Shake That Tambourine

Of course my eight month old daughter isn't the only child interested in rattles. But the way she uses them to great effect while listening to "Shake That Tambourine" must be somewhat more unusual. It was when I noticed her interest in shaking toys that then rattled that I got the idea to play her track number six on my Harum Scarum CD. Sitting on the floor, her eyes immediately lit up when she heard the intro featuring the tambourines and her hand clutching the rattle started moving purposefully as she looked up at me. I picked her up and started humming along with my daughter in my arms. A smile animated her face as she looked at the loudspeakers from where the music emerged.

Shake... the little tambourine Shake a-ring a jing -jing a-ling Shake, shake my little dancin' queen Shake that tambourine, that tambourine

From then on that's been her favorite music number. Maybe even more so after receiving a pair of castanets from a friend of ours about a week later. Talk about the perfect present! I admit I even went so far as to play my daughter a couple of unreleased takes of "Shake That Tambourine," courtesy of FTD. But listening to Elvis loosing it after singing "Bracelets keep a-clinking, on their' TEENY feet" only seemed to confuse her, so pretty soon I returned to the master. By the way, Elvis actually did at least 38 takes of "Shake That Tambourine," as the master is a splice of takes 24 and 38, according to Ernst Jorgensen's A Life In Music as well as Joe Tunzi's Elvis Sessions III. It was the only song he recorded on February 24, 1965.