Cochran as Genealogy Journeys® where we focus on educating folks about Social History. More about that: genaandjean.blogspot.com. More on our podcasts: genjourneys.podbean.com. More about my own projects: Circlemending.org.

Saturday, September 12, 2009

Music & the Old, and not so Old, West

Well, I am at the Bonanza convention (yup, a convention for fans of the old TV show) and am having a great time (making new friends, connecting with old ones, & enjoying Lake Tahoe, between watching videos of ... well, you can probably guess). Music is a major part of the whole weekend.

We are selling our CDs here, which is a nice "icing on the cake," but also listening to the CDs of the Bonanza stars (what? you didn't know there are CDs of Lorne Greene, Pernell Roberts, Dan Blocker, & Michael Landon? Well! These are remastered from their old LPs ... click here to check out the 4-disc set). And tonight we are part of the entertainment, singing old Western songs, calling the square dance, and introducing other performers (Mitch Vogel, who played Jamie Cartwright - yup, an even younger brother - is here & plays a mean guitar ... well, he plays mine because it's more convenient).

Music was part of the old west! My latest CD - "Songs of the American West" - is now available for order from CDBaby. From there you can hear clips and even download MP3s of the songs!

Well, the auction of Bonanza memorabilia is about to begin so I will have to blog more about Western songs at a later date!

"We chased Lady Luck till we finally struck BONANZA; with a gun & a rope and a hatful of hope, we planted our family tree!" Everybody sing!

One quick PS: I swear, half the people here have the Bonanza theme as their cell phone ring. The theme plays and 50 people are grabbing for their cell phones (whew, I'm not one of them ... my cell phone ring is the Flash Gordon theme!).

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