Meet Chris Yost
My Life & Times
For most of my life, I have been interested in popular music from the 1920,s, 30,s 40,s and 50,s. This was mainly due to the influence of my parents. At age seven , I played Frank Sinatra and Nat “King” Cole records that my dad purchased, and I listened to the records my mother bought that contained the musical soundtrack of “The Sound of Music and “Oklahoma.” When I was ten, I saw “The Jolson Story,” during a “Cable Vision” promotion week, and I was forever after captivated by that magnetic personality, with his unique style and voice. A few months later, for my Dad’s “Father’s Day” present I got him the album of Jolson’s recordings from the 1920’s called “The Vintage Jolson.” These were songs neither my Dad or I had heard in “The Jolson Story.” Some of them were written by the great songwriting team Of De Sylva, Brown and Henderson. In short order, I Was memorizing and singing these songs, along with the more well known songs of “The Jolson Story.”
When I entered High school, I did Jolson impersonations to the delight and applause of my fellows student’s, half of whom did not know who Al Jolson was. This allowed me to bring to bear my unique personality and talents to my fellow students, and I was thereby appreciated, instead of bullied, as I had been in Junior High and Grade School.
My interest in classic movies came later in life. For one thing, during most of my Childhood, there were no classic movie channels where I lived, and no home video. I learned about most classic movies during my childhood from books in the school library that focused on classic movies from the silent through the mid-60’s. Since the advent of home video, I have made watching classic movies my hobby, and over the past 40 years I have watched hundreds of classic movies, of all genres, from 1903 to 1967. My special interest though is classic musicals of the 1920’s through the 1960’s, Film Noir from the 1940’s and 1950’s and World War I movies.
For fifty years I have sung with various Church groups, and school choirs, but my favorite time was in High School, singing songs from Folk to Songs from the Big Band era. It was only at age fifty, that I joined a group of singers age fifty and up called “Entertainment Explosion,” which is a non-profit group amateur group which raises money for charity, singing mainly at retirement homes, but also performing at larger venues several times a year like “The Farmer’s Market” and “Lake Fair”, a major event in Olympia Wahington. My specialty with this group was doig imitations of Al Jolson. After the long Pandemic reduced my performances with this group, I have decided to put my singing on U-Tube.I do this with no financial compensation in mind, but rather as the old saying goes on the principle of “art for Art’s sake. I am also setting up a blog in which I intend to talk about various classic movies, on TCM, and music that is considered part of the American songbook.