{"id":8257,"date":"2014-05-11T23:00:31","date_gmt":"2014-05-12T03:00:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/?p=8257"},"modified":"2022-08-01T07:43:08","modified_gmt":"2022-08-01T11:43:08","slug":"sweet-surprise","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/2014\/05\/sweet-surprise\/","title":{"rendered":"Her Sweet Surprise"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Sweet<\/a>Sometime in October of the year 1969, a sixteen-year-old brown-eyed Pennsylvania boy sat down and wrote the words to what he counted as his seventy-first song.\u00a0 Like his hero John Lennon, the young man was inspired by an advertising poster — but not for a circus, as was the case when Mr. Lennon penned Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite<\/em>.\u00a0 Rather, the ad that caught the youngster’s eye was for a Mother’s Day flower arrangement called “The FTD Sweet Surprise.”\u00a0 Such was the humble yet stirring origin of the song Her Sweet Surprise<\/em> by the naive, somewhat talented Pennsylvanian boy, Craig H. Collins.<\/p>\n

Collins did not use his middle initial at the time.\u00a0 No matter.<\/p>\n

Collins would go on to record Her Sweet Surprise<\/em> four years later (late 1973 or early 1974) in his Carnegie-Mellon University studio (aka dormitory room) in jug-band style, with his friend Rob Simbeck.\u00a0 Collins provided electric guitar, the signature acoustic guitar run, percussion and main vocal.\u00a0 Simbeck played acoustic guitar fill-in and lead as well as some higher-than-currently-imaginable vocal harmonies and an introductory burp.\u00a0 Just recently, Collins decided to digitally remess with the original, forty-year-old, two-track analog tape, adding bass, keyboard and percussion parts.\u00a0 The result can be heard here<\/a>:<\/p>\nhttp:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/wp-content\/uploads\/sweetmix3.mp3<\/a><\/audio>\n

\u00a0Please listen to this selection on a decent sound system.\u00a0 At least use headphones or earbuds.
\nDon’t even think about playing it on your tinny little laptop.<\/h5>\n

I am pleased to announce that, on June 24, 2014, the esteemed auction house Sotheby’s will make available the only known draft of the lyrics to this landmark song (along with lyrics and personal effects of another musician of the 1960s and 1970s).\u00a0 In the copy of the draft (below) you can see that changes were made to the lyrics prior to the final recording.\u00a0 As the manuscript expert Richard Austin said<\/a>, “Here you have a chorus that is such an iconic piece of history, but it clearly didn\u2019t arrive fully formed.\u00a0 And you wonder, if he chose another rhyme, would it have had the same impact?”<\/p>\n

\"Her<\/a>

How does it feel, to be a complete unknown?<\/p><\/div>
\n[raw]The draft lyrics are expected to fetch between $1 and $2 million* at auction.\u00a0 All readers of The 100 Billionth Person are invited to submit bids.  For convenience, you may enter your bid in the Comment section of this post.<\/span>[\/raw]<\/p>\n

________________________<\/p>\n

* Bidders, please read the above carefully.\u00a0 The minimum bid is $1.<\/h5>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sometime in October of the year 1969, a sixteen-year-old brown-eyed Pennsylvania boy sat down and wrote the words to what he counted as his seventy-first song.\u00a0 Like his hero John Lennon, the young man was inspired by an advertising poster … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35,39],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8257","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-creativity","category-interests"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8257","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8257"}],"version-history":[{"count":36,"href":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8257\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8297,"href":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8257\/revisions\/8297"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8257"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8257"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8257"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}