Behind the music

The internet is a funny animal. Really breathes new life into the old cliche that it’s a small world after all.

(Yikes, just got a Disney World flashback...sorry about that...don’t want that song bouncing around in my head for days.)

After posting last Thursday about the Johnny Mathis song, "Yellow Roses on her Gown," I received a message from someone in Australia that is a friend of the woman who posted the Mathis clip on YouTube.

He says that the songwriter, Michael Moore (no, not that one!) wrote the song about his father, a lawyer that represented people who were victims of the McCarthy-era Communist witch hunts.

"As a result," he writes, "he was driven out of the profession by the right wing interests and took to farming and some limited legal work to make ends meet."

Wow, was all I could say. If this is indeed true, the revelation brings a deeper and even more tragic aspect to an already haunting piece of music.

I so hope that Mr. Moore, if he’s still alive, will surface one day and let us know more about his beautiful song.

Special thanks to Denis in Melbourne for this most interesting news.

Speaking of a small world, I was quite tickled to see that the guest on "What’s My Line," the classic game show I sometimes watch on GSN, from the Sunday, Nov. 9, 1952 episode, was one Ruth Marie Diamond from Knoxville, Tenn. The re-run aired last Saturday morning.

Turned out Ruth Marie Diamond’s line was that she was a United States Marine. What a hoot! I’d love to catch up with Ms. Diamond if she’s still hanging around East Tennessee. My guess is she would be in her 70s now.