Category: Original Songs

Description: “New American Trilogy” Back Story I was in the Silver Diner on Wilson Boulevard in Arlington, Virginia, for Sunday morning breakfast recently and the place was bustling as usual. Sleepy when I entered, I woke up over my usual soft scrambled eggs with farm sausage and crispy waffle topped with maple syrup, and three cups of coffee. After paying my check and getting up to leave...I looked around to see that this all-American place was filled to the brim with people -- Americans! -- of ethnicities and backgrounds from all around the world...enjoying that simplest but most profound of pleasures: the company of family and friends in the midst of other good and decent people doing the same! THIS is America! Almost 50 years ago another American icon, Elvis Presley, sang a medley called "American Trilogy". Honoring the memory of yet another American icon, folk-singer Burl Ives, I wrote, some years ago, two songs: "One Great Big Family" and "We're All Americans!". Inspired by that Sunday morning at the Silver Diner I wrote another, "I'm Proud to Be...an American Dreamer". And further inspired by the universality of the American Dream I witnessed that morning in Silver Diner I put these three songs together into a recording titled "New American Trilogy". A preliminary video of “New American Trilogy” with images of American diversity can be viewed on YouTube at https://youtu.be/K85bXyqOzvo All in the spirit of what is best about America, the people — all of them — who truly make America great! Something worth getting together (even virtually!) and singing out about! Now, more than ever, it’s imperative that we all make efforts to reinforce and remind others of the power of the American Dream. From today’s American Dreamers (born here to parents without proper documentation) who are still waiting for the Supreme Court to decide their fate, to the legions of American Dreamers who made their way to this country during the past 400 years to realize their own and their families’ futures for many generations, to billions of people around the world who will never have the opportunity to realize the American Dream but struggle to maintain hope and determination that their home countries (happening now in Hong Kong) will one day embrace the pillars of American Democracy.