Max's Musings

Soundtrack, Feb 8, Sleep Walk

In 1957, two teenagers, Santo and Johnie Farina, spent a sleepless night in their parent's garage writing an instrumental song. Their tools were steel guitars and a Webcor tape recorder their father had purchased for them. They were sure they'd written a pretty good song, but it took them a year and half to find a publisher willing to record their song.

Eventually, the persuaded Ed Burton of Trinity Music, and their song released in 1959. By August of that year, "Sleep Walk" entered Billboard's top forty and, by mid-September, rose to number one on the charts. It remained number one until the second week of November, an impressive run for their pretty good song.

In my the first chapter of my novella "Dreamin' Life Away" , "Chapter 1. Sleep Walk" , the song is playing on a radio program reprising the number one hits of bygone times and serves as foreshadowing for the journey to the past the protagonist, Dante, is about to take. And, yes, his name suggests where he's going metaphorically. Specifically, however, he's headed to the 1950s in this slipstream tale.

Every chapter of the novella has one or more songs from the 1950s that inspired it, so get ready for a list of a dozen more songs.

Here's the today's song. It also inspired the surreal mood of the chapter and the novella.