Maalaala Mo Kaya?

Just discovered this over at YouTube. The song has long held a strange appeal for me which I could not explain, delving as it does into some primal emotion in me. It may very well have been constantly hummed to me as a baby. I've never really bothered with the lyric, which strikes like a rant by someone nursing an Alzheimer's patient. And there have been godawful covers out there.

This version by the late Jerry Orbach, who introduced the song on Broadway in 1960, is just fantastick. Perfectly modulated, the arrangement free of overblown arpeggios. The epitome of classy, almost statesman-like, as if watching Lincoln or Obama sing very well. If one had lived a long long life, settling down to the end, and this version below was the very last thing that person ever heard, it would just be apt.