Darin Morris - Cookie Jar [COMPACT DISCS]

Bill Sharp/ Composer/Producer: What a marvelous time I had producing this CD, though I had to become a senior citizen to do so, first having to get the "working years" out of the way. I was a schoolteacher for 35 years, grades 2-12, now retired. During all those many years I wrote songs for my own enjoyment and played trumpet on the weekends in various groups, but never my own songs because of the uncertainty of how they might be accepted. About two years ago I linked up with Darin by accident because my teenage son, who was taking lessons from him, started missing lessons, and I took his place when he didn't show up -otherwise I was paying good money for nothing. I ended up taking regular guitar lessons from Darin, who is a very accomplished guitarist -an incredible player who could tour with anyone, in nearly every style imaginable. During one lesson I had a couple of tunes in the case and set them in front of Darin and said, \'Play these for me please. I\'ve had them sitting around for years and would like to hear them played by a real musician. I only hear them when I play them.\' He made them sound so good that I started bringing in 3-4 songs a week. About 40 songs later, he said, \'I look forward to this. These sound like songs you'd like to hear.\' This made my wheels turn, and a couple weeks later asked him if he had a CD of his own. When the answer was \'No\' I said, \'We both have a lot of musically accomplished friends. Why not see if they\'ll help us produce a CD?\' We figured that with all the high-caliber musicians we knew between the two of us that we could do it somewhat 'on the cheap,' but with no skimping on the final production. Most of what you hear is only possible because so many stellar musicians gave of their time and talent. Every musician was given full latitude to put their own spin on the interpretation of a tune. The first time I saw how important this became was on the very first song we recorded when Donnie Mahoney, while singing Low-down Lonely Blues said, "I'd like to take a Ray Charles approach". My response was "Go for it!" and, as a result, you will hear the richness of his voice in his special interpretation of the words and melody . . . he truly made it 'his' song. Play the CD several times and try to separate out and follow what every individual is doing each time. You will experience an extraordinary audio experience and come to know what fine individual artists are on this recording.