In perusing the list of musicians who passed on this year, I feel grateful in saying that, although I mourn the loss of all who passed from this earth in 2008 (some entirely too early), I didn't feel the impact of any nearly so much as I did for Dave Carter in 2002 or Rachel Bissex in 2005.
Then I scanned the list again and sustained a sucker punch to the gut – oh my god... Eddy Arnold...
I'd like to think I'm too young (even at the age of 54) to have been personally invested in his music – however, a secondhand ripple effect can be just as impactful. I've spoken before of my father's role in my love of music – I'd be an entirely different person today if he hadn't taught me the art of active listening. My father would sit... me... down... and explain to me, in musical and literary terms, why what I was about to hear was so meaningful – I do that today... to my kids, my friends... and anyone who, in conversation, sparks a memory/jumping-off point requiring a particular song be played, right then and there...
So it was with Eddy Arnold's Cattle Call, which I probably heard 100 times over the course of my childhood – the recording was half-ode, half-lament to the cowboy, with an accompanying yodel that was both joy-filled and mournful. Easy to visualize the “brown-as-a-berry", lonesome hero rounding up bovines – the tune would later become my mental soundtrack the first time I read Larry McMurtry's Lonesome Dove decades later...
Eddy Arnold: Cattle Call
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Thanks for the memories, Dad – hope you've finally had the chance to tell Eddy face-to-face (or a reasonable heavenly facsimile) how much you loved his tune...
P.S. I've just come from the hospice bedside of Vic Heyman who, although not a musician, can certainly be credited with major support for many folk musicians in the form of reviewing, promoting and financing various music projects (most notably Remembering Rachel) – Vic and his wife Reba have been coming to South Florida in the winter for years (at first for a week at a time which has now extended to a four-month stay) when Vic took a turn for the worse last week. Reba and their daughter Judy are sitting vigil, after having disconnected the ventilator a few days ago – I brought them tangerines, stayed a few hours chatting and had an opportunity to say my goodbyes, staying strong while there and weeping all the way home.
...which brings us back to Rachel Bissex, who wrote this song, from her final recording In White Light, about Vic and Reba...
Rachel Bissex: Just Like That
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...which segues to Dave Carter's brilliantly poetic unfolding of transition, the only somber banjo tune of which I'm aware...
Dave Carter (with Tracy Grammer): When I Go
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...which reminds me of Mary Chapin Carpenter's song describing "that thin chiffon wave", the title of which came from Tracy Grammer's ("his partner in all things") description of Dave's passing...
Mary Chapin Carpenter: Between Here and Gone
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"The deep pain that is felt at the death of every friendly soul arises from the feeling that there is in every individual something which is inexpressible, peculiar to him alone, and is, therefore, absolutely and irretrievably lost." ~ Arthur Schopenhauer
