"I scream, you scream, we all scream for ice cream!" 🍦 July is National Ice Cream Month and that quote is actually the title of one of the pieces in this month's sightreading handout*. It was written by the lyricist Howard Johnson, sadly no relation to the restaurateur Howard Johnson who made "28 Flavors" of ice cream famous. You might not recognize its tune when you sightread it, except for the four bars in common with "God Bless America" published a decade later.
The other pieces this month are all played by ice cream trucks, but otherwise have nothing to do with ice cream. One (familiar on the Front Range) is the sad story of an Indian maid whose brave is killed in battle. The others are an American drinking song and a popular 19th century English dance tune with inscrutable lyrics. You'll recognize all three tunes. They also have obvious chords (C, F and G) for doing chord melody.
To cool off, imagine playing on this fretboard of frozen Neapolitan ice cream. Where would you play? Are you strictly a vanilla sightreader? Well now's your chance to break out of 1st position and bring some new flavors to your sightreading. All four pieces this month are easy to play in chocolate (7th position) as well as vanilla, and the fourth piece can easily bridge across chocolate into strawberry (part of 9th position). FYI, the cherry is at high C (8th fret) because "C" stands for "Cherry". So lick off the whipped cream and get sightreading up where it gets tasty!