A Beautiful Song With a Nice Public Health Message

Here’s my rendition of one of the top ballads of all-time, Jerome Kern’s Smoke Gets in Your Eyes (1933):

The couple that podcasts together, stays together? So far so good.

For many people, Smoke Gets in Your Eyes is remembered as a 1958 hit by the Platters. Others associate it with the classic Nat King Cole recording. For others, Benny Goodman, for others Frank Sinatra, for others, etc etc etc. Everybody and their mother had a hit recording with this tune, except for me (but I’m working on it).

Smoke Gets in Your Eyes is a special song for me because I associate it with my wife, Kate. She works in the field of public health, and one of her former positions was Tobacco Control Coordinator for the county health department. Needless to say, the Uslan household has a strict no smoking policy. When we relax after dinner, we use chewing tobacco only! (That was a joke.)

Here’s some more information about Kate that you might not be aware of. She is very musical. In elementary school, her music teacher told the class that boys should consider learning drums, and girls should consider the dainty instruments, like flute. So Kate of course chose drums and made it her mission to beat out all the boys to become first percussion chair in the middle school band. And she succeeded! She also became very skilled at the marimba. But as she devoted herself to public health, she went on marimba hiatus. When we got married and needed to scrounge up some dough, we sold the marimba. Now I think it would be nice if she takes it back up again. So if you have an extra marimba you want to get rid of, please contact me privately.

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