{"id":3050,"date":"2015-11-12T16:35:03","date_gmt":"2015-11-13T00:35:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/classicalguitarmagazine.com\/?p=3050"},"modified":"2015-11-12T16:38:04","modified_gmt":"2015-11-13T00:38:04","slug":"throwback-thursday-mason-williams-and-harpist-deborah-henson-conant-perform-classical-gas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/classicalguitarmagazine.com\/throwback-thursday-mason-williams-and-harpist-deborah-henson-conant-perform-classical-gas\/","title":{"rendered":"Throwback Thursday: Mason Williams and Harpist Deborah Henson-Conant Perform &#8220;Classical Gas&#8221;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/0vXtywOlayc\" width=\"780\" height=\"439\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>OK, classical-guitar fans, this is no time to be snobby. Maybe you think that <strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.masonwilliams-online.com\/\" target=\"_blank\">Mason Williams<\/a><\/strong>&#8216; mega-popular instrumental hit song from 1968, &#8220;Classical Gas&#8221; (#3 on the U.S. pop charts!) is cheesy or somehow undignified. All those trombones! The middle-of-the-road strings! But the fact is, the tune was extremely catchy and it put classical-guitar in the spotlight in a way that few compositions ever had. At the time, Williams was head writer for <em>The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour<\/em> (a very hip show on American TV in the late &#8217;60s), and the piece premiered on that program before an audience of millions. It became a true phenomenon, earned three Grammy Awards, and made Williams a star. Strip away the<em> perhaps<\/em> over-ripe orchestrations, and you&#8217;re left with a lovely and quite original piece, as shown by this version from 2012 performed by Williams and harpist <strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.hipharp.com\/\" target=\"_blank\">Deborah Henson-Conant.<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>OK, classical-guitar fans, this is no time to be snobby. Maybe you think that Mason Williams&#8216; mega-popular instrumental hit song from 1968, &#8220;Classical Gas&#8221; (#3 on the U.S. pop charts!) is cheesy or somehow undignified. All those trombones! The middle-of-the-road strings! But the fact is, the tune was extremely catchy and it put classical-guitar in the spotlight in a way that few compositions ever had. At the time, Williams was head writer for The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour (a very [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":3052,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3050","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/classicalguitarmagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/11\/throwback-thursday-mason-williams-and-harpist-deborah-henson-conant-perform-8220-classical-gas-8221.jpg?fit=1920%2C1080&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/classicalguitarmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3050","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/classicalguitarmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/classicalguitarmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/classicalguitarmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/classicalguitarmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3050"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/classicalguitarmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3050\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/classicalguitarmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3052"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/classicalguitarmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3050"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/classicalguitarmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3050"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/classicalguitarmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3050"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}