♫ Smile When The Raindrops Fall (The Beau Hunks)

This song makes me super-happy every time it comes up on my "Pulserate Neutral" playlist.

It's a tune that frequently shows up in Hal Roach comedies but is associated most closely with Lauren and Hardy shorts. Here it is, in 1933's "Busy Bodies":

How can this song and this kind of memory not put you in a better mood? Especially if you're taking your daily constitutional, and you're trying not to let on (to yourself as much as to any outside observer) that you're wet and miserable and you're feeling kind of stupid for not having checked the weather?

It's one of many songs in that playlist that has a Walter Mitty sort of effect on me when it comes around on shuffle play. I don't suddenly start walking like Stan Laurel or Oliver Hardy. But I feel as though things are quite pleasant, that Comedy is about to ensure, and I'll come out of it OK no matter what happens.

First and foremost, though, it's just a damned lovely little tune. And this orchestration might have been lost, if not for the musical collective known as the Beau Hunks Orchestra.

They're a group of musicians who painstakingly reverse-engineered classic movie scores that were never originally considered to be worth preserving. There were no recorded masters, and the written orchestrations weren't filed away anywhere.

Okay, arguably, it's not as though the music that backed the "Our Gang" comedies is up there with John Williams' score for "The Empire Strikes Back." But (1) who's to say, really? and (2) even if it isn't, it doesn't make any difference. It's still art! And every time a piece of art is lost forever, our culture is diminished. Thank Heavens that there are people out there who are determined to claw stuff back from the precipice of oblivion.

(…even when they bend copyright laws in the process. If you're gonna save the Ark of the Covenant, you gotta shoot a few Nazis. That's fair.)

The Beau Hunks describe themselves as a "Documentary Orchestra." They strive for note-perfect accuracy and try to use period-correct instruments. The commitment even extends to the engineering of their studio recordings. All of the musicians sat in a circle around a single microphone…just like the Hal Roach Studio orchestra would've done, back in the day. This track feels "exactly right."

"Smile When The Raindrops Fall" was a popular tune in its day and there are plenty of contemporary recordings. I'm glad that there's this IEEE-standard edition. This is the recording that'll put me in that beaten-up Model-T as it shambles through an as-yet-undeveloped residential LA community. This is the one that compels my to daintily brush a little dust off the steering wheel and nod cheerfully at my hetero life parter over there on the opposite seat.

Watch the Beau Hunks in concert. They play stuff from their whole catalogue.