§ I Am Music and I Pick the Songs: Only the Good Die Young

{Song #9 « Song #10 » Song #11}

§ ≡ One of an ongoing series of posts in which I pick, in my not-so-humble opinion, the best songs of the second millennium. Feel free to offer constructive dissenting opinions; preferably set to music.

Song #10 is Only the Good Die Young, sung by Billy Joel.

Joel attended Hicksville High School, and was expected to graduate in 1967. However, due to playing at a piano bar, he was one English credit short of the graduation requirement; he overslept on the day of an important exam, owing to his late-night musician's lifestyle. Faced with a summer at school to complete this requirement, he decided not to continue. He left high school without a diploma to begin a career in music, later telling an interviewer he'd told the Hicksville Board of Education, "I'm not going to Columbia University, I'm going to Columbia Records." Columbia did, in fact, become the label that eventually signed him.

Columbia University, in fact, was where I earned my master's and doctorate, after graduating from Hicksville High in 1959. During my student days in Hicksville, America was known as the great Melting Pot of the world, referring to its status as the nation of immigrants. In 1949, I had been one of those immigrants. In those days there were very few Jewish kids in Hicksville High. Although they were not required to wear a yellow Star-of-David on their shirt, it was common knowledge who they were. They were the kids whose names appeared at the top of the school's honor roll. One of them was known to be dating a pretty, blond, blue-eyed, Irish-Catholic girl. That's how the great American melting pot worked.



Post #740 § I Am Music and I Pick the Songs: Only the Good Die Young