My Pop Life #251 : Feelin’ Good – Little Junior Parker

Feelin’ Good – Junior Parker

Gonna boogie…….til the break of day

I was a teenager when I started to buy Al Green LPs. The first one was called Al Green Gets Next To You, which had the eternal single Tired of Being Alone (see My Pop Life #101) and his stunning cover of the Temptations hit Can’t Get Next To You among the jewels. Al Green was my definition of soul music back then, and he is still, for me, the greatest singer of all time. Of course I love Aretha and Billie Holiday, Sarah Vaughan and Marvin Gaye, Otis Redding and Anita Baker. Maria Callas! Dionne Warwick!! But Al Green is in another zone.

My favourite LP of his is called Al Green Explores Your Mind. It looks like this.

I look at the green cover and every time I say Al Green Explodes Your Mind in my head. Because he does. Here we have Sha La La (Make Me Happy), One Night Stand, The City and the mighty Take Me To The River, written by Al with guitarist Teenie Hodges who played in the band alongside his brothers Leroy on bass and Charles on Hammond organ. All under the guidance and instinct of Willie Mitchell, who arranged and produced Al Green throughout the 60s and 70s up until that moment when Al renounced pop music after a terrible incident at his home in 1974. Al Green’s girlfriend Mary Woodson (a married woman with three children whom he had refused to marry) threw a pot of boiling grits over him then committed suicide. Two years later, calling it a “wake up call” Al Green renounced pop music and established his ministry in South Memphis at the Full Gospel Tabernacle Church. He only made gospel records for the next ten years.

All of this is background to this song which I only heard because of Al Green. On the opening to Take Me To The River as the Hodges brothers establish the groove, Al tells us that he is dedicating the song to “Little Junior Parker….a cousin of mine who’s gone on, but we’d like to carry on in his name.” The song is classic Al straddling the secular & the sexual with concerns for baptism & spiritual cleansing in the water : I wanna know, won’t you tell me? seems to be addressed to God, but who knows with Al. For such a powerful song to have such a dedication meant I had to follow up, eventually buying the single Feelin’ Good when I saw it in a record shop in Camden Town. It is a cracker and bursts out of the speakers like an explosion of joy.

I’ve never established if Little Junior Parker is actually Al Green’s cousin. But why not right? He was born in West Memphis, Arkansas – not so much across the tracks as across the Mississippi (and the state line) from Memphis, Tennessee. West Memphis was a seedbed for electrified blues in the 40s and 50s with Sonny Boy Williamson II being the elder among a group which included B.B. King, Howlin’ Wolf, Roscoe Gordon, and Johnny Ace. As a young man Junior Parker played harmonica like Sonny Boy and he would go on to become part of the Beale Streeters collective with B.B. King and Bobby ‘Blue’ Bland (see My Pop Life #28 Too Far Gone).

Junior Parker

In 1951 he formed Little Junior Parker & The Blue Flames with Pat Hare and ace guitarist Floyd Murphy. They cut one single with Ike Turner on Modern Records in 1952, which led to being signed for Sam Phillips and Sun Records for whom he cut a few sides in 1953 including this one Feelin’ Good, (possibly inspired by John Lee Hooker’s Boogie Chillen?), the mighty Love My Baby and Mystery Train, the latter two combined and covered by Elvis Presley. They’re now both rockabilly standards. But the vast majority of his work was playing live on the radio and touring the South with The Blue Flames, and combinations of the above artists. Live R&B was very popular throughout the 1940s through to the 60s especially on the Chitlin Circuit through the southern states.

“Blues Unlimited on the road: Little Jr. Parker, standing (far left), Bobby ‘Blue’ Bland, kneeling (far left),
Pat Hare, standing (far right). South Carolina, 1952

Memphis is on the Mississippi River around halfway from New Orleans to Chicago. It is a major staging post for American music, and boasts the Stax Records Museum, Elvis Presley’s house Graceland, Sun Records, Beale Street, Al Green’s church and other hot spots. It was the scene for one of the great rip-offs of my life one December evening in 1988 when I was driving from Washington D.C. to Dallas to deliver a car. I’d just spent two nights in Nashville and visited Grand Ole Opry (see My Pop Life#83 Country Boy) and mucked about with two young women around the hotel pool playing with their (brand new!) camcorder. This is before mobile phones and so on. A brand new moment. Camcorders !! On the morning of the second day I drove to Memphis, just a few hours down the road, and went straight to Graceland and parked up in the parking lot alongside the modest white mansion house and grounds.

Graceland. Memphis, Tennessee

There was no line to get in and I didn’t get a guide as I recall. I started in the Jungle Room which was the first room Elvis decorated and furnished. It has a full-size pool table as its centrepiece, a juke box and a bar and you are reminded how young he was when he earned his first million. It made me like him more. Graceland is a charming snapshot of a moment in time when an electrifying young white boy who wore eye make up and was obsessed with music of all kinds broke the sound barrier and brought rock and roll through the colour bar to the white suburbs of America and the rest of the world. I wrote a bit about Elvis in My Pop Life #80 Heartbreak Hotel but I have to recommend to all of you the greatest book on the subject Last Train To Memphis written by Peter Guralnick which details the rise of Elvis Presley up to him being drafted into the US Army in March 1958 with scholarly detail, compassion and understanding. There is a second book which takes us from leaving the army up to his death called Careless Love. Both highly recommended.

I came out of Graceland and drove into downtown Memphis, had a look at the mighty Mississippi and then on to Sun Studios which is now a museum, and a shop of course. Bought some 45s. Can’t remember now which ones but I’d guess Elvis’ cover of Mystery Train was one of them.

Little Junior Parker is one of those artists
who changes his name on each batch of recordings it seems

Sam Phillips gives himself a writing credit suggesting perhaps the melding of the two Parker songs was his idea

Had a bite to eat in the locality and decided to drive to The Lorraine Motel across town where Martin Luther King was murdered on April 4th 1968. It was fenced off, bleak and shrouded in sadness and an old black lady seemed to be guarding it with all of her soul. I later learned this was Jacqueline Smith who had stood there for over 20 years. She used to be desk clerk there, then became a resident. Now the Motel is the Memphis National Civil Rights Museum, but last time I checked Jacqueline was still there protesting the gentrification of the area, and the celebration of death over life among other things.

I drove south to find Al Green’s Full Gospel Tabernacle Church which I did. I have to remind you that this was all done using maps and addresses. No GoogleMaps, no StreetWise, Ways or SatNav. Got there. It was unoccupied. I paid my respects, went to find a bed for the night, checked into a motel, and then went out to Beale Street, home of the blues. Vibes. Live music everywhere, buskers, neon, beer. A fella on the street asks me if I want to buy a camcorder.

Super sexy sleazy sucker territory Beale Street, Memphis

The suggestion is that it’s a knock-off, no questions asked. He was the Mack Man and I’m a fool so we went ahead and drove to a suburb of Memphis in my car whereupon I gave him $350 and off he went to get the camcorder, and never returned. Wow. What a damn fool. My neck prickled and a feeling not unlike embarrassment crept up my throat and across my face as my stomach sank into my bowels. Jesus H. Christ on ice WEPT. The other sections of this road trip can be accessed at My Pop Life #147 Lost Highway and there will be more, but I’ll just mention in passing where I ended up that night – The Arcade Diner, which is a black-owned diner in South Memphis (where Elvis Presley used to eat banana & peanut butter sandwiches) selling southern staples like grits, sweet potato pancakes, cheeseburgers, BLT etc. That did ‘sweet me’ and I nursed my wounds and the tragic loss of cash and made a plan to survive on the Mastercard from now on. It was touch and go because unbeknown to me it was close to its limit.

The Arcade, South Main St, Memphis

I didn’t visit West Memphis where Little Junior Parker hailed from and which was more of a birth of the blues location than Beale Street possibly, but it was where local white musicians like Steve Cropper, Donald ‘Duck’ Dunn and Charles “Packy” Axton would go to check the local rhythm & blues scene. They formed a band called The Mar-Kays (marquees) who recorded a steaming song called Last Night in 1961 (#3 in the US) which was released by Axton’s mother Estelle on Satellite Records – then Estelle and her brother Jim Stewart formed Stax Records named after them both, and Cropper and Dunn joined with two black musicians Al Clark on drums and Booker T Washington on keys to form Booker T & The MGs, the house band of the record label, the pride of Memphis. I am obsessed with Stax Records.

I really haven’t spent enough of my life in Memphis. Dropped in on the way back from Phoenix on that trip, delivering another car to Indianapolis from Dallas, very low on cash and with a credit card which had started terminally bouncing. I drove to the Arcade Diner and got there in time for dinner, lingered over the banana split and slept in the car outside. Woke up cold to snow at dawn and someone knocking on the car window. It was a local hooker desperate for work at 5.30am. It was surreal. I made my excuses and left, ie I started the engine and turned in the direction of Nashville.

When Al Green name-checked his cousin in 1974 Little Junior Parker had been dead for three years. At 39 years of age he had an operation on a brain tumor from which he didn’t wake up. Al Green talks about carrying on in his name, and two things join these artists for me – one, they like to talk in their records. Some of my favourite talking records include Are You Lonesome Tonight? by Elvis Presley

I wonder if you’re lonesome tonight? Y’know someone said that all the world’s a stage and each must play a part…fate had me playing in love with you as my sweetheart..

Axis Bold As Love has Jimi Hendrix muttering darkly

I’m the one who’s got to die when it’s time for me to die…so let me live my life the way I want to…

Then there’s the classic Stax cut Woman To Woman by Shirley Brown which opens with this

Barbara, this is Shirley you might not know who I am
But the reason I am calling you is because I was going through my old man’s pockets this morning
And I just happened to find your name and number

Pow. But then there’s Barry White the master who is almost always whispering sweet nothings into your ear in a voice two octaves below what I can manage. And here’s Little Junior Parker…

You know, the other day I was walkin’ down the street, I met an ol’ friend of mine
And we stop, we stop and get a little somethin’ to eat
And when I got through, I was: “Say, man, look a-here” – He said: “Yeah, Junior, what’s happening?”
I told him

and then he starts singing this ridiculous note which then goes higher and it is so thrilling as the John Lee Hooker-style guitar zips along beside him that the only word that can do justice to this pure moment is glee. And Al Green also is not averse to expressing pure glee quite liberally in his work. Bursting with glee at the ellipsis.

The only friend of mine who knows this song – as far as I’m aware – is Sir Nick Partridge who has always collected blues records as long as I’ve known him – we met in 1979 and were flatmates for a couple of years in West Hampstead with Pete Thomas and Sali Beresford. We still chat. If you are a buddy and I’ve under-rated your Little Junior Parker appreciation vibes, you may choose to comment below…

This is a joyful song. It is a song full of joy. We need more joy.

My Pop Life #148 : Lost Highway – Hank Williams

Lost Highway   –   Hank Williams

I’m a rollin’ stone all alone and lost
For a life of sin I have paid the cost
When I pass by all the people say
Just another guy on the lost highway

A version of this blog will appear in my forthcoming book Camberwell Carrot Juice.  Watch this space for details !

RB

Tombstone, Arizona

Hank Williams Sr sings to Hank Williams Jr

My Pop Life #137 : The Word/Sardines – Junkyard Band

The Word/Sardines   –   Junkyard Band

My mother went down to the foodstamp line…

1988 Washington D.C.    I was undecided.  Thinking about work-shopping my play Sanctuary for a new city, a new country, new circumstances.  Sanctuary had been produced the previous year by Joint Stock Theatre Group and toured the UK from Salisbury to Newcastle.  I wrote about it in My Pop Life #86.   Sanctuary was a rap musical about homeless teenagers and based around London’s Centrepoint Shelter and the cardboard city at Waterloo, as well as the bed-and-breakfast policies of most of the London boroughs in the mid-80s.  An American Theatre Company called The No-Neck Monsters had seen the show at The Drill Hall and asked me if I’d like to re-stage it in Washington D.C.  I said “No” of course, but later wondered whether I should investigate when they said they would fly me to D.C. to meet them and look around the city.    I arrived in Washington in late June ’88 and was met at the airport by Gwendoline Wynne and Helen Patton who ran the theatre company.  We drank, chatted, ate and I crashed.  Later I met D.C. actor Eric Dellums who was in Spike Lee’s School Daze and bought a $40 selection of go-go records, the local funk music.  I should note in passing that there was also a thriving punk scene in Washington D.C. in the 1980s, producing local groups like Fugazi and their predecessors Minor Threat, Bad Brains and Embrace.  Henry Rollins  is from D.C. (years before Black Flag and LA).  But I didn’t know about that then.  Shame – it would have been an interesting element for the play.

Chapter III nightclub, 1988

Next we spent night after night trying to get into go-go clubs to check the pulse of the scene.  Washington D.C. is called Chocolate City because the population is 80% black and often we are the only white people in evidence when we do get allowed in – I keep failing the ‘no-sneakers’ rule.  Chapter III in SW Washington let us in eventually and the manager Adolphe took a shine to us and showed me the DJ booth where we watched some scratching and I was taught “The Butt“, a local dance, by a fat boy – the current hit single by E.U. or Experience Unlimited & featured in the School Daze film.

Junkyard Band 1986

We carried on walking around the streets talking to homeless kids about their experiences.  Often they would be busking, we met one group on Capitol Hill on July 4th who ranged from 10-13 years old playing upside down buckets and jam-jars with a go-go beat.  They called themselves ‘High Profit’ and their heroes were The Junkyard Band.  The following day another young group at Dupont Circle were playing the buckets and cans, watched over by their mum.  They were called Backyard and clearly hoping for a hit record like their heroes Junkyard who’d been signed to Def Jam.  The fact that E.U. had a track in a Spike Lee joint had the go-go scene buzzing, and a few days later we went to an outside event at Brandywine, Maryland for a go-go spectacular to see local heroes Junkyard, Little Benny & The Masters, Hot Cold Sweat, Rare Essence and Chuck Brown & The Soul Searchers.   This was a roll-call of the top go-go scene bands.  Temperatures were mid-80s and upwards.  Once again, Helen and I were pretty much the only white people there.

Bowie T-shirt !

Cycle shorts, hi-top sneakers and gold chains were the order of the day. People posed for photographs in front of painted backdrops of Cadillacs, thrones and jewellry for $5 a picture.  The best one was Fred Flintstone with gold chains, diamond rings and Adidas sneakers with a speech bubble: “How Ya Like Me Now?”   Two dimensional images of wealth and status for the black American dreamers.  Another guy was selling T-shirts with crack slang:  ‘Beam Me Up Scotty‘ and on the back ‘Don’t Let Scotty Get Your Body‘.   I bought one, and for the rest of the summer people in D.C. asked me where I’d got it from.  The huge difference between Sanctuary UK and Sanctuary DC was crack cocaine.  We were surrounded by it here.  Teenagers openly flashing rolls of $100 bills.  Crack is the short cut to status and money and is inextricably linked to the murder rate.  Adolphe told me he wouldn’t allow go-go nights in Chapter III anymore after shooting incidents.  Ironically the go-go scene itself is anti-crack – a new supergroup had just released a 12″ single called D.C. Don’t Stand For Dodge City.  But it was entirely clear to me that if I decided to come back here and re-write my play,  crack would have to be part of the storyline.

But the other huge issue was race.  Fear.  Oppression.  Hate.  Only 20 years previously there had been Jim Crow laws in Washington : whites-only drinking fountains, rest-rooms, cinemas and lunch bars.  You could still feel it around the city.  I was cycling around like a naive white liberal poking my nose into communities who were selling drugs to survive, and it was killing them, literally.

One day I cycled down to a homeless shelter south of the Capitol building, and went in to meet the people who ran it.  On my way out I was surrounded by a group of angry and curious black men who wanted to know what I was doing there.  I explained that I was researching for a play about homelessness.  “You is European” one of them said, as an accusation.  Yes, I replied, I am English.  He didn’t mean that.  He meant I was white.  One scary-looking dude prowled around the edge of the circle of men like a caged tiger, a challenging look in his eye, flashing his coat open now and again to show me a 12-inch blade.  I tried to explain that I wasn’t racist – that I saw a colour-blind future.  Why the hell did I say that ?  I probably did feel that way in 1988.  I don’t anymore.  At all.  That will never happen.  I’m currently reading Ta-Nehisi Coates’ book Between The World & Me and here my current racial politics lie.  Resistance.  By all means necessary.  Non-violence ?  The establishment doesn’t respect it.  So why keep showing these 1960s civil rights scenes of black people being beaten?  No.  We’re entering a new paradigm I believe.  Or going back to an old one. Malcolm X.  The Panthers.  Enough is enough.

For some reason in downtown D.C. in 1988 this group of angry homeless black men heard some degree of non-hate in my voice and parted to allow me to cycle away.   Perhaps I had acknowledged their pain and circumstance, and they’d recognised that.  Or perhaps they’d meant no harm in the first place.

1988 was the final year of Reaganomics – the famous trickle-down bullshit – referenced by the Valentine Brothers on their seminal single Money’s Too Tight To Mention.  The Junkyard Band reference Reagan on The Word –

Reagan gave The Pentagon the foodstamp money

and waiting in the wings was George Bush Sr, about to defeat Dukakis in the presidential election by calling him a liberal, as if it was a curse word.

Go-Go was born in Washington D.C. and can be traced right back to the 1960s – the word was originally a name for a club, as in Smokey Robinson’s Going To A Go-Go (1965) – and it developed as a live call-and-response form of funk music, hugely influenced by James Brown, George Clinton, Sly Stone, Jimi Hendrix and Grover Washington, among others, and using cowbell, congas and other percussion instruments to create a more latin or african groove.  The music has brass and the word “boogie” seemingly permanently in evidence, other dance tunes are often quoted, and it is best experienced live, since there was rarely a break between songs, any talking was done while the band played.

Chuck Brown has been credited with being the Godfather of Go-Go – perhaps he made the nation aware of it with his huge hit Bustin’ Loose in 1978, but he’d been around since the mid-60s.   Other exponents Trouble Funk and Rare Essence built the go-go house on solid ground alongside E.U. and others during the golden years of the 1980s.   Come to think of it the previous piece of music I’ve written about from Washington D.C. has some of this feel – Julia & Company’s Breaking Down (Sugar Samba) (see My Pop Life #50) has a great deal of cowbell !

Junkyard Band

Junkyard Band started out in 1980 with members as young as nine playing on buckets and cans and bottles and traffic cones and they would add an instrument when they could afford it. By 1985 they were honed into a funky percussion ensemble that rapped more than the other acts, had less horns and had a defining street-edge.  Def Jam Records signed them and in 1986 Rick Rubin produced the double A-side  The Word, flipside Sardines, now their signature tune.

They are still playing together in Washington and elsewhere.

My Pop Life #83 : Country Boy – Ricky Skaggs

Country Boy   –   Ricky Skaggs

I may look like a city slicker

shinin’ up through the shoes

underneath I’m just a cotton picker

pickin’ out a mess of blues

show me where I start

find a horse and cart

I’m just a country boy, country boy at heart…

I didn’t know what was going on.  Late ’88.  I seemed to have stopped being an actor for a while and become a writer – again.  My play Sanctuary had won the Samuel Beckett Award and been picked up by an American theatre company from Washington D.C. called The No-Neck Monsters.  I’d re-written it for the nation’s capital after a short but intense workshop period (My Pop Life #137) and a six-week writing period when I lived in Adams Morgan next door to a beautiful black/cherokee mix woman called Debbie who worked at the Pentagon.  A gang of us went to a Baltimore Orioles game, and Debbie and I started to have an affair.  I noticed that one of my actors – Paul – got annoyed about this – but – hey – that’s life.   But once I’d delivered the play to director Gwen Wynne it was time to go back to England, London, and my single man status – although I was seeing someone there too…

A few weeks of rehearsal passed to which I was not invited (!) – and I came back for the thrilling opening night of Sanctuary D.C. as the play was now called – it was still a rap musical with beats, but now some of them had music too thanks to brilliant MD Scott Richards – and the final song had me in floods of tears.  It was a spectacular experience watching the play again, and a kick in the teeth and guts to find that Debbie and Paul had become an item in my absence.   Not only that but half the company had turned on me too, no doubt to bolster Paul’s righteous behaviour. Shocked, I slept with her one last time in my fury then cut and run for it.   I went west.   In a car.

Auto-Driveaway is a company which delivers cars for people, all over the US and Canada.  They need drivers.  I went to the office in D.C., showed my licence, gave them a $200 deposit and took a car for delivery.  There was a vast choice – I chose Dallas, Texas.  I had five days to get there and a full tank.  After that ran out it was up to me, and I could deliver it empty.  I quickly calcuated that if I drove like the clappers (what are they?) on the first two days, then I could stay in Nashville, Tennessee for two nights and one whole day.  I should give this trip a name because it became epic and legendary for all the wrong reasons – but not this section.  Driving over the Appalachians through West Virginia then looking down at the map to see your progress makes you realise how vast America is.  I went to Dollywood – a brief detour (see My Pop Life #46) but it was closed.  Back in the car and carry on.  Radio stations come and go as you pass through towns on the Interstate Highway.  No hitch-hikers anywhere, unlike 23 years earlier when Simon Korner and I had gone coast to coast and beyond with the mighty thumbs of yore.  (See My Pop Life #30 for the early part of this trip on the same road).  Just me and the road, hour after hour after hour.   On the outskirts of Nashville I pick up a gospel radio station.  Then a country station.  Then there’s an ad (a commercial spot in the local vernacular) for The Grand Ole Opry.  I immediately drive there and buy a ticket for that very night, check into my motel 6 and put on my best cowboy boots.

Grand Ole Opry is a nightly live radio show that goes out across the Nashville area, and beyond thanks to the internet.  It takes place in a large auditorium which showcases country music, bluegrass, folk and has it’s own hall of fame.  It started in 1928 as a barn dance and it is the longest-running radio show in America.  Elvis Presley (My Pop Life #80) only played here once in 1954 and was told to go back to driving trucks.  The Byrds played in 1968 when Gram Parsons was producing Sweetheart Of The Rodeo and got cat-called by the conservative redneck audience as “longhairs”.   It’s an American Institution.  The night I went (December 17th 1988) I was lucky enough to see the great bluegrass legend Bill Monroe hosting a segment of the 9.30pm show which also included country hall-of-fame members Porter Wagoner, Boxcar Willie, Roy Acuff, Hank Snow, Charlie Louvin and Ricky Skaggs.   I was in country heaven.

Is it weird that at the same exact time that I was buying all the hip hop singles and LPs that were released, I was also busy discovering and digging on country music? Thanks to new releases by k.d.lang, Lyle Lovett, Dwight Yoakum and Patty Loveless.  Kenneth Cranham had fed my country fever with a C90, I was buying Dolly & Willie, NWA & Public Enemy, Hank and Reba.  I was a schizo muso mentalist.  Down to the record store, come home with EPMD and Nanci Griffith, Big Daddy Kane and The Judds (see My Pop Life #6).   I didn’t see any contradiction there at all.

I didn’t care about Ricky’s image, he’s a genius

Ricky Skaggs blew my mind that night, among all those legendary performers, names who had been playing for decades – he was one of the youngest performers there.   He played a song called Country Boy which still makes the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end – his band nailing an impossibly fast bluegrass instrumental section that is quite literally Instru-Mental.   When I listen to the song I inevitably think that the drummer must be playing too fast.  He appears to be hurrying them along – the effect is quite odd.  Very exciting music.  Skaggs was at the forefront of a generation of younger musicians at the time who were taking music back to its roots, away from pop-country and the Nashville mainstream.    Bluegrass was born in the United States from musical folk roots in England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales, with jazz influences from the South.  Ricky Skaggs is a master of the genre.  He has won multiple Grammys and is a demon on the mandolin and guitar.  

I went out to Ernest Tubbs Music Store in Nashville the next morning and bought the seven-inch single of Country Boy.    A treasured possession.    I am a country boy after all, Cambridge -born and Sussex bred, strong in the arm and thick in the head, despite my education, I am pretty thick in the head.   A young soul, picking things up along the way – oh ! is that how it works?  Right…. very little natural wisdom.   Almost a naïf at times.   I love the country, the seasons changing, the leaves, the insects, particularly the butterflies, the birds, the streams, the mud, the flowers, the hedgerows, the farms, the wind, the sky.   It’s my natural habitat.   I am a country boy at heart!    Take it away Ricky.

This is how I first experienced ‘Country Boy’ – live :

My Pop Life #6 : She Is His Only Need – Wynonna Judd

She Is His Only Need  – Wynonna Judd

…he’d heard about something she wanted…

Late 80s, somewhere in Acton rehearsal rooms, fellow actor Kenneth Cranham gives me a C90 cassette he’d made up of his favourite country songs.  He’d caught me listening to Dwight Yoakum and Lyle Lovett on an NME “New Country” giveaway cassette and asked if I knew Nanci Griffith ? Patti Loveless? The Judds ?  This was the 3rd job I’d done with Ken in a short space of time, and we’d become a gang, and subsequently he’d turned me onto so much great music, mainly country. He is an addictive aficionado like me.  I loved The Judds on first listen.  A mother and daughter team, strong clean harmonies on beautiful songs like Drops Of Water or Why Not Me?  But this is the daughter Wynonna going solo in 1992 – the year we got married – with a Dave Loggins song.

Her mother Naomi had been diagnosed with Hepatitus C, and retired.  It’s a special song, a typical country vignette of a two lives intertwined in two verses and a chorus – a simple story of love and family.  It touches me deeply : there’s a moment in the second verse which goes from her first pregnancy to old age in a few graceful lines – brilliant lyrics can do this :

Bonnie worked until she couldn’t tie her apron
Then stayed at home and had the first of two children
And my, how the time did fly
The babies grew up and moved away
Left ’em sitting on the front porch rocking
And Billy watching Bonnie’s hair turn gray

but really you have to hear the melody to get the emotional heft of those few lines.  The chorus is the thing though :

He’d heard about something she wanted – and it just had to be found…

This has become a catchphrase for Jenny and I, we use it as a joke, as a tactic, as a sincere explanation. It’s woven into our relationship just like this song.  Sometimes the little things are the things.  It’s a song about love.