Anne Ku

The song I played on the guitar and piano as a teenager on Okinawa was fun because of the catchy piano introduction that’s also used between verses. It starts in the key of D but modulates to C for the first verse. Staying in C for the second verse, it returns to the D for the third verse and the modulates back to C for the fourth verse (which is a repeat of the first verse). Released in 1971, it is Cat Steven’s greatest hit. He took a relatively unknown Christian hymn first published in 1931, and harmonized it differently, most notably using a piano arrangement and performance by Rick Wakeman. The text was written by an English poet famous for nursery rhymes, and the hymn was set to an old Scottish Gaelic melody known as Bunessan.