Mr. Rogers was a fully-qualified Presbyterian minister. He was a televangelist who didn't directly mention Jesus Christ as his savior. One of the precepts of h

Mr. Rogers was a fully-qualified Presbyterian minister. He was a televangelist who didn't directly mention Jesus Christ as his savior. One of the precepts of hymns and sung texts is that the music imparts the mood and emotion, rather than the speaker imposing his own interpretation on the text. Even if someone chants recto tono, the mode/key will elicit a less personal and more universal feeling to the words. Mr. Rogers was still part of that transition from vaudeville and live musical theater. My childhood experience of his musicality was that it was sometimes so well-integrated that we hardly noticed he was singing, or accompanied, and sometimes it took center stage, such as when the trolley bell sounded and the piano imitated its travel along the tracks. All that insight from this video, such as the improvisation and originality of each recording, the mature nature of the arrangements rather than a "childish" plinking of the keys, that's all a confirmation of my feelings about Mr. Rogers being an excellent father figure and an icon of what mass media can do right.