Mr. Rogers - Won't You Be My Neighbor?

The church service I played yesterday started with this video clip from the intro of Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood:

That brought back some memories. I knew that the show had a great band, but I hadn't really watched it as an adult or noticed the music when I was a kid. As with many people, Mr. Rogers was a big part of my childhood. It's not that the show was popular; it was just ubiquitous, in a very unobtrusive way. We only had a handful of channels and PBS was one of them. So, like Sesame Street, Mr. Rogers was always just kind of there.

The song itself was written by Fred Rogers, as were most of the pieces on the show. Rogers had a B.A. in Music Composition, and was an excellent pianist. The trio on the show featured jazz virtuoso Johnny Costa. I love that such great musicianship has been in the background of our childhoods, exposing kids indirectly to rich chords, rhythms and melodies. Rogers also frequently interviewed musicians and even introduced his band:

The show's opening song "Won't You Be My Neighbor" has a pretty busy intro, but the song itself is a simple AABA form with a short tag at the end. I'm surprised - given its nice chords, familiarity and simple form - that I don't really ever hear piano trios playing the song. Maybe some people find it a bit hokey, but if someone's too cool for Mr. Rogers then who really cares what they think?

As it turns out, a bunch of Rogers' songs are featured on the show's website, complete with PDF simplified piano music. I'm guessing this site was build at some point during the dot com boom, given the late-90s look and the Real Player audio files. The chart to "Won't You Be My Neighbor" is quite good and includes the chords for those who want to improvise. My gripes with it are that: a) it's not in Mr. Rogers' key and b) it's two pages long with three staves, unlike a typical lead sheet style chart that most jazz musicians would use. I figured I'd write it out in C as an iPad-friendly one-page PDF, for those who might like to play it:

The PDF can be downloaded HERE, along with versions in D, F, G, A and Bb. Enjoy!

So why is this song great? I don't know. Most of this blog is an excuse for me to be a theory nerd, or to point out some profound cleverness in well-known pop songs. There's nothing particularly clever about the song. It is profound only because it connects so many of us to our youth.

As I said, Mr. Rogers was always just there. No matter how much you grow up, he knew you before you were an adult. He knew you before you were cool, angry, smart, selfish, or hurt. No matter how brilliant someone might be, there is no guarantee that they will write music that connects with people. It matters where the music comes from, and in the case of Mr. Rogers it came from someone who saw the best in people and asked us to be better to each other. For that, I am grateful that he was around when I was a child.