Meeting “Van”
photo by Rich Borden
This one is long over-due. Back at the end of August we took the Philharmonette on the road to the Hudson Valley in New York for shows at two of our favorite venues out that way, the Peint O’Gwrw Tafran, a Welsh tavern in Chatham, and Musica, a musical instrument store in Hudson.
Our good friends Denise & Rich setup the shows so that we could meet a very special man, George D Brantley, who was in the area for about a week. George recorded two singles with his brother Billy back in 1968 under the name “Van & Titus” – George was “Van”/Billy was “Titus”. One of the four songs they released is a fantastic number called “Cry Baby Cry”, which came to Chandler’s attention by way of Christine Ohlman, “The Beehive Queen”, who found the record in a yard sale (or thrift store or something like that) and re-recorded the song as a duet with Dion on her album “The Deep End“. We’ve been performing the song off & on for several years now, and I just love singing it.
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