To All The Girls I've Loved Before

In the summer of 1995, I found a karaoke place near us in Huntington Beach that was called "Only You" and it had rooms for you to do your singing and recording should you wish to do that. One of the songs I noticed on the list was this title song "To All The Girls I've Loved Before". The background music was from the recording of Willie Nelson and Julio Iglesias who made the song famous.

I remember Johnny Carson and Julio did that once on the Johnny Carson Tonight Show and I have the video tape of it. So I copied it and sent it to my friend Dave Cole in Northern California. I said that we needed to do that song together on the Talent Show on a 5 day cruise to Ensenada that we were taking in July. This was one of the times Dave and Marlene Cole were getting together with Ann and I to celebrate the ladies birthdays as I mentioned in a recent posting. We practiced this separately and then when they came down to go on the cruise we went to the karaoke place to work on it. We decided to just sing it straight using our own voices -- I was Willie and he was Julio.

Here is a picture of Dave and I singing that song on the Talent Show on Viking Serenade.

We got a great response from the crowd and the cruise director enjoyed it very much as well. All participants in the Talent Show got a medal to hang around their necks.

Sometime in the fall of 1995 our church (Pacific Christian Community Church in Irvine) decided to do a Hootenanny night showing the talents of the members. I got in touch with Jeff Harrison who sang with me in the choir and told him about the song. He wanted to do it and wanted us to impersonate the two stars who made it famous including costumes. But we were not to see each other at the show until we were on the stage. i didn't know what he was wearing and he didn't know what I was wearing. I had a wig with pigtails, a bandana, a scruffy beard, a tee shirt that had "The Legend Lives On" printed on the front. And jeans.

I led the song off with just me on stage singing a phrase and then Jeff came out to join me for the next phrase. You can see in the video below our reaction seeing each other for the first time in our costumes. As you can also see and hear, the crowd loved it! Click on the picture and be sure your sound is on and up.

Jeff and I did that song once again at my private retirement party in June 1996. Sees to be a favorite and I hope you find it enjoyable as well.