[wcap]

Sing along songs for an elderly audience - suggestions?

My family and I have been asked to do a musical performance at an apartment complex owned and run by our church. These are sort of retirement/assisted living apartments, and so most of the audience will be quite old.

I'm primarily a fingerstyle guitar player and banjo player, and I could easily fill an hour with original fingerstyle guitar stuff (on my classical and on my Goodall), along with some more familiar pieces like Classical Gas, I Can't Help Falling in Love with You, Shenandoah, etc (and on banjo, the Beverly Hillbillies theme, and a few other more traditional pieces). I could also add in a flatpicking arrangement or two ...e.g. Whiskey Before Breakfast.

An hour of just guitar (and banjo) will probably not be as interesting to the audience as it would be to me though, so at least half of the time will include my wife and daughter. They'll play a few flute duets, and we'll all play some stuff together (guitar + two flutes, or guitar + flute + violin) ...traditional walzes (e.g. Star of the County Down, some traditional Finnish walzes, etc) and some Irish fiddle tune type stuff.

But I suspect what this audience would enjoy more than anything might be some sing along stuff. When the middle school and high school kids in the church put together an event for for the folks in these apartments a while back there was some fantastic classical violin playing that got only modest applause, but then my daughter played Danny Boy on trumpet - a much simpler piece - and the audience started singing along, and she got a standing ovation.

SO, do any of you have any suggestions for good sing-along music that might be fun for an elderly audience like this (and that would not be too hard for me/us to learn some simple accompaniment for quickly)?