Q: What was that Beatles song you sang?

A: It was­n’t actu­ally a Beatles song at all!

My son and his wife finally had their wed­ding recep­tion the day before their second anniversary. A tiny little Cov­id wed­ding two years ago was not fol­lowed by the party they had wanted to share with fam­ily and friends, so at long last they hos­ted a won­der­ful gath­er­ing last week­end. It was kind of nice for them to be able to simply enjoy a party, without the stress of the actu­al wed­ding cere­mony. Sadly, some of their wed­ding party wer­en’t able to join us, but their co-MCs, Trent and Bray­den did an amaz­ing job and were charm­ing and hil­ari­ous. The food was deli­cious, the bever­ages flowed, there were games out on the lawn… and I was proud of myself for suc­cess­fully set­ting up the sound sys­tem and mak­ing it work!

A few people gave speeches, and when Matt went up to give his, I went along to be his Emo­tion­al Sup­port Human. I was pre­pared to step in and fin­ish read­ing his words should he choke up and be unable to con­tin­ue. For my part, I did­n’t both­er writ­ing a speech, but had planned a song. I queued it up before­hand and asked my broth­er-in-law John to hit Go at the right time.

So the answer to the ques­tion C asked me last night is this: It was not a Beatles song at all. In fact it was called Till There Was You, and is from the music­al, The Music Man. The Beatles recor­ded a cov­er of it in 1963. It was recor­ded in mono, so when I pan from one speak­er to the oth­er you can hear just Paul’s vocals, or just George and John’s gui­tars. I was able to cre­ate a sort of karaoke track this way. (At least, I think this is how it worked… I’m not sure of the tech­nic­al stuff, but the res­ult is the import­ant thing.)

The res­ult was that I sang Till There Was You, accom­pan­ied by the Beatles’ guitars.

Want to hear their rendi­tion? https://youtu.be/SHAqAO7w8M8