I’m both amazed and bewildered by my brain's ability to retain unused information for decades, only to regurgitate a tidbit or two when you least expect it.

Recently my daughter, Laura, gave me a DeskCycle, a compact bike pedal exerciser. To pass the time while exercising, I listen to music on my iPad. And for several days that music was provided by Tuba Skinny, with an assist from Potato Head Jazz Band, in videos recorded during a jam session at Torreilles, France, in 2019.

Tuba Skinny is a Dixieland band that began in New Orleans and plays mostly early jazz, ragtime and blues music, though a few songs are written by band members, chief among them the incredible Shaye Cohn, trained as a classical pianist in Boston, but now found usually playing cornet, and sometimes a wicked ragtime piano (though she’s also proficient on the fiddle, accordion, banjo and spoons). I believe she’s the leader of the band.

Tuba Skinny started as a street band in 2009, but now performs all over the world. Their music is infectious and they are, in my opinion, the coolest band there is. I especially like Robin Rapuzzi, called ‘the wizard of the washboard,” for good reason.

I’ve enjoyed this style of music since I was a teen when some Solvay High School students formed their own Dixieland band, inspired by the Salt City Five (later Salt City Six) which featured former Syracuse University students and performed at a place called Memory Lane.

As for Potato Head Jazz Band, it originated in Spain and features musicians from Spain, Argentina and Italy.

RECENTLY, I decided to listen to something else, knowing every song I ever heard is available via a YouTube video. That's when my brain threw me a curve ball. Next thing I knew, I was tapping on my keyboard to locate a version of “Sparrow in the Treetop.”

To paraphrase Humphrey Bogart in “Casablanca”: “Of all the songs ever recorded, why did my brain come up with this one?”

But there it was. I immediately knew the version I wanted was recorded by Guy Mitchell, and even remembered who wrote the song (Bob Merrill). It took less than a minute to find and listen to the song, which peaked at number eight on the Billboard pop music list in 1951.

Having started down this road, I couldn’t stop. Next up was “The Roving Kind,” also recorded by Mitchell. It was on the flip side of his first hit, “My Heart Cries for You.”

ON A ROLL, my brain suggested a one-hit wonder from 1958 called “Su included mmertime, Summertime,” by a group called The Jamies, named for sibling members Serena and Thomas Jameson. It was Thomas Jameson who wrote the song, best-remembered for its opening line which became fixed in listeners’ heads.

To be honest, this song is never that far from my thoughts because it’s linked to a favorite memory of my mother, normally a shy, retiring woman who avoided attention. She wasn’t particularly interested in popular music, which is why she stunned my sister and me when she went “Weird Al” Yankovic on us one evening when we sat at the kitchen table and she began singing her version: “It’s suppertime, suppertime, sup sup suppertime.”

The Jamies were lucky to have made the rsecording because this was a difficult time for would-be singers and composers. Just as studios controlled the movie industry, recording companies controlled the music industry until the 1960s. Very few singers or groups ever wrote their own music. Songs were submitted to recording companies by a relatively small group of composers, and when a song was accepted, a record company executive would decide who recorded it. Songs became hits when they were liked by people of all ages, and the top songs of the week were featured on “Your Hit Parade,” a hit program on radio and television.

WHICH GETS me back to “The Roving Kind” and “My Heart Cries for You.” Mitch Miller was the musical genius at Columbia Records at the time and decided those two songs would be Frank Sinatra’s next record. Sinatra’s career was in a slump at the time — Miller was quoted as saying he couldn’t even give Sinatra records away — but the singer recognized that neither song fit his style, particularly “The Roving Kind,” which had a nautical theme. (Among its lyrics: “I spied a lofty clipper ship and to her I did steer. I hoisted out my sig-a-nals which she so quickly knew, and when she saw my bunting fly she immediately hove to-woo-woo.”)

So Sinatra turned them down and in 1952 switched from Columbia to Capitol Records where Nelson Riddle's arrangements and orchestra turned the singer's career around.

Back at Columbia, Miller had faith in both songs Sinatra had rejected, and went into a recording studio with an unknown singer named Al Cernik, who, under the name Al Grant, had won on “Arthur Godfrey’s Talent Scouts” television program in 1949.

Miller didn’t want his singer known as Al Cernik or Al Grant, so he chose a new name. From his habit of saying, “Hi, guy” when people greeted him, Miller decided to call the singer Guy Mitchell, Mitchell being Miller’s given name. The rest, as they say, is history. Mitchell possesssed a deep, rich voice well suited to both songs, and had a string of hits afterward and even a shot at the movies (“Those Redheads from Seattle” and “Red Garters”).

AT THE TIME, hit songs covered a wide range of musical styles and could be so unusual you had to wonder what composers were thinking when they wrote them. As an example, my trusty brain offers “Mule Train,” written by five guys unknown to me until I checked out Wikipedia — Johnny Lange, Hy Heath, Ramblin’ Tommy Scott, Fred Glickman and Ellis “Buz” Butler Jr., who first recorded it in 1947.

Why it was written, I don’t know. The lyrics begin: “Mule train! Hah! Hah! Mule train, clippity clopping over hill and plain, seems as how they'll never stop, clippity clop, clippity clop. clippity, clippity, clippity clopping along.”

In 1949, Miller produced a recording of that song with Frankie Laine, one of the most unusual singing superstars to emerge in the years after World War Two. The Laine version featured the crack of a whip to emphasize the “Hah!” portion of the lyrics.

People whose love of music began with rap or Taylor Swift may wonder how the hell “Mule Train” became the country’s top song, but there it was. Laine had a long string of hits; among them, “High Noon” (though it was Tex Ritter who sang it in the movie sound track) and “The Cry of the Wild Goose.” ("My heart knows what the wild goose knows, I must go where the wild goose goes. wild goose, brother goose, which is best? A wanderin' foot or a heart at rest?")

I believe "Wild Goose" was one of the songs that inspired a Steve Allen comedy bit that had him read popular lyrics as serious poems.

“MULE TRAIN” was featured in “Singing Guns,” a cheap 1950 Western, and was performed in the film by its star, Vaughn Monroe, another big musical name whose fame would puzzle anyone who studied the era as a history project. Monroe’s signature song was “Racing With the Moon,” but he may be best remembered for “Ghost Riders in the Sky.” According to his Wikipedia site, Monroe's was described as "the Voice with Hair on its Chest."

I think current Academy rules would exclude “Mule Train,” but in 1950 it was nominated for an Oscar as best original song, but lost out to “Mona Lisa.” (“Mona Lisa, Mona Lisa, men have named you, you're so like the lady with the mystic smile. Is it only 'cause you're lonely, they have blamed you, for that Mona Lisa strangeness in your smile?”)

Another odd song, “Mona Lisa” was featured in the Alan Ladd movie, “Captain Carey, USA” and sung in Italian by Sergio de Karlo. The song became a big hit for Nat King Cole, who had an even more unusual smash two years earlier in “Nature Boy,” written by Eden Ahbez, a composer and one of the original hippies, who based the song on a man who inspired him.

(“There was a boy, a very strange, enchanted boy, they say he wandered very far, very far, over land and sea, a little shy and sad of eye, but very wise was he.”)

BUT WHEN it comes to the strangest of the strange, my brain chooses “The Thing,” a 1950 hit for band leader-singer Phil Harris. It was written by Charles Randolph Grean, and begins like this: “While I was walking down the beach one bright and sunny day, I saw a great big wooden box a-floatin’ in the bay, I pulled it in and opened it up and much to my surprise, Ooh, I discovered a (boom-boom-boom) right before my eyes.” That boom-boom-boom was the sound of three loud thumps. Identity of the “thing” was never revealed.

This could go on forever, so I’ll stop. One benefit of this particular brain fart is that I'll never again criticize today’s music, given that I so greatly enjoyed so many weird songs when I was young.

However, there was something reassuring during that period when different generations all listened to the same things, no matter how bizarre they were. Other favorite examples: “How Much is That Doggie in the Window,” “If I Knew You Were Coming, I’d’ve Baked a Cake,” “Come Onna My House,” “There’s a Pawnshop on the Corner in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania,” and, of course, the song that started me down this road, “Sparrow in the Treetop.”

Because of its lyrics — which include: "Don't look at me, sweetheart, with scorn in your eyes, been out all night, gonna tell you no lies.
Stopped in one place, heard them singin' a song, like a lonely sparrow, started singin' along" — I expect "Sparrow in the Treetop" will still be heard many years from now in any bar where people break into song when they've had too much to drink. It's not only a very catchy, listenable song, it's very easy to sing.

It was appropriate the hit recording was produced by Miller, because it's a perfect sing along song for the man who became famous in 1961 with a surprise hit TV show, "Sing Along With Mitch."