23 March, 1998
HOUSTON
I love Country Music, and have for quite some time. There was once a time when this was just not so - - - or so I thought!
In the early 1960's, I did not put music into categories, as people love to do today. I listened and either liked or disliked an individual song, not particularly caring about what genre it fit into, or even about its popularity. I liked it, and that was that!
The late 1950's and early 1960's was a time in which several types of music were popular simultaneously: Bee-Bop, Rock-&-Roll, orchestral music (later called "Elevator Music"), jazz, folk music, and Country Music - (Back then it was called "Country & Western" or even "Hillbilly Music.")
My first feelings about Country Music became manifest around 1963, but for the wrong reasons. I was 12 years old then. There was a program on the TV called "The Grand Ol' Opry." I never watched it. In fact, I HATED it with a passion, simply because in order to make way for this "new" show, one or two of my favorite shows were cancelled, and I held these lousy Hillbillies culpable. Every Saturday afternoon, when the program began, I would resent the fact that they did away with something I liked and substituted this... I-don't-know-what!
Then I heard the news about an airplane crash in which a Grand Ol' Opry star was killed. Shortly thereafter another air disaster was to take yet another Grand Ol' Opry member.
"HA!" I thought, "Maybe they'll take that darned old program off the air, now!"
As I said, I was 12 years old, and had never heard the songs of Patsy Cline or Jim Reeves.
Not too very long after the second crash, I began to hum a random tune. My mother happened to hear me hum it, and asked me where I had heard it. I explained that I always had this in the back of my head, but that I had no idea just where it came from - of when I had heard it before.
She explained: "That song is called 'The Wreck of the Old 97.' It's a hillbilly song your Dad used to sing to you when you were just little baby!"
Curious, now, I asked my mother about this kind of music, and she sang me a funny song:
"Tell me will ya, Darlin', why you look so bad tonight;
Those bags around your eyeballs which is red in stedder white!"
She sang me some more funny Hillbilly songs by a guy named Little Jimmy Dickens and others. Now there were sad, melancholy songs like: "I Got Tears In My Ears While Lying On My Back in My Bed While I Cry Over You!", "Take an Ol' Cold 'Tater and Wait," Does Your Chewing Gum Lose Its Flavor on the Bedpost Overnight?" and "Detour! There's a Muddy Road Ahead, Detour!"
Now I have to say that I walked away from that musical conversation a bit confused, to say the least. I was not at all convinced that this Country Music thing was for me. Undaunted, I explored further: I took my grandfather's Sony transister radio that I used to use to listen to short-wave broadcasts, and found a local Country Music station.
I listened to the music, DJ'd by a guy named Bill Carroll, for a few minutes, and then I got this brilliant idea to call him up and request a song. Where I got the courage to do that, I'll never know! Of course, I asked him to play "The Wreck of the Old 97."
"I just played it!" he answered incredulously.
My heart sank, because I had just tuned in, and he had already played the one song I wanted to hear. I told him all about the song and how I had hoped to hear it again, after so long. The disappointment must have come through the phone line loud and clear that day. I was just saying goodbye, when he interrupted me and said: "Look, I'll get in trouble if I play the same song in the same hour; but keep listening, and I'll play it for you the next hour. How 'bout that?"
Sure enough he DID! I had a strange feeling come over me as I heard that old melody drift over the airwaves. I found out then that, whatever this music was, it was a part of me somehow - and always has been.
From then on, I was hooked! I asked my mother to buy a phonograph, and that day I bought my very first records, 45 rpm's. Shortly afterwards, I bought a bluegrass banjo album, and added several more 45's to my little collection. One of the songs I bought was one by Jim Reeves.
I bought yet another banjo record, and enjoyed listening to the bluegrass music as I ate Cheerios in the morning before going to school. I even brought Roger Miller's "Chug-a-Lug" to a school party! Everything went well until the record began to play. Everybody immediately stopped dancing and talking - began to fuss and complain, and demanded that the offending vinyl be taken off immediately!
"Who was the IDIOT that put that record into the stack?" was the question that I heard someone ask. I never did admit to doing the foul deed, and quietly slipped the offensive disc back into my schoolbag, keeping a very low profile for the rest of the party.
I learned that Country Music wasn't cool. I didn't care!
Later I began to increase my collection, but, understandably, kept this interest to myself. In fact, the very few times my musical tastes were discovered by any of my contemporaries, I was immediately ridiculed.
My grandfather did not laugh me, even though he did not LOVE the music. He even took me to a Country Music Spectacular concert in New Orleans in March, 1965. At least my family didn't make fun.
The years passed, and my audio collection grew. Eventually, a strange thing happened: in the 1980's, after a series of blockbuster movies and "crossover" hits put Country Music on center-stage, Country Music came of age. It was COOL!! That meant nothing to me, except that I could hear it in public without having to wear earphones.
It was, though, poetic justice, because there was a song: "I Was Country, When Country Wasn't Cool." THAT DEFINITELY was a song for me!
And, oh, yes - there was even more "poetic justice" for me, as well, for, among my all-time favorite singers are the late, great Patsy Cline, and Gentleman Jim Reeves, the two singers whose deaths I mentioned before. It is fitting that I should be a fan of those two artists who were taken so soon from us.
As for the "Wreck of the Old 97," a few years before he passed away, I got back in touch with my Dad, who, I was delighted to hear, played COUNTRY and BLUEGRASS music!! One day on a visit to his home, he was playing the guitar, and I asked him if he knew "The Wreck of the Old 97?"
His china-blue eyes lit up, and a smile flashed wide over his face as he answered: "Son, I used to sing that song to you, nearly every day, when you were a baby!" and with that, with almost childish glee, he strummed and picked on his guitar, and sang that old railroad ballad I had not heard in over twenty years. Those shiny steel strings spoke to me, and Dad sounded better than any singer I had ever heard before. That's because he was singing from the heart!
We had at last come full-circle, Dad and I. We two, who had lost contact with each other so many years ago, now communicated through a song I last heard in my infancy. The years and the miles had not succeeded in erasing that which was a part of both of us.
He played the Dobro, and made it sing! I accompanied him on autoharp, and it was as if we had never been apart. In the corner of his eye was the trace of a tear. Maybe it was a tear of sadness - thinking about what was lost. I'd like to think it was a tear of joy, at what was found.
Nothing is truly lost, if it's carried within the heart.
I'll always remember the few but happy times Dad and I played music together.
I think of him every now and then, especially when I play an Emmylou Harris song, about the Wildwood Flower:
"In the end he knew it was his finest hour,
Now all we have left of him... is a song."
Here is a link to a video of him singing!!!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zla1qxNIoLg
This is an awesome story brother. As I read it, it came to life. It brought tears of joy for that little boy and now grown man. So many emotions through a song. I'm so happy that you have them too! As for me, my boots will always be walkin~~
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