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47 years ago, I began to hear music.

I would wake up in the morning and there would be a complete song playing in my head. When I say complete I mean complete...drums, horns, violins, keyboards, melody and breaks....This went on for quite a while. Agonizing over it, I wanted and needed to capture the songs in some way. But I did not know how to read or write music. It was akin to being in a foreign country and not being able to communicate due to the language barrier. I came up with an idea. I would capture the songs by singing them into a cassette recorder. I invested in a nice Sony Walkman player/recorder and began to hum the different parts of the song into it as they came to me. As my tape began to fill up, I pondered how to get the songs in a form people could hear them as I did. I called the Cleveland Federation of Musicians Union and presented my dilemma. They referred me to a local member that could listen to my songs and write them. on what I was told was a "lead sheet" so other musicians could read and play the songs. I called the gentlemen they referred and we set up a meeting at his house on Saybrook Avenue in University Heights, a suburb of Cleveland. I took several city busses and walked the rest of the way to his house. I was met by a senior man who was very cordial. He sat down at his piano and listened to the first song on my cassette tape. He seemed impressed. We went over it note by note and re-wound the tape many times as he played ny song on the piano stopping to confirm each and every pitch and sound with me. After wards he wrote out the song on a lead sheet and charged me $12. I was overjoyed. Hey! I was making big  progress! My dreams took flight. An admirer of Berry Gordy, Motown and Gamble & Huff with their amazing Phildelphia Intenational Record company,  I started my own record label and called it Cleveland Unlimited Records. If youre gonna dream, might as well dream big right?.  I started making my musical  pilgrimage to his house as often as I could to get all of the songs I had on the cassette tape made into lead sheets. Often we did several songs at a time and I made multiple visits back as my meager money permitted. At one point he told me I was very “prolific" I smiled like I know what he meant and later at home looked up that word to see the meaning. Hey It was a compliment! It was many years later that I discovered this gentleman was Al Russ, a respected band leader and the orchestra leader at the famed Front Row Theater in Cleveland. He wrote and arranged music for such nationally known performers such as Perry Como & Steve Lawrence. He was best known locally for writing a popular national advertising jingle “Garfield 1..23..23”. I later found out Al passed in June of 1998. I am not sure how many songs I had Al make into lead sheets for me but I ended up with the 14 selections that make up this project. I kept the lead sheets of the songs in a file folder and as life happened, military service, Law school, starting a company called National Payment Systems, a payment processing company, Opening a bustling business office in Dublin Ohio, I literally forgot all about them. In 2003 my mother was informed by her doctor she had the beginning stages of breast cancer. coincidentally to this event, my father became paralyzed from the waist down due to a hospital mistake while taking a pain relief needle shot in his back and subsequently required round the clock care. The stress accompanied by recurring medical related expenses began to mount for them both. I closed my Dublin Ohio  business office and moved back to my hometown Cleveland to the vacant upstairs unit of their 2 unit family home to be of help to my parents. Her cancer having metastasized to her lungs, Mom passed after a valiant fight. My mother was a fighter to the end. Ironically the doctor that initially diagnosed her and told her she had only 6 months of life, died a full two years before she did. I then became the primary caregiver for My Dad who passed several years later. I was very strong for them both but afterwards I grieved for quite a awhile. I had to avail myself of the bereavement counseling offered by the great folks at Hospice of Cleveland. I adopted 2 Godsons whom I loved dearly who suddenly needed a stable home. They were the spark that ignited, energized and reinvigorated my life. I woke up to the realization that I now had two little lives that I was responsible for who depended solely on me for their survival. I also took my solace in my love of music, I reactivated my old record label and dove head first into listening to young aspiring rappers, singers and songwriters and helping them fulfill their dreams by releasing their music commercially to the world. One afternoon while cleaning out the basement I ran across my old metal chest from my military days. Inside the chest was packed a wealth of personal items I had forgot about and at the bottom of the trunk was my old folder of lead sheets! Moisture and some mold had smeared the ink badly on some of the songs to the point they were unreadable and lost forever, but I was able to save 14 of them. In the last few years, I was able to find various pianists and arrangers to play the songs so I could present them to people. Each song also has complete lyrics, but for this project, I just wanted to capture the music itself and get it out into the universe. Perhaps if afforded the opportunity, the next project will be the tracks complete with vocalists singing the lyrics as well. For me this project has been wildly exhilarating and a very long time coming to pass. It represents a metaphor to one major culmination of my life journey. My songs... originating decades ago from initial concept and thought all the way to present musical reality. Thanks for taking the time to listen. I hope you enjoy them. Peace and Blessings to you all.