A reader responded to my last post on composers and writers by calling attention to a YouTube video (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jjXyqcx-mYY) that treated Sen. Barack Obama’s “Yes, We Can” speech in Nashua, New Hampshire as a song.

The video was amusing to watch, but at the same time it gave me pause. It reminded me that back in the 1960s, Sammy Davis Jr. had a hit song called, “Yes, I Can.” I’m rather surprised that the media hasn’t pointed the similarity between the two refrains.

My memory of the song was rather hazy, so I looked up the lyrics, and found them to be astonishingly topical. For those who don’t remember him in his heyday, Sammy Davis Jr. (1925-1990) was a slender black man with a velvet voice and a lot of animation.

But read the lyrics and see if they if they don’t remind you of someone else:

Yes, I can, suddenly
Yes, I can …

I was just born today,
I can go all the way.
Yes, I can.

Will Senator Obama go all the way? That is the question of the hour.