By Bob Berry

I have long thought the greatest songs are the ones where just one or two lines can bring back memory, and enable you to sing the entire lyrics.

Think Lennon & McCartney, the Great American Songbook writers, the Brill Building contingent, and Motown’s Smokey Robinson and Holland-Dozier-Holland.

Or think Paul Simon.

“A winter’s day, in  deep and dark December…”.

“When I think back on all the crap I learned in high school..”.

“When you’re weary, feeling small…”.

“And it was late in the evening, and all the music seeping through…”.

“The words of the prophets are written on the subway walls, and tenement halls…”..

Paul Simon’s songs , with Art Garfunkel or as a solo artist, are beautiful poetry. They are highly personal, autobiographical, endlessly romantic, even at their most bitter or cynical. They are also, thinking “At The Zoo”, “You Can Call Me Al”, and, of course, “The 59th Street Bridge Song (Feeling Groovy)”, just plain fun.

Today (10/12), on his birthday, we at Keener13 feel lucky to have enjoyed his great gift.

By Bob Berry

He was part of the legendary Wrecking Crew, helping Phil Spector shape his Wall of Sound.  His Hammond B-3 helped The Beach Boys pick up on “Good Vibrations”. He played with The Mamas and Papas, The Fifth Dimension and The Carpenters, and David Gates and Bread.

His barrel-house piano kick-started “Rockin’ Pneumonia and the Boogie Woogie Flu” for Johnny Rivers

He was an extraordinary keyboard player, who happened to play guitar so well, that he supplied the bass tracks for The Doors’ “Light My Fire“!

His name was Larry Knechtel, and today would have been his 76th birthday. Here is his “greatest hit”, a beautiful, gospel-inspired piano that helped make the title song to Simon and Garfunkel’s Bridge Over Troubled Water album the Record and Song of the Year in 1971.

That’s who “that guy on keyboards” was.