Sunday Morning Coffee

Sunday Morning Coffee is a collection of instrumental tracks compiled by Chip Davis that serves the purpose of setting the mood or background music. This is one of my favorite CDs in my collection. It covers different moods occuring on a Saturday or Sunday morning. I like it because it evokes old feelings of romance, peace, and inspiration in me when I listen to it while sipping a warm cup of tea by myself or with friends (I guess you could also call it 'Sunday Morning Tea' or something).

Here's the album intro on the inside CD jacket which sums it up nicely:

"Day Parts" is a term applied to various parts of the day by the broadcast business. They have names for various day parts like "Early morning drive", etc. Back in my days as a jingle writer, I used to have to compose music that fit various formats and moods, and quite often in a very wide variety of styles. Several years ago, I thought it would be neat to have an album for different parts of the day to sort of "score our lives" like one might a movie.

There are a couple of standout tracks here. I like how each song has a brief intro written about it on the CD booklet. For example, here's the intro for 'Sunday Morning Coffee' composed by Chip Davis himself. It's probably the best track on the album, and kind of reminds me of the lovely actress Meg Tilly.

This piece was brewed on the morning (Sunday... of course) after my little peewee daughter, Kelly Lynne, was born. It was a fresh morning with yellow sunlight and the warm feeling of a new life starting.

Here's the intro for 'Sunday Sonata':

You work your job all week, you work your yard all Saturday, and Sunday... well, Sunday has already been proclaimed a day of rest, so let's not feel guilty about it. This tune is about sitting on the front porch, with a steaming cup of java, softly strumming a guitar. Or if you don't own a guitar, a Sousaphone will suffice.

I particularly like 'My Secret Lust', the bad boy track in this compilation. Heck this is how I feel most Sunday mornings!

This song is "the other" kind of Sunday morning. You've had a miserable work week and Saturday night you indulged in a little too much snake-bite juice. So here you are on a Sunday morning, taking coffee and aspirin through an I.V., thinking "there has to be more to life than this... If I only had a new sail boat... or a glamorous job... or that sexy barmaid... or... "______" (fill in your own "secret lust").

Here's another good one, the intro to 'Coffee with Carla':

This is the picture perfect Sunday morning: your significant other sits close by, wrapped in a terry cloth robe; the soft sunlight warms your shoulders and peace rises with the steam off your coffee. Life moves in a slow motion waltz, and the sleepy feeling is occasionally broken by small crescendos; the laugh from a comic strip... the ring of the phone... the furnace blowing up...

Of course if you've had too much coffee, you end up with too much caffeine in your system, which results in the hyperactive final track 'Morning Blend', the second best one on the album:

It wasn't baroque, so I didn't fix it. However, I thought that a little intermingling of styles would make this cut (cup?) a little more interesting. I ground this out on a Sunday too.

The result is a refreshing cup of musical enjoyment.

Rating: 4/5 * * * *
Inspiring and relaxing.