SIMPLE BUT NOT STUPID

          What in the name of all that is sacred is auto-tuning???  Have we progressed to the state as a society where our singers don't even need to sing?  Where tune and tone can soar and plunge at the dragging of a mouse, as a gutter-voiced lovely-faced starlet drones her way into computer-assisted virtuosity?

          Songs used to be fun.  And they used to be sung.  If you hearken back to a time when things actually worked properly without all kinds of manipulation and intervention, simplify your work and simplify your life -- and go back to some of the great old tunes of American music, like the few favorites we've put together here:

• "Happy Music," by Peggy Lee with the Dave Barber Band (first song of collection, also available for download).  "I want to hear some music with a happy beat, just a simple tune so I can tap my feet . . . ." 
• From the brilliant Louis Prima, long-time Vegas entertainer and the voice behind the timeless "I Wanna Be Like You" in Disney's the Jungle Book, we bring you "Tutti Tutti Pizzicato" (7:55 into the collection, also available for download)."
• "Do-do-do-do-do-do it again," by the Four Tunes with the Sid Bass Orchestra (first song of this collection, also available for download), a real toe-tapping, shoulder-wiggling number.
• "Heap Big Smoke, But No Fire," Arthur Godfrey with the Too Fat Trio (at minute 11 of collection, also available for download).  This hilarious send-up of folks who talk the talk and never walk the walk will bring you back to the days of schoolyard banter.  "Him talk a lot, him not so hot -- him big schmo . . . ."
• Slowing things down a ways, "Dem Dry Bones" from the Delta Rythym Boys will take you way back to a different and maybe more spiritual America (download here).
• Getting closer to modern styles, we have the rhythm and blues stylings of Kansas Joe McCoy in the stirring, mournful classic, "When the Levee Breaks" (download here).
• And, finally, my personal favorite, the unforgivably silly "Ain't Gonna Rain No More," popularized by Wendell Hall and here interpreted by Billy Murray and the International Novelty Orchestra (download).

          Buy yourself the free time to explore classic tunes from the good old days of Americana -- or buy time to screw around in the office -- with this-here cutting edge effort-saving workload-reducing efficientifizing software.