Dolly Parton: Daddy's Working Boots
[purchase]
A perfect example of a good old Christian country song: an affectionate celebration of the working man, told through a focus on the trappings of the blue-collar life and the ways in which work itself can be a kind of love, complete with a confident plea for Daddy's heavenly reward. First released way back in '73, Dolly's young voice is sweet and clear, and the choir of angels that joins her for the final verse is a perfect touch.
Michael Smith: I Brought My Father with Me
[purchase] on the Time CD
Catie Curtis: Dad's Yard
[purchase]
Todd Snider: Missing You
[purchase]
I am still in the small town of Flowery Branch, Georgia - what was to be a two-week visit (from my home in Florida) with my mom has turned indefinite. We have begun home hospice, and I have chosen to be the primary caregiver - we are taking this One Day At a Time... the process could be days/weeks/months... and I am exactly where I need to be...
I am reminded of how different this is from my father's passing, almost 14 years ago... on my 19th wedding anniversary – I had not spoken to him in the 3 years before his death because he had chosen to take his life in a direction I did not wish to follow. I felt no guilt about our diverging paths, only regret that there was a finality to whatever possibilities I may have envisioned for our future - on the day after his memorial service, as my mother, brother, sister and I drove up to Anna Ruby Falls to scatter his ashes, we took turns telling stories of our interactions with him over the years... and it was like putting together the pieces of a puzzle, as we all had such different, and sometimes conflicting, memories to share.
My father is so much in me: my love of music, my affinity for the written word and my appreciation of humor, especially a good pun - on the dark side, I have also inherited his qualities of perfectionism which leads to procrastination which leads to paralysis.
My time, energy and music collection are limited these days... but my memories are boundless and my legacy is dear - thanks to Michael, Catie and Todd for sharing theirs with us...
Kristina Olsen: My Father‘s Piano
[purchase]
Sometimes you don’t learn to appreciate a father until after he is gone. The narrator of My Father’s Piano has that piano to remember her father by. And it represents all of his best qualities in her memory of him. I put this song in a mix of songs I made for me and my wife, which I called Bittersweet. These are songs of warm nostalgia, tinged with regret for those which are gone forever. There are many songs like this, but it is the mark of a great songwriter to capture these conflicting emotions well. Kristina Olsen has done that here.
My first acquaintance with Kristina Olsen was at a small folk and folk dance festival held outside of Boston. (Hey, Boyhowdy, ever heard of NEFFA?) She presented a workshop on unusual musical instruments from Victorian England. Olsen had several of these with her, and could play all of them.
Andy M Stewart and Manus Lunny: Take Her in Your Arms
[purchase]
Songwriters as a group seem to have uneasy relationships with their fathers. To start with, there simply are far more songs about mothers. But, beyond that, do you want to give your father a mix for Father’s Day that includes a classic about how he never had enough time for his son, (Cat’s in the Cradle)? Or how he wasn’t there at all, (Papa Was a Rolling Stone)? You see the difficulty.
Even Take Her in Your Arms is not a thank you for a father’s good advice. Rather it is a comic portrait of a lovesick young man who should have asked his father’s advice, but never did.
When you hear about Celtic folk music, you usually hear about how wonderful Irish music is. And it is. But the Scots more than hold their own. Andy M Stewart and Manus Lunny were in the “Scottish Supergroup” Silly Wizard. Since then, they have continued to produce fine work, both as solo artists and as a duo.
Paul Simon: Father and Daughter
[purchase]
This one triggers a specific memory for me.
First, let me say that I am one of those people who hates sing-alongs. I always feel that I’m going to get it wrong. So I don’t sing.
But when my wife and I took my daughter to see The Wild Thornberry Movie in the theater, something came over me. When the story is over, a song plays while the end titles roll. In The Wild Thornberry Movie, that song is Paul Simon’s Father and Daughter. In the theater, I was hearing it for the first time. By the time the chorus repeated for the first time, I had turned to my daughter, and was singing it to her. The magic carried through to the end of the song and a little beyond. That moment is now my reminder, if I ever need it, of just how much I love my daughter. The years that have passed since then have not changed that.
Bonus trivia fact: Nigel Thornberry was voiced, in the movie and on television, by Tim Curry.
Utah Phillips: Daddy, What‘s a Train?
[purchase]
I wasn’t expecting to get to post the transitional tune this week, but here it is.
I am 43 years older than my son, (now 5). So I grew up on another planet. This was a world where TV signals came through the air, and were caught by something called an antenna. After a storm or a windy day, my father would go up on the roof, and turn the antenna back to its optimal position. A computer was a machine that took up an entire room, and only institutional users had them.
And, in the next town over, there was a railroad track. I always felt lucky when we happened to go through that town as one of those impossibly long freight trains came through.
A few years ago. they shut down that line. They pulled up the tracks, they even took out all of the railroad trestles. Now, if you didn’t know where the tracks used to be, you could never tell. Going back before my time, I imagine this happened a lot. Air freight came in, and it must have seemed like all freight shipping by train would become a thing of the past. And that would be around the time that Utah Phillips wrote this song.