In 1928 a song called Mack the Knife was born. Armstrong sang it. Darin sang it. Fitzgerald, Sinatra, Buble — every generation picks it up, bends it, and makes it live again. One set of words, a hundred versions, none of them the same. The song never dies because it never stops being handed forward.
Quick story. Tom could have learned to play an instrument — picked up a guitar like everybody else, learned his three chords, and stood in line with every other player on Earth. He went the other way. Thirty years, all in, on one craft: the words. A word specialist. A master song crafter. An idea thinker-upper. While everyone else practiced scales, he built 433 songs.
That is the theory this whole catalog runs on. Tom Jensen is giving away 34 albums of lyrics — 433 songs — to countless generations of music fans and musicians. Free. Forever. Name credit is the only price.
And here is the revolution, flipped upside down from the entire music industry:
THE WORDS ARE SHARED. Take them. Sing them. Reshape them. They keep evolving, version after version, singer after singer — a living songbook that grows every time somebody touches it.
THE MUSIC IS YOURS. Your melody. Your recording. Your property. Sell it. Profit from it. Nobody can take it from you — not even us. Your words can be built on; your music cannot be stolen.
These spoken pages exist so you can hear the cadence without hearing a tune. Absorb the language with your own creativity uncontaminated — then go write the song only you can write.
And by the way — this is about the 41st entry point into this website. Forty-one different front doors, any one of which can be your first, and any one of which should leave you satisfied enough to keep going.
All of it in the name and honour of Lady Weaver — the mom of music. She taught us well.