Initiation to the Miracle of Music

I always made it my mission to surround my daughter with music, beginning the day we brought her home from the hospital as an infant. From then on, whenever we were in the car, a CD or cassette (remember those?) was playing, or the radio - pre-Satellite and Internet iterations - was on. Although recorded music was not always on at home, my guitar was never out of reach and I frequently played for her, almost from the start. One of my most cherished memories from her childhood occurred soon after I recognized her singing potential. 

I was casually accompanying her on They Can't Take That Away from Me. In the repeat of the middle section, my seven or eight-year-old lifted an improvised turn from Sarah Vaughn's version of that well-known Gershwin classic. Right after doing so, she stopped singing and asked me -"Daddy, where did that come from?"  I explained that she'd been continually listening to Sarah, Ella, Billie, and many others for her whole life and that, sooner or later, something like this was bound to happen. I will never forget that moment of musical magic. And now, I get another chance.   

Although I did not bring him home from the hospital, within twenty minutes of first holding him two days after he was born, my grandson's musical education began in earnest. The good news? Because of Internet radio - and the twenty plus flawless stations I've created over the last fifteen years - I can expose him to whatever I want, whenever I'm holding him, wherever we happen to be. I can curate tune-by-tune from every genre, at any tempo, helping to ensure he's endlessly eclectic when he begins choosing his own music later in life. No more reliance on sometimes sketchy DJs, no more worries about a cassette flaking out or no CD player available, no more needing to be in a car. If a computer and Blue Tooth are nearby (when are they not?), he and I will be consistently co-joined in musical heaven. Want to guess what Gershwin song and which version I picked to initiate him to the miracle of music? Will lightning strike twice? How can it hurt to try?