dedalus_1947 | Entries tagged with music

I have a song to sing, O
(Sing me your song, O)
It is sung to the moon by a love-lorn loon
Who fled from the mocking throng-o

It’s the song of a merry man moping mum
Whose soul was sad, and his glance was glum
Who sipped no sup and who craved no crumb
As he sighed for the love of a lady.

Hey-di, hey-di, misery me, lack-a-day-di
He sipped no sup and he craved no crumb
As he sighed for the love of a lady.
(I Have a Song to Sing O: Peter, Paul, and Mary)

I have noticed an interesting phenomenon in the telling of old family memories – the more the stories are told, the less factual they become, and the more mythical they grow in the telling. This is what happens to memoir. We cobble together recalled scenes and events from the past, and then string them together into a seemingly coherent narrative. These stories make sense to the teller – but they may not be the way other people remember them. The following is one of those stories. It involves my wife Kathleen, her brother Greg Greaney, and her friend Susan (Frosty) Von Tobel, and it occurred in the Winter of 1975.

Kathy and I were married in August of 1975 and immediately took up residence in an apartment complex on Ocean Avenue in Santa Monica. It was a two-story complex with a long rectangular courtyard in the middle. We lived on the first floor in a two-bedroom apartment with a spacious living room, an adequate kitchen and breakfast table, and a large bathroom. Except for the lack of parking spaces for the tenants, it was the perfect honeymoon flat for a newly married couple, and we were to live there happily for two and a half years.

Of the many guests to our apartment in Santa Monica during those 2 ½ years, the two most frequent were Frosty, a college friend of Kathy’s, and her younger brother, Greg. Frosty had just moved into a nearby apartment on San Vicente Blvd., and Greg was attending UCLA in Westwood. Of all of Kathy’s numerous girlfriends – from her neighborhood, grade school, high school, and college – Frosty was probably her closest at the time we first met in 1973. They met at Mount Saint Mary’s College in 1968 and evolved into best friends after graduation. Frosty was a regular presence at many Greaney family events and Mount parties. So, as I was dating Kathy, I saw a lot of Frosty and grew to accept her as a friend. Greg, on the other hand, I came to know best on my own.

During my dating years with Kathy, I paid more attention to her 7 sisters than to her two brothers, Mike and Greg. The sisters were both curious and wary of me – and since I felt that I needed their good opinion to truly win Kathy’s affection, I worked harder to befriend them. The brothers, on the other hand, remained mildly indifferent to me, and I to them. However, that relationship changed with Greg at UCLA. In the Fall of 1973, Greg enrolled at UCLA as a Freshman, and I returned there as a graduate student under the G.I. Bill. Now with an enrollment of over 3,000 students on a campus of 419 acres, the chances of meeting someone you know is incredibly small (In my undergraduate years at UCLA, I would only run into former high school classmates about once a year). However, through a strange confluence of factors, it seemed I was running into Greg on campus about once a week. Both of us were college commuters driving cars to school. Both of us arrived early to school because Greg had 8:00 am classes, and I had to ensure a free street parking space along Veteran Avenue. Therefore, we both had to catch the early UCLA shuttle bus at the Veteran & Kinross Student Parking Lot. And so it was, on an overcast morning in September, that I spotted someone that looked like Kathy’s brother on the shuttle bus. I’d met him on previous occasions – at Kathy’s family home in Sherman Oaks, at his high school graduation and party, and I’d embarrassed myself at a family beach house party at Capistrano Beach that featured Mickey’s Big Mouth malt liquor. While I was trying to convince myself that the student I spotted on the bus was not Greg, he turned, saw me, and called out: “Hey Tony, what are you doing here?” That was the beginning of a beautiful friendship.

At first, we simply met and talked while waiting for or riding the shuttle, either in the morning in the parking lot, or on afternoons, on our way home, in front of Ackerman Student Union. Then one afternoon, Greg suggested that we disembark early to browse the book, music, and record stores that abounded in Westwood Village at that time. It was there we discovered our mutual love of 60’s folk and rock, and 70’s country-rock music. I was astounded at the breadth of his musical taste and interests. He would wander through all the sections of the music store looking for bargains: country, jazz, blues, and rock. He was an eclectic connoisseur of music. But more important, I came to appreciate his laughter and sense of humor. What I had at first taken as high school mockery and juvenile satire, clarified itself into a more refined sense of the absurd. Even at his most critical and argumentative, Greg never seemed to take himself too seriously, and he made as much fun of himself as he did about other people and things. We found commonalities about music, television, movies, sports (remember we attended UCLA during its years of NCAA basketball dominance), and cultural trivia. His knowledge of TV and movie trivia was confirmed when, on another occasion, he spotted me riding my Honda 50 to campus, while wearing a night watch cap, and labeled it my “Then Came Bronson” look. Two years later, after Kathy and I married, Greg became a frequent drop-in guest at our apartment – either on weekdays after his UCLA classes, or on weekends.

One Saturday in December of 1975, Greg dropped by the apartment and began chiding us on the absence of a stereo record player as he perused our combined LP collection stacked in the extra bedroom (along with our books). Although we had purchased a TV set and a couch for the apartment, we hadn’t gotten around to a stereo. So, taking advantage of Greg’s musical and technical expertise, we took him shopping with us to purchase one – on the condition that he would set it up for us. We visited a music store in Santa Monica where Greg chose our first stereo player, and then we watched him set it up in our apartment. We kept that stereo for many years after, and Greg always made a point of bringing his recommended record albums as gifts for birthdays and Christmas. I especially recall two of them that became my favorites: Aja by Steely Dan, and The Best of Earl Klug.

At some point during that day, Kathy asked Greg if he would like to join us at a Christmas party Frosty was hosting for her Mount St. Mary’s College co-workers and nuns of the Congregation of St. Joseph (CSJ). Reluctant at first to attend a party with a lot of nuns, we cajoled him to accept and cleared his attendance with Frosty. To pass the time before the party we then decided to play a new Jeopardy board game we had purchased, while warming up with a few “brewskeys”. Each of us considered ourselves masters of this popular television game, so the matches were highly competitive. One would act as the host and judge (ala Alex Trebek) and read the categories and answers to the two contestants (e.g., “He cared for a blue ox”). The contestants would “click-in” with hand clickers, and the swiftest would respond with the appropriate question (Who was Paul Bunyan?). Then we would alternate roles: the winner of the match would then play the host, and the loser would assume the role of reader and judge. We played one complete round with enough time left for one more match between Greg and me. Only this time, Greg suggested that the loser had to pay a penalty of some sort.

Discussion over the criteria of this penalty took as much time as the game itself – with a lot of squabbling, laughter, and crazy ideas. We finally decided that the penalty would be to sing a song of the loser’s choice that had to occur during Frosty’s Christmas party, and it was to remain a secret until the moment it was sung. Also, the song could not be introduced. It had to happen spontaneously; the way songs occur in Broadway musicals. I suspected this was more of a seductive challenge for Greg because it was a penalty he wouldn’t mind paying. I, on the other hand, was definitely not eager to lose.

The match proved a very tight one, with the winner being decided by the Final Jeopardy question. I wish I could remember what it was – but the upshot was that Greg responded with the correct question, and I lost the game and the bet. The penalty was mine to pay. However, I did have a plan. All the discussion over criteria was aimed at making the penalty palatable and fun. While Greg had more advantages because he memorized popular songs and could sing them, I was not altogether unprepared. I had gone through a stage of watching movie versions of popular Broadway musicals, and listening to their recordings on my mother’s vinyl LP’s: Oklahoma, Carousel, The King and I, West Side Story, The Music Man, and South Pacific. I loved the musicals, and I loved the songs, but I never thought of memorizing them until I found a library book containing the music and lyrics of songs by Rodgers and Hammerstein when I was in high school. On a whim I checked out the book and memorized some of them. I had a particular one in mind as we played our final game of Jeopardy.

I was the center of attention as the three of us walked to Frosty’s apartment on San Vicente Blvd. Greg and Kathy peppered me with questions: What song did I pick? When would I sing it? How would I introduce it? I ignored the pressuring questions and told them they’d have to wait and see. I wasn’t sure myself, so I tried putting it out of my mind on our arrival. As to Greg’s early apprehensions of attending a party with so many single women and nuns present, they were immediately assuaged. He was quite the hit of the party, chatting up the nuns and telling them stories of when Kathy was a teenager. However, he always made a point, during his interactions with guests, of catching my attention with a look. Raising his eyebrows, he would give me a questioning and challenging look as if to say: “Are you going to do it? Don’t chicken out!”

And so, in the middle of a conversation with one of Kathy’s former teachers, I said in a loud voice: “You know sister, this party reminds of the first time I met Kathy”, and I started singing:

Some enchanted evening.
You may see a stranger.
You may see a stranger,
Across a crowded room.
And somehow you know,
You know even then,
That somehow, you’ll see her again,
and again.

Some enchanted evening
Someone may be laughing,
You may hear her laughing,
Across a crowded room.
And night after night,
As strange as it seems,
The sound of her laughter
Will sing in your dreams.

Who can explain it?
Who can tell you why?
Fools give you reasons,
Wise men never try.

Once you have found her,
Never let her go.
Once you have found her,
Never let her go!

I don’t remember much after that. All the guests were quite stunned by the unexpected song, and then they clapped. Greg patted me on the back and congratulated me for not welching on a bet. The performance was the surprise of the party and Kathy, Greg, and I laughed about it all the way back to our apartment when it was over.

Oh, I could tell you how it feels
When you got a dirty deal.
I could even tell you how it hurts
When you been stepped on
And treated just like dirt.

Ask me why do all good things
Have to come to an end?
I don’t know.
Lord have mercy I don’t know.
You see
Ask me nothin’ but about the blues.
The blues is all that I was left with.
(Ask Me ‘Bout Nothin’ But the Blues: D. Robey & H. Boozier – 1969)

Last weekend Kathy and I traveled to Indio, California to hear Boz Scaggs perform at the Fantasy Springs Resort Casino. My friend Jim Riley had learned of the concert months earlier and asked if we wanted to join him there. I immediately said yes, because I’d never heard him sing live. You see, I didn’t become interested in Scaggs or his music until 1997, when I first heard his song “Ask Me ‘Bout Nothin’ But the Blues” on a mixed tape my son Toñito made for me as a Christmas present. That song, along with a score of others in different music genres, was intermixed between two long recordings he made when he interviewed me on his college radio program at George Washington University. I had flown to D.C. that Spring to watch him act in a Freshman performance of Shakespeare’s As You Like It, and was hoping to take him out to lunch, when he suddenly invited me to watch his DJ radio segment. As we walked into the college radio station (really just a cluttered office with racks and stacks of CD’s and vinyl records, and a couple of microphones), he again surprised me by asking if he could interview me on the air. Although I was stunned and intimidated at first by the request, I have to admit that I was also a bit flattered and I said yes. I assumed he would ask me predictable questions about my profession as a principal and educator, and my role as a father. Instead he wanted to know if I was happy, and then followed up by asking me to describe the things, people, and activities that made me happy or brought me joy. These topics didn’t really elicit any clever or snappy David Letterman-type responses, so I decided to be honest and answered his questions as candidly as possible. It was only months later, when listening to the mixed tape of this interview and heard the song “Ask Me ‘Bout Nothin’ But the Blues” for the first time, that I realized my DJ son had become a connoisseur of the Blues, and that he suspected I was struggling with depression during that period of time.

I’ve come to understand that music appreciation is an evolving process, in which a person needs to be open to ALL types of music, even those genres they don’t like at first. I’m embarrassed to confess that I became a music fan of the Blues very late in life. I was a rock and roll and pop music snob in grade school, a Beatles and Bob Dylan snob in high school, and a folk-rock snob in college. Except for a few Motown songs and artists, I pretty much dismissed Country music, Rhythm and Blues, Blues, and Jazz, and was not particularly curious in learning anything about them. Luckily for me things started changing in 1995 when I was assigned as the new principal at Van Nuys Middle School and ran right into the Blues. Van Nuys Middle School was a do-over for me. It was my second assignment as a principal, and I wanted to avoid the errors and mistakes of my first. I had been pretty much full of myself at that school, believing that I was the best qualified educator to decide on matters of middle school reorganization and reform, and that I could administer the school from my office, without the need of interacting with and gaining the confidence and support of the parents, faculty, and students. Reorganization did take place during the three years I was there, but it came at the cost of alienating large parts of the school community and making for a unhappy school. Van Nuys offered an opportunity to change and to actually LEARN how to be an effective leader and maintain a positive and achieving school culture and community. The first thing I wanted to do was to identify the faculty leaders and influencers among the teachers and staff, and to learn their strengths, talents, and opinions.

I met and talked to all of the administrators and many of the teachers and staff during the weeks before the start of school, and they all had a lot to tell me. Certain influential individuals really impressed me: Kandy Lundbergh, the Head Counselor; Amanda Bageri, Magnet Coordinator; Dorothy Phillips, Magnet Science teacher and Chapter Chair; Ed Shenin, Math Dept. Chair; and, Jim Clemensen, Physical Education Chair and the P.E. Demonstration Program Director. One other person they all highly recommended to me was Marty Crowe, Counselor. They raved about Marty’s powerful charisma with all the students of the school, his effectiveness as their trusted counselor, and the respect he earned from all the teachers. Each of them also mentioned that he was a talented musician who sang and played the harp (harmonica) on a respected Blues band called Shades of Blue. Ultimately, of these six educators and counselors, two stood out for me because of their unique talents and interests – Jim and Marty.

Jim Clemensen had moved beyond the typical P.E. teacher profile and was the driving force in making his department a model-demonstration program throughout the city and state. The goal of the program was not simply to teach sports and exercise, but to inculcate physical fitness practices for life, employing the newest California State Guidelines for Physical Education and the most efficient methodology. All of his teachers were on board, and they soon modeled cutting edge teaching practices to the entire faculty. Jim also made P.E. fun. His jogging activity was not simply having his students running around a track but challenged them to run and catch rubber chickens that they tossed to each other in the air, and then be able to take and log their pulse rates from beginning to end. He also developed a Circus Unit for the 6^th grade classes, teaching the athletic and finesse skills and talents one would see demonstrated in a circus – arm and leg strength, balance, and movement. Students would measure and grade their own progress, and the culminating project was a juggling demonstration. Watching students’ progress from awkwardly tossing and trying to catch floating scarves, to confidently juggling three balls in the air was amazing, and I asked Jim to teach me as well. I struggled for months, with Jim giving me encouraging tips along the way, until he suggested a strategy, he employed with his students of playing Marty’s Blues CD as they practiced. So, I purchased the album Shades of Blue from Marty and started listening as I practiced juggling. Jim was right, my juggling improved, and listening to the music sparked my interest in the Blues.

Marty was the type of hands-on, bi-lingual counselor that every school should have – a fearlessly, child-centered counselor and advocate, who also had the complete trust of the faculty. He took every opportunity to interact with students throughout the day. He would greet students each morning at the corner intersection of the school and wished them well when they departed for home at the end of the school day. It was his corner, and he was always there to speak with students – checking on their day, their concerns, and their problems. During lunch and recess he wandered about the school yard and playing fields, again interacting and checking on his students. Teachers and students always knew where to find him. After listening to his CD for a while, I finally asked Marty to become my Blues guru and started borrowing some of his Blues albums, so I could get a sampling of different musicians, sounds, and styles. I soon found the Blues to be an acquired taste that kept expanding – the more I listened, the more I liked it, and the more CDs I bought for myself – and I began hearing in its rhythms and lyrics the original roots and influences of Rhythm and Blues, Rock and Roll, Country, and Jazz. Of course, I started my collection slowly with the standard modern musicians – B.B. King, John Lee Hooker, T. Bone Walker, Charlie Musselwhite, and Keb Mo – and then began reading about the origins and lives of the early Blues Musicians. It was like a musical archeological dig, I kept discovering more and more artists with their distinctive sounds, and I bought more and more CD’s. Adding to this excitement with my discovery that when I mentioned this new musical interest to my children, friends, and relatives, they admitted that they were closet Blues fans as well, and we started comparing artists and information. I made KJazz, 88.3, “America’s Jazz and Blues Station”, a favorite station on my car radio and listened whenever I drove. Through this station I also learned that they sponsored an annual 3-day Blues Festival on the Cal State Long Beach campus every Labor Day weekend. It even seemed as if the Blues were conspiring to entrap me when I went to my first Blues festival in 1998 and ran into Marty who also happened to be there that day.

My first year at Van Nuys Middle School was a blissful honeymoon period, where I avoided hubris and my previous mistakes, and had the trust of the faculty. In my second year, however, I experienced the subversive influence and mayhem a small band of zealous parents could cause when directed by a pair of disaffected and angry staff members, the Title 1 Coordinator and her husband (This was my first lesson that it is never wise to have a husband AND a wife at the same school). The 1996-97 school year was a pyrrhic war against an onslaught of false, malicious, and slanderous charges from these parents who besieged the district superintendent, claiming that the school was being ruined, and demanding my removal. Entries in the daily journal I kept at that time stretch from September 22, 1996 to April 17, 1997 and chronicled my solitary struggles and the steady deterioration of my physical and psychological health as I battled the insubordination, defiance, and undermining efforts of these two staff members. It was a gradual campaign of slander and innuendo, which grew and grew because the accusations were so outrageous and so incredible, that reasonable parents, teachers, and administrators began wondering if there weren’t SOME grounds for suspicion. It was during the Spring of that school year that I traveled to Washington D.C., was interviewed by my son on his college radio station and discovered that he was very aware and concerned about my anxious and depressed condition.

By April of that year, I was dreading going to school. Every day promised a new catastrophe, a new crisis, or another emotional scene of defiance and confrontation with one of the opposing staff members or their minions. I could only compare my feelings to the “battle fatigue” that bomber crews experienced during World War II after countless missions over flak infested skies where they were sitting ducks for enemy fighter pilots and anti-aircraft guns. Finally, on one Friday night as I was driving home the emotional toll caught up with me. Highlights of the week’s conflicts flashed through my mind, and when I arrived home, I just sat in the car, without moving, for about 30 minutes. I felt shell-shocked and depressed. I was comatose – just sitting there, gulping deep breaths, closing my eyes, and then opening them to stare off, vacantly, into space. I was paralyzed and unable to think or make decisions. I felt helpless and overwhelmed by these never-ending problems and the constant realization that they were being taken “over my head” and delivered directly to my superiors. Feelings of failure and inadequacy welled up like a giant, black wave, and then came crashing down over me. I only had one wish – I wanted to feel competent again. I wished I could once again act with confidence instead of reacting with doubts, fears, and uncertainty. That evening Kathy finally stepped in and, by telling me all that she had been observing in my actions and behaviors, put a mirror to my face and let me see for myself what I had become in the course of the year. I wasn’t sleeping through the night; I was experiencing gripping aches and pains in my back, neck and chest which were recurrent; I was coming down with constant colds and coughs; I had stopped jogging and exercising, replacing a healthy routine with daily cocktails at 6 o’clock, and drinking wine with dinner; I had developed an uncontrollable and annoying twitch in my upper eyelid; my handwriting had deteriorated so badly that my secretary (who had worked with me for 4 years) could no longer decipher it; and I was always so sad, that not even my daughter Teresa’s animated talk after a high school basketball game could cheer me. Kathy told me that she loved me, and would do anything to help, but if I could not recognize the symptoms for myself there was no hope. I was stunned, but not blind. I called Employee Assistance the next day and scheduled a psychiatric assessment the following week. The psychiatrist confirmed what Kathy already knew and I suspected; I was clinically depressed and had been for a long time. By the time I opened Toñito’s Christmas gift in December of ’97 and listened to his mixed-tape of my interview with him, along with the song “Ask Me ‘Bout Nothin’ But the Blues”, I had already accidently discovered that the Blues were a crucial part of my recovery therapy. My prescription for health became medication, counseling therapy, jogging, diet, and the Blues (although not necessarily in that order). In effect, the Blues became the soundtrack of my eventual recovery.

I came to love the Blues because the music seemed to resonate with me during that time, and the stark lyrics from the songs I heard seemed to hold a personal meaning for me. Boz Scaggs’ rendering of “Ask Me ‘Bout Nothin’ But the Blues” was one of those songs that seemed to reach out and grab me by the throat. It seemed he was singing my life and my feelings through his words. Marty once theorized that people listened to the Blues because it was one of the simplest but emotionally intense genres of music. By shunning the complex chord progressions and rhythms of classical, jazz, and more sophisticated forms of rock and roll, he said, blues musicians were forced to make their music more compelling by playing it with feelings from their own life experiences and suffering. Blues comes from the soul, and it is the hardships of life that formed this style of music, and as such it cannot help but inspire one to feel something deep inside. Johnny Winters, another noted blues musician, once said “You gotta’ live the blues if you ever wanna play the blues”. Of course, not all blues songs are sad ones, but I think the “sadder” songs work best because they help us feel better when we are down or depressed, as I once was. It’s as though the singer knows exactly what we are feeling, and he holds out the promise of our getting better. Such was the case for me, and I will be eternally grateful of its restorative power.

Take me on a trip upon
Your magic swirling ship,
My senses have been stripped
My hands can’t feel to grip
My toes too numb to step
Wait only for my boot heels
To be wandering.
I’m ready to go anywhere,
I’m ready for to fade
Into my own parade,
Cast your dancing spell my way,
I promise to go under it.

Hey, Mr. Tambourine Man,
Play a song for me.
I’m not sleepy and there ain’t
No place I’m going to.
Hey, Mr. Tambourine Man,
Play a song for me.
In the jingle jangle morning
I’ll come following you.
(Mr. Tambourine Man: Bob Dylan – 1965)

The announcement in October that Bob Dylan was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature was uniquely satisfying for me. It finally legitimized Dylan’s merit as a writer, poet, and artist, by putting him in the same category as W.B. Yeats, T.S. Eliot, Pablo Neruda, Octavio Paz, and Seamus Heaney. Dylan occupies a special place in my life. I can mark my progress since adolescence by his career as a folksinger/songwriter, a rock legend, and finally a cultural icon. I can’t begin to measure the impact that Dylan has had on generations after generations of musicians, writers, and artists throughout the world. I hear his influences embedded in hundreds of the singer/songwriters and bands that succeeded him.

I learned to appreciate poetry in my junior year of high school under the guidance of a marvelous English teacher, Mr. Thomas McCambridge. He took our class from the staid beginnings of Tennyson and Longfellow, and introduced us to the modern styles of T.S. Eliot and E.E. Cummings. Words, metaphors, and similes began to take on a life that was more complex and compelling than the rhyming words of earlier poets. But there was still a wall between poetry and me, and I continued believing that poetry was an intellectual medium reserved for cultured intellectuals and academically certified practitioners. Then I heard Like a Rolling Stone, and poetry exploded.

I didn’t hear Dylan the way I heard regular rock and roll songs on the radio. Those songs were commercial tunes that concentrated on catchy rhymes and harmonies. Dylan, on the other hand, challenged you with words, metaphors, and allusions. I listened to Dylan’s songs and words and then plunged headfirst into their endless flow of possible meanings and interpretations. This was the kind of poetry Mr. McCambridge talked about, poetry that demanded attention – grabbed you by the throat, forced you to listen to the words, and demanded that you interpret their message. Like a Rolling Stone, and the other songs on Dylan’s Highway 61 Revisited album, turned Rock and Roll on its head. The songs were too long, the orchestration was too simple, and the lyrics were too bizarre. And yet, the album seduced countless young people into falling for the allure and limitless capacity of poetry that was contained in his music.

The Something is Happening Tour marked a coming of age in my life. Dylan was the first musical artist I heard live in concert. It was 1965, the beginning of my Senior year of high school, when a friend, Russell Dalton, suggested that we go see him play at the Long Beach Municipal Auditorium in December. He told me he was tired of my endless ravings about Dylan’s Revisited album and he insisted we actually go and hear him play. I suspect that his real motive was to involve me in a double date so he could ask out a particular girl he had been mooning over. That night was my first rock concert and my first official date. Prior to this event the closest thing to a date was visiting a girl at her home under the watchful eyes of her parents, spending time with a girl at a school activity, or asking a girl to dance at the Sock Hops in the school gym after home football games. This was the first time I called a girl to asked her out on a date which entailed picking her up at home, meeting her parents, driving to the concert in Long Beach, and ending the evening at a pizza house before taking the girls home. It was a big deal. Yet, while I can’t remember the girl’s name, I have crystal clear memories of that night, the concert, and the songs that Dylan sang.

Tom Waits, the gravely voiced, fedora topped, blues singer was the opening act. I had never heard of him before, yet his songs and lyrics, a mixture of jazz and blues, invoked cinema noire images, and scenes of billiard parlors, forlorn and empty streets, and lonely nights. He was the perfect introduction to Dylan because his music also emphasized words and images instead of accompaniment and orchestration. Dylan’s performance was divided into two parts with a brief intermission. The first half was classic Dylan – a lone troubadour on stage with an acoustical guitar and a harmonica draped around his neck. This is the image of Dylan I will always keep with me: a man and his musical poetry, singing Mr. Tambourine Man, I Don’t Believe You (She Acts like We Never Met), and Desolation Row. He sang many of the songs on, what I thought at the time, was his debut album, Highway 61 Revisited, saving the electronically accompanied tunes for the second act. Songs like Tombstone Blues demanded concentration, but his hit, Like a Rolling Stone, brought down the house. That concert, and Dylan’s performance solidified my eternal support for him and his music. At the time, I was totally unaware of the historic musical significance of the album and this tour. For me, Dylan, the singer/poet, had sprung fully formed from the mind of some rock and roll god, with songs that were unique because they were more lyrical and poetic than anything else on the radio. They were almost existential. It wasn’t until college that I started filling in the back-story on Bob Dylan.

Besides the commercial rock and roll on the radio, it was folk songs that permeated college life in the mid- 60’s. These were the songs of protest and youthful defiance that challenged the Vietnam War and the social injustices that seemed so apparent to the baby-boomer generation. It was at UCLA, in the Newman Center and the Student Union, that I heard the classic folk music of Joan Baez, Pete Seeger, Judy Collins, Gordon Lightfoot, and Peter Paul and Mary, and finally discovered some of the historic roots of Bob Dylan. It sounds naïve now, but until college I had no clue that the singer/songwriter of Like a Rolling Stone and Mr. Tambourine Man was the same guy who wrote Blowin’ in the Wind and Don’t Think Twice. While always a “fan” of Bob Dylan throughout my life, I never became maniacal about his music or his life. I didn’t buy all his records or CD’s, and I never bothered reading the countless articles and books written about him, or movies made about his life. I supposed I simply considered him an exceptionally gifted singer-songwriter. In fact, it wasn’t until 2005, when I saw Martin Scorsese’s documentary, No Direction Home that I finally got a clear picture of his early connections to the legendary Woody Guthrie, and American “roots-music”, and his migration to the folk music scene in Greenwich Village. I was especially shocked to learn of Dylan’s traumatic breakup with the folk world in 1965. By “plugging in” his guitar and playing electronic Rock and Roll at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival, Dylan scandalized the folk music purists. All by himself, Dylan became the solitary bridge between folk music and Rock and Roll, and he created the folk-rock genre that would dominate the late 60’s and 70’s, and influence musicians throughout the world for decades.

Certainly the awarding of the Nobel Prize for Literature to Bob Dylan was controversial, and numerous traditional poets and writers criticized it. Perhaps they were even as shocked as the Folk Music purists were in 1965 when Dylan “plugged in”. I was delighted. In true Bob Dylan fashion, while accepting the honor, he did not attend the Nobel Prize ceremony in Stockholm, on December 5, 2016 to receive his award. Instead he sent a humble and disarming letter of thanks to be read by the United States Ambassador to Sweden. In it, he said that he was honored in receiving such a prestigious prize and joining the ranks of so many giants of literature. At the same time, he let it be known that he never really considered the idea that his work might be “literature”.

“When I started writing songs as a teenager, and even as I started to achieve some renown for my abilities, my aspirations for these songs only went so far. I thought they could be heard in coffee houses or bars, maybe later in place like Carnegie Hall, the London Palladium. If I was really dreaming big, maybe I could imagine getting to make a record and then hearing my songs on the radio… Well, I’ve been doing what I set out to do for a long time now. I’ve made dozens of records and played thousands of concerts all around the world. But it’s my songs that are at the vital center of almost everything I do… Not once have I ever had the time to ask myself, ‘Are my songs literature?’ So, I do thank the Swedish Academy, both for taking the time to consider that very question, and ultimately, for providing such a wonderful answer.”

I think Dylan’s response was perfect. To me, he will always be the Tambourine Man, dancing and singing his songs. Over all these years, he was just a musician creating his art – writing and performing uniquely poetic songs. He wrote for himself first, and, perhaps, for an audience second. With or without and audience, he would always write and sing his songs. Perhaps Horace Engdahl, a member of the Nobel Committee, said it best in a speech he gave after the ceremony. In it he called Dylan, “a singer worthy of a place beside the Greek bards, beside Ovid, beside the Romantic visionaries, besides the kings and queens of the Blues, beside the forgotten masters of brilliant song Standards. If people in the literary world groan (at the prize for Literature going to a singer-songwriter), one must remind them that the gods don’t write, they dance and they sing.”

They erected a beacon to guide their children
And their children’s children,
And the countless myriad
Who should inhabit the earth in other ages.
(Abraham Lincoln: Bloomington Speech – 1852)

On this first observance of Patriot Day
We remember and honor those who perished
In the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.
We will not forget the events of that terrible morning
Nor will we forget how Americans responded
In New York, at the Pentagon,
And in the skies over Pennsylvania
With heroism and selflessness;
With compassion and courage;
And with prayer and hope.
(Presidential Proclamation: George W. Bush – 2002)

I never thought I’d attend a 9/11 Memorial Concert. I usually ignore all the citywide events, and the concerts, memorials, and specials on TV and radio. I was stunned by the scenes and events of that day in September in 2001, and never felt the need to relive it. I was the principal of Van Nuys Middle School on the day the Twin Towers fell in New York, and the father of a family on that day when life in America changed forever. Nothing would ever be the same again. We would never participate in public events such as sports, entertainment, airplane travel, or large venue happenings in quite the same way. Our national lives changed in the way a personal life changes after the death of a very close friend or family member. Everything is different the next day, the next month, and the next year, until the difference becomes the norm and we don’t feel the strangeness anymore. So when I first received my brother Eddie’s invitation on Facebook to attend a performance of a Patriot Day Concert on September 11^th, I smiled, thought it was nice, and put it out of my head. It wasn’t until he called a few weeks later to ask if I could help him with the event that I took it seriously. Eddie was assisting his wife, Tamsen, who was the concertmaster of the event, and needed family reinforcements, so I agreed to help. For me, the event was not about national sentiment, but rather, about family need and support.

I’ve heard and read how many Americans claim to remember everything that happened on September 11^th, 2001. I don’t. The day was a kaleidoscope of events, emotions, and scenes. I only remember:

Kathy waking me up and saying there was something wrong happening on TV.

Hearing conflicting reports on the television newscast about a high-rise fire in the Twin Tower Building in New York, or of an airplane accident in that city.

Feeling annoyed and worried about the lack of factual information, and the seemingly wild speculations being offered by the announcers. The school year had just begun, and chaotic or panic inducing misinformation would be difficult to manage without well-established procedures and plans already in place.

Seeing smoke rising from one of the twin towers on TV and believing it was simply a high-rise fire.

Hearing the report that a plane had crashed into the Pentagon.

Seeing the tape of a second plane crashing into another tower.

Showering for work and wondering what was going on in New York and Washington D.C.

Driving to school and hearing that all airline flights were cancelled and airborne planes ordered to land.

Hearing the concern, anxiety, and fear in the voices of teachers and staff as they reported to work in the main office.

Standing out in front of the school where parents could see me, and where children could question me as they arrived at school: “Is there school today, Mr. Delgado? What’s happening, Mr. Delgado? Are we safe? Are we being attacked, Mr. Delgado?”

The clearest memory of that morning was when I greeted Stephen, a sandy-haired, 8^th grader who was also a student-office worker in the Main Office.
“Are we going to have regular classes today, Mr. Delgado”, he asked? “My mom is really worried”.
“Yes,” I assured him, “we’re having regular classes today, Stephen. As the Main Office gets more information about what’s going on, we’ll pass it on to the teachers, who will discuss it with you.”
“Okay”, he said, relieved. “I’ll tell my mom everything is fine.”
About 5 minutes later, I saw Stephen’s mother approaching me on the sidewalk at a fast pace.
“I know you told Stephen that everything is fine,” she began, breathlessly, “but I’m still worried. I’m not sure this is the safest place to be right now. I think I should have him home with me today.” Stephen’s mother also happened to be the PTA president, so I knew her question and concerns mirrored that of other parents, and that her actions and opinions could have a ripple effect on the feelings and actions of other parents and families.
“Linda”, I began, in the calmest and most confident tone I could muster, “your son is in the safest place he could be right now. He is in a structured and secure location that he knows, surrounded by friends and teachers who know him, care for him, and will protect him. He’s safer here than being alone at home, watching TV, or calling his friends to find out if they are at school. Believe me, Linda, especially today, this is the best place for Stephen and all our children.” I managed to calm her down and convince her that day, and she decided to let Stephen remain in school. Many months later, on Graduation Day in June, she brought that conversation to my attention again and presented me with a gift. I thanked her, but added that I was only doing my job.

Eddie and Tamsen’s Patriot Day Concert began with a salute to the service providers of the nation, those “first-responders” whose dedication to duty and service we rely on so much. They were represented by members of the Monrovia fire, police, and emergency health providers, who, garbed in their respective uniforms, suits, and equipment, carried in a memorial wreath to honor their fallen brethren who had responded to the calls for help on that fateful day. Two original works by Dr. David Stern, a local composer, teacher, and musician, comprised the first part of the program before intermission. The first piece was called, Lincoln Speaks of Liberty: “All Men Are Created Equal”, followed by his most performed orchestral work, written in response to the attack on New York, called We Stand for Freedom: In Memoriam, September 11^th, 2001.

Lincoln’s timeless words, as narrated by my brother Eddie (Eduardo) seemed to establish the theme of the concert:

“The Fathers of the Republic said to the whole world: ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness’.
This was their majestic interpretation of the economy of the Universe.
This was their lofty, and wise, and noble understanding of the justice of the Creator to His creatures…
They erected a beacon to guide their children and their children’s children, and the countless myriad who should inhabit the earth in other ages…”

Eddie ended his narrative with this last admonishment from Lincoln:

“They established these great self-evident truths, so that when in the distant future some man, some faction, some interest, should set up the doctrine that none but rich men, or none but white men, were entitled to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, their posterity might look up again to the Declaration of Independence and take courage to renew the battle which their fathers began so that truth, and justice, and mercy, and all the humane and Christian virtues might not be extinguished from the land…”

Dr. Stern’s second orchestral piece redirected our attention to the 3000 American men and women who died on September 11.

The second part of the concert was more traditional in its selection of Dvorak’s New World Symphony 9, and it concluded with an uplifting rendition of Stars and Stripes Forever by John Phillip Sousa. Ending with a Sousa March was to be expected, but my curiosity over how Anton Dvorak’s symphony worked in conjunction with Stern’s early pieces prompted me to do a Wikipedia search when I got home. I learned that Dvorak wrote this popular symphony while director of the National Conservatory of Music of America in 1893, and that he was supposedly inspired by the hope and opportunities provided by America’s freedom and its “wide open spaces”. The symphony became sufficiently representative of America that Neil Armstrong took a recording of the New World Symphony to the Moon during the Apollo 11 mission in 1969.

Eddie and Tamsen’s Patriot Day Concert was not what I expected. I had feared a militant music celebration, filled with rousing wartime appeals for patriotism and sacrifice. Instead, what I saw and heard was a salute to the best of American values, American ideals, and American service. The main message of the concert was encapsulated in Lincoln’s words, that Patriots Day renews our belief and faith that “truth, and justice, and mercy, and all the humane and Christian virtues might not be extinguished from the land”. These are our values, our beliefs, and the basis of our way of life.

In We Stand For Freedom, David Stern reminded us that the people who died on 9/11 were ordinary Americans doing their jobs, providing their services, and living their lives. The music didn’t portray them as heroic figures, but simply as men and women who were martyred because they represented a way of life whose values and beliefs another group saw as a threat to their own. Many Americans, in referring to these victims use the phrase, “lest we forget”. I always took that phrase as a call for “justice”, which for some people is code for vengeance. I suppose that’s why I avoided going to these concerts, believing they would be vehicles to stoke the flames of revenge. But, there was no hint of anger, or a desire for retaliation in Dr. Stern’s music, or in Dvorak’s symphony – just sounds of loss and sadness, ending with a flourish of American hope. Hope that the pain and trauma of this tragedy would eventually diminish to a bearable level so we could continue forward. As President George W. Bush expressed it in his original proclamation, “Americans have fought back against terror by choosing to overcome evil with good. By loving their neighbor, as they would like to be loved”.

Some say the heart is just like a wheel
When you bend it you can’t mend it.
But my love for you is like a sinking ship
And my heart is on that ship out in mid-ocean.

When harm is done, no love can be won.
I know it happens frequently.
What I can’t understand,
Oh please God hold my hand,
Why it had to happen to me?
(Heart Like A Wheel – Kate & Anna McGarrigle: 1974)

I first learned of Linda Ronstadt’s disabling medical condition on Facebook in late August. My sister-in-law, Tootie, posted a link to the AARP Magazine story in which Ronstadt revealed that she could no longer sing because of her Parkinson’s. The news was a blow to me, and sounded so much like a death sentence that I didn’t want to read it – so I ignored it. I couldn’t conceive of the owner of that incomparable voice, who Rolling Stone and Time Magazine crowned Queen of Rock in the 1970’s and 80’s, silenced forever. I succeeded suppressing these facts until I happened upon a surprisingly upbeat article in the Sunday New York Times about Linda Ronstadt’s memoir and Parkinson’s.

The first time I encountered Linda’s beguiling voice was in high school, when I heard the hit single Different Drum on the radio. Although a new musical trio, The Stone Poneys, recorded the song in 1967, Top-40 radio stations and television music shows quickly started featuring its photogenic, standout female vocalist, Linda Ronstadt. I’d like to claim that I was an ardent Ronstadt fan from those early days in the mid-60’s, but that wouldn’t be true. My appreciation of Linda’s voice and work actually grew because of the devotion of a true fanatic, a veritable Ronstadt groupie, my friend Jim.

I’m not sure when Jim fell in love with Linda (probably as early as 1967), but it was clearly manifested by the dawn of the next decade. Jim bought all her solo albums and played them whenever our group of friends got together for trips, parties, or card playing evenings. It was Jim who convinced us to go to The Troubadour on Santa Monica Blvd in West Hollywood for the first time to hear her perform. It was in that iconic, musical temple of Folk, Rock & Roll, and Country Rock that I fell in love with her too. One had to see her to truly realize and appreciate how such a tiny, dark-haired, cupid-faced beauty, could have such a powerful and wide-ranging voice. She played us like instruments, flirted with our musical emotions, and blew us away with her voice. We would eventually follow Jim to other exotic places like Riverside, CA, and the Palomino Club in North Hollywood to hear her sing.

Linda Ronstadt 2

Although never the devoted collector of all her vinyl albums like Jim, I bought my first Ronstadt LP in 1972, with the self-titled album, Linda Ronstadt, and then 5 more, stopping in 1978. With the birth of our son, Toñito, that year, my record purchasing cooled off until 1987, when I learned (from Jim) that Linda had recorded a musical homage to her Mexican roots with an album titled Canciones De Mi Padre (Songs of my Father). This album became a great excuse to expose my son (and soon my daughter Prisa) to the wonders of Mariachi music. For me, that album confirmed Ronstadt’s reputation as a gifted interpreter of other artist’s music. Never a songwriter herself, she was able to take other people’s words and sentiments (mostly men’s) and reform them in such a unique way, that she eventually captured the real voice of the music and expressed it in a distinctly Ronstadt-esque way. Even with a song so universally recognized with the voice of its author, Roy Orbison’s Blue Bayou was successfully redefined and re-popularized by Linda in her album, Simple Dreams. In Canciones De Mi Padre, one would never believe that Linda wasn’t naturally fluent in Spanish, or deeply steeped in Mexican musical traditions from birth (she was neither). But her fluid and seductively intense delivery of Mariachi songs and lyrics was so authentic and so passionate, that millions of her fans were introduced to the romantic, flamboyant, and uniquely macho sounds of traditional Mexico.

Canciones De Mi Padre

I lost touch with Linda after her Mexican phase. I would occasionally read how she dated then-Governor Jerry Brown, was chosen as the female lead in Joe Papp’s 1980 New York production of Gilbert & Sullivan’s The Pirates of Penzance, and collaborated with Nelson Riddle in 1986 to perform and record selections from the Great American Songbook in 1986. But I was no longer attending her live performances, nor buying her albums. For all intents and purposes Linda started fading away from me. I assumed that she, like other aging but timeless singers, simply retired from touring and recording in the new millennium, married, and quietly resided in the peace and tranquility of some Santa Barbara beach. So I was shocked to learn last August that she suffered from Parkinson’s disease and would never sing again. It wasn’t until I decided to read Sam Tanenhaus’ Times article on a Sunday morning, that I found the will to think about her again, and to remember the influences she had on my musical enjoyment.

Brown & Ronstadt 1979

I liked the tone and content of Tanehaus’ piece, Like A Wheel, But Turning Slower, right away. It wasn’t the musical obituary that I’d feared, but, rather, an upbeat and positive description of an artist’s next phase of becoming. The story was a report of Linda Ronstadt’s new career as an author, and the publishing of her first book, Simple Dreams: A Musical Memoir, in September. While citing the AARP Magazine report about her Parkinson’s, and quoting Ronstadt about her inability to sing, the article concentrated on the memoir, and Linda’s artistic life before doctors confirmed the debilitating disease. I learned that she never married, and lives in San Francisco with her two children, ages 22 and 19. It also related an interesting story of Linda sharing a cab with singer-songwriter Jerry Jeff Walker after a night of music in Greenwich Village. Walker sang the first verse of Heart Like A Wheel, a ballad written by Kate and Anna McGarrigle, that Ronstadt later recorded in her 1974 album of the same name. Tanehaus described the song as beginning with raw emotions but seasoned with a metaphor – the wheel that when it bends can’t be mended – and a plaintive question: “What I can’t understand/Oh please God hold my hand/Why it had to happen to me?”
“I felt like a bomb had exploded in my head”, recalled Ronstadt in her memoir, remembering that evening.

Memoir

I found myself wondering, after I finished the story, if those same lyrics from Heart Like A Wheel, hadn’t gone through Linda’s mind when she was first diagnosed with Parkinson’s, and told that it was the reason she could no longer sing, and never would again. I’m glad Linda wrote her memoir, and my hope is that she will keep writing. The knock on all songstresses who ONLY “interpreted” songs has always been that they were not “authentic” artists; because they did not create the lyrics or music they sang. Many critics dismissed the legendary diva, Billie Holiday, who treated her voice as an instrumental part of the band, and was the creative muse of countless songwriters, as ONLY a jazz and blues singer. I believe Linda is in the same category. She influenced three generations of musicians, songwriters, and audiences, but never wrote a note or a lyric. She was an interpretive genius who never stopped changing throughout her career. Like Dylan, The Beatles, and Neil Young, Linda never stopped evolving. She was like the wheel in her song – her artistic heart never bent, warped, or broke – she just kept rolling along, traveling through the bumps, bends, and tragedies of life. Now she has moved into an art form that she never imagined herself capable of – writing. Even though she never wrote music or lyrics, she now writes prose. Written words have become her new medium of expression, her Different Drum, and I have every confidence that she will make them rock and roll.

Day after day I must face a world of strangers
Where I don’t belong, I’m not that strong.
It’s nice to know that there’s someone I can turn to
Who will always care, you’re always there.

When there’s no getting over that rainbow
When my small lusty dreams won’t come true
I can take all the madness the world has to give
But I won’t last a day without you.
(I Won’t Last A Day Without You: Paul Williams - 1972

A few months ago I heard a song that stopped me cold. The lyrics shot right to my brain and glowed, as if highlighted with a fluorescent marker. Don Williams’ soft baritone painted an image that slowly materialized into a picture of my wife Kathleen and our life together. By the time Years From Now was over, I was lost in a hazy mist of memory and emotion, remembering how much in love I am with her, and how much I need her in my life – especially after almost 40 years together.

Until that moment, I could name only five songs that I’d call my love songs of Kathy. These are tunes that instantly created scenes, images, thoughts, and memories of her. Strangely, I can’t think of one that I’d call “our song”, or “our songs” during the years we dated and courted in the early 1970’s. Oh, don’t get me wrong; music was always the background score to our times together. I remember the rock and roll, and folk rock sounds of the 60’s and early 70’s ringing in my ears when I think of Kathy: the Beatles, Rolling Stones, Peter, Paul, and Mary, Gordon Lightfoot, James Taylor, and Carole King. Music was my excuse for getting romantic, holding her hand, wrapping my arms around her, and kissing her. But I hadn’t found the lyrics of any particular song to provoke thoughts of Kathy until after we were married in 1975. The first song to really create such an image of Kathy, and my feelings for her, was Mary Travers’ rendition of The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face.

We were in the Van Nuys Tower record store on Ventura Boulevard when Kathy’s brother Greg called me over to the Used Records department. “You gotta’ buy this one,” he said, handing me a used album with the picture of Mary Travers on the cover. “It’s her first solo album,” he explained. I was already a great fan of the Peter, Paul, and Mary trio, and agreed with Greg’s assessment that Travers was their best singer. I think I paid two dollars for the record, and couldn’t wait to hear it when we got home. It wasn’t until I flipped the record over and played the B-side that I heard the tune I associate with Kathy even today. I could have dictated every word, because they described exactly how I felt when I first saw Kathy’s face, kissed her mouth, and laid by her side.

The first time ever I saw your face
I thought the sun rose in your eyes
And the moon and stars were the gift you gave
To the dark and the empty skies, my love,
To the dark and the empty skies.

The first time ever I kissed your mouth
And felt the earth move in my hand
Like the trembling heart of a captive bird
That was there at my command, my love,
That was there at my command.

The first time ever I lay with you
And felt your heartbeat close to mine
I thought our joy would fill the earth
And would last till the end of time my love,
And would last till the end of time.
(The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face: Ewan MacColl – 1957)

A few years later, I heard the second love song on the car radio as I drove home from work. Paul Williams’ The Lady is Waiting was the sign-off theme of a radio program I listened to on my long drive home from West Hollywood, during our third year of marriage. We had just moved from our honeymoon apartment in Santa Monica to our first home in the San Fernando Valley, a few months before the birth of Toñito. I sang the lyrics to that song (as best I could) every workday for one year as I wound along the curving road of Coldwater Canyon and inched through the straight lanes of the 101 Freeway. I stopped only when I got a new job teaching at Van Nuys High School, which was only 10 minutes away from our home, and ceased listening to the program. The song went like this:

Brighter than sunshine reflected on water,
The smile of the lady is gracious and warm.
Though she’s a woman
She laughs like a child at play.
And the lady is waiting
At the end of my day.

Waits at the doorstep and says that she loves me
And wants me to tell her that I love her too
If I have troubles I know she will wish them away.
And the lady is waiting
At the end of my day.

Waiting to comfort me if I am weary
Eases my mind
Waiting to comfort me,
Ready to cheer me,
Ever so gentle and kind, and kind.

Sharing my secrets and wishing my wishes
A whisper of summer is there in her smile.
Softly reflecting our love in the things that we say
And the lady is waiting
At the end of the day.
(The Lady Is Waiting: Paul Williams – 1972)

That song made me a fan of Paul Williams – something few men would admit in the 1970’s. Williams was a pop singer/songwriter, the man who wrote many of the hits for Three Dog Night, The Carpenters, Helen Reddy, and Barbara Streisand. He came along just at the right time for me. Songs like We’ve Only Just Begun and You and Me Against the World, seemed to describe the new home and family Kathy and I were just starting. It was while listening to the three Paul Williams’ albums I purchased in 1974, that I also found Kathy’s third song, I Won’t Last A Day Without You. The truth of this song became apparent to me every day as Kathy and I experienced the problems and difficulties that came with new careers, raising two children, and dealing with unforeseen emergencies. I’d always imagined that the man and husband, with his “small lusty dreams” in hand, dealt with all the tough issues, while the wife and mother took care of the children. Well I quickly learned that I couldn’t handled those situations alone, and never had to. Kathy was always with me, leading the charge, standing by my side, or backing me up. We were beginners, lovers, and parents; we were a pair, a partnership – a marriage. Paul Williams’ songs best described those times and those feelings for me.

I don’t recall the exact sequence of events that brought Kathy’s fourth song to my attention. I think it was around the time of our 20^th Wedding Anniversary (1995), when we were driving home from Northern California during a get-away weekend. Toñito and Prisa were in high school at the time, and Kathy had borrowed a cassette tape of Eric Clapton’s Slow Hand album. I became a fan of Eric Clapton in a very roundabout way. While recognizing his early contributions to rock and roll in the 1960’s, I only really started liking his work, when I heard Tears In Heaven on the Unplugged album in 1992. My devotion to him only increased when I discovered his close ties to the Blues in albums like From The Cradle in 1994 and Riding With The King in 2000. Learning of my interest in Clapton, Kathy had borrowed an audiocassette from Liz Killmond, a daughter of her friend Mary. While most of the tunes in the 1977 album were only so-so, in my opinion, the lyrics of one song, Wonderful Tonight, had the same inexplicable impact as the songs of Paul Williams seventeen years before.

It’s late in the evening; she’s wondering what clothes to wear.
She puts on her make-up and brushes her long blonde hair.
And then she asks me, “Do I look all right?”
And I say, “Yes, you look wonderful tonight”.

We go to a party and everyone turns to see
This beautiful lady that’s walking around with me.
And then she asks me, “Do you feel all right?”
And I say, “Yes, I feel wonderful tonight”.

I feel wonderful because I see
The love light in your eyes.
And the wonder of it all
Is that you just don’t realize how much I love you.

It’s time to go home now and I’ve got an aching head,
So I give her the car keys and she helps me to bed.
And then I tell her, as I turn out the light,
I say, “My darling, you were wonderful tonight.
Oh my darling, you were wonderful tonight.”
(Wonderful Tonight: Eric Clapton – 1974)

The song merely described one evening in the life of a husband taking his wife to a party, but it was a facsimile of the many times I’d gone on a date, to a party, or to dinner with Kathy. Inevitably she would ask, “How do I look?” And I would always answer honestly with, “You look wonderful!” Clapton set those simple words and feelings to music and forever memorialized how I felt about Kathy when we went out.

I heard the fifth love song on December 30, 2007, at Catalina’s Bar and Grill. Kathy had arranged the evening of dinner and jazz as her Christmas gift to me (and us). I’d been captivated with Catalina’s ever since our first time there in April of 2003, when I took Kathy to celebrate the 30^th anniversary of our first date in 1973. The food, atmosphere, and music had been magical, and the songs performed by Peter Cincotti, memorialized the evening. In 2007 we heard another singer, Tierney Sutton, introducing a song by Allen and Marilyn Bergman called On My Way To You. Until that moment, I had not been particularly impressed with Sutton, but I was riveted by the words of the song. They seemed to explain the importance of every choice and every event in my life, even the negative ones, and how necessary they were for my meeting Kathy in 1973.

So often as I wait for sleep
I find myself reciting
The words I’ve said or should have said
Like scenes that need rewriting.

The smiles I never answered
Doors perhaps I should have opened
Song forgotten in the morning.

I relive the roles I’ve played
The tears I may have squandered
The many pipers I have paid
Along the road I’ve wandered.

Yet all the time I knew it
Love was somewhere out there waiting
Though I may regret a kiss or two

If I had changed a single day
What went amiss or went astray
I may have never found my way to you.

I wouldn’t change a thing that happened
On my way to you
(On My Way To You: Marilyn & Allen Bergman – 1987)

I was so moved by those lyrics that I wrote an essay about the song and posted it for Valentine’s Day in 2008 (see On My Way To You). I thought that song pretty much closed the door on any new love songs I would find for Kathy. The songs I’d chosen over the years covered so many aspects of our relationship, and my feelings about Kathy, that I didn’t think there would be any new revelations after 40 years – but then I heard Don Williams.

Don Williams was one of the country western artists who was in the last group of vinyl records I converted for my brother-in-law, Greg (see A Good Day For Me). Although I liked all Williams’ music and songs, I didn’t pay attention to the lyrics while I converted them to digital form. It wasn’t until days later, as I was driving home late one evening, that I heard the words on my cars’ stereo:

Years from now,
I’ll want you years from now.
I’ll hold you years from now,
As I hold you tonight.

You are my one true friend,
Always my one true friend,
And I’ll love you till life’s end,
As I love you tonight.

I know this world that we live in
Can be hard now and then,
And it will be again.
Many times we’ve been down.

Still love has kept us together
For the flame never dies.
When I look in you eyes
The future I see.

Holding you years from now.
Wanting you years from now.
Loving you years from now,
As I love you tonight.
(Years From Now: C. Cochran & R. Cook - 1981)

As the words and melody faded, I sat transfixed in the car. The singer told of the youthful exuberance of first love, the satisfaction of overcoming hardships together during marriage, and the hope of keeping the passions of love alive, many “years from now”. But I was luckier than the singer. I was able to be in the three places he described. I had expressed those same “lusty dreams” of keeping our love alive in the early days of our courtship, and when we raised a family. Now, as a much older man, the song filled me with the satisfaction of being able to look back at our life together and say:

“I love you Kathleen Mavourneen, as much today as on the first day I loved you.”

Toma el llavero abuelita
Y enseñame tu ropero.
Con cosas maravillosas
Y tan hermosas que guardas tú.

Toma el llavero abuelita
Y enseñame tu ropero.
Prometo estarme quieto
Y no tocar lo ques saques tú.

Bring your key ring, granny
And show me what’s in your wardrobe.
I know it holds all the marvelous
And beautiful things that you save there.

Bring your key ring, granny
And show me what’s in your wardrobe.
I promise to stay very quiet
And not to touch what you bring out.
(El Ropero/The Wardrobe – Francisco G. Soler: 1935)

When I babysit my granddaughter on Thursdays and Fridays, I don’t have fixed objectives or goals for the day. I follow a flexible pattern that allows for playtime, exploring, napping, and eating, until she gets fussy or bored. However, that was not the case on May 12, the day Sarah Kathleen turned 6 months old. On that bright and sunny Thursday morning, I definitely had two goals I wanted to accomplish. The first was to introduce Sarah to Spanish, by singing aloud the cradlesongs I learned as an infant, and the second was to memorialize and record the route we took on our daily walks. The first task required considerably more thought, research, and preparation, than the second.

As I’ve mentioned in previous stories, I was born into two Mexican families: my father’s in Los Angeles and my mother’s in Mexico City. In both, Spanish was the language of comfort and choice. As an infant, all the rhymes, lullabies, and songs I heard were in Spanish, and I did not speak English until I had to, in Kindergarten. The words and music of my infancy were in Spanish, but that was not the case with our own children, Toñito and Prisa. Although I incorporated a handful of Spanish rhymes into their routines (Papas, papas, para su mama, los quemaditos para su papa!), they learned all of their infant songs in English. I suppose I didn’t mind this so much, because I was physically present to remind them that they were American children, born of two fine and culturally rich, ethnic traditions, Irish and Mexican. This would not be the case with Sarah. I knew that Joe and Prisa were correctly excited at the prospect of teaching her the songs and rhymes of their infancies, and had already started. The only language alternative they had was a singing “Abuelita” doll, which played recorded snippets of Spanish songs when a button on her hand was pressed.
“Shouldn’t I be the one singing songs to her in Spanish?” I found myself asking, as I pressed the Abuelita’s button. I had already started singing a few American songs to her: the Sesame Street Theme song as we opened the window shades to let in the morning’s sunshine, and It’s Raining, It’s Pouring, from Peter, Paul, and Mary, when the days were overcast or rainy. But the only Spanish song I sang was Duermete Mi Niña, a Spanish lullaby, or cancion de cuna, which I found remarkably effective at getting her to fall asleep. I was almost tempted to just go along with this lazy pattern until I rediscovered the songs of Cri-Cri.

Cri-Cri: El Grillito Cantor (“Cri-Cri: The Singing Cricket”) was the stage name of Francisco Gabilondo Soler, the Mexican composer and performer of children’s songs during the 1930’s and 50’s. He wrote and recorded countless songs with simple and repetitive vocabulary, catchy tunes, and important values. He was a musical equivalent to Fred Rogers, of Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood, on PBS, and he was equally popular among Mexican children. I remembered hearing and singing his songs over and over in Spanish with my mother as a child, mimicking the Spanish pronunciation of vowels, the rolling “r’s”, and the soft consonants. My iTunes library contained seven of my all-time favorite songs: Los Cochinitos Dormilones (The Three Sleeping Pigs), El Raton Vaquero (The Cowboy Mouse), El Chorrito (The Little Drop of Water), La Patita (The Little Mama Duck), La Marcha de los Vocales (The Parade of the Marching Vowels), El Baile de los Muñecos (The Dance of the Toys), and El Ropero (The Wardrobe). After listening to them again, and downloading the lyrics to refresh my memory, I decided to start singing and teaching these songs to Sarah at the first opportunity. My chance finally came on May 12.

When Prisa and Joe left for work, I put Sarah down and let her roll around on the floor mat for about 15 minutes, watching and cheering her on as she flipped over from back to stomach and stomach to back, while reaching, grapping, and manipulating toys, as she covered the wide area of a quilted blanket. After a diaper change, I placed her in the Baby Einstein Exersaucer for 25 minutes, and watched her bounce up and down, while screaming her delight, and moving from one manipulative station to another in a circular fashion. After all this activity I decided it was time for her to meet Cri-Cri. I placed Sarah in a swinging chair, and situated her on the floor in front of me. I adjusted the iPod player on a table to my right, positioned the printed lyrics in my left hand, and began singing all seven of my favorite songs with Francisco Soler’s vocal accompaniment.

Sarah was an enthusiastic listener, especially when I performed the songs with exaggerated facial expressions and hand gestures. I kept her attention for 20 solid minutes. Her blue eyes popped open in wonder at the pitch of my voice, and the volume from the musical device on the counter. Her lips, tongue, and mouth moved in mimicry of my facial gesticulations, until she began laughing and giggling, as I moved my hands up and down, and used my fingers to point at her head, nose, and mouth. If I lurched at her to emphasize a dramatic part of the song, she squealed with delight. It wasn’t until I tried replaying the songs again, that Sarah became distracted, turning her head from side to side, and failing to make eye contact. The Spanish lesson was over. I lifted her out of the swinging chair, telling her she had been a wonderful audience. I felt that this new language experience had been a great success, and I congratulated her as we walked around the house. When her head started drooping against my shoulder, I suspected she was getting tired and I started crooning a repetitive lullaby, swaying her gently as I sang:
“Duermete me niña, duermete me amor. Duermete pedazo de mi corazon. (Sleep now my baby girl, sleep now my love. Sleep now, little piece of my heart).
When she emitted a surrendering exhalation of breath and relaxed in my arms, I carried her to her crib where I laid her down for a nap. She had outgrown sleeping in the middle of her parent’s queen-size bed where I could stay and watch her dream. Now I had to be satisfied with occasional peeks through the slightly open doorway to see how her slumber progressed during the quiet mornings.

Thirty minutes later, I heard Sarah’s solitary murmurings and what sounded like laughter coming from her bedroom, and I geared up for the second phase of the morning. Questioning her about her sleep and talking sounds, I changed her diaper and dressed her for the day in a onesy jersey and pants. I was a little nervous that morning because I was feeding her cereal for the first time, but she proved to be an excellent (or hungry) solid food eater, and the bowl was consumed quickly. After topping off the meal with a bottle of milk, we sat for a while on the front porch greeting pedestrians and neighbors who walked by, and watching cars motor along 162^nd Street. When she became restless, I returned her to the floor mat and Baby Einstein Exersaucer for the rest of the morning while I watched and laughed at her antics.

We usually take our constitutional walk at noon. A diaper change signals the beginning of the transition, and Sarah’s facial expression changes when I place her in the car seat that attaches to the stroller. Her blue eyes widen in anticipation and she tracks my every action: backing the stroller out of the corner, packing it with a blanket, cloth diaper, pacifier, oversized, plastic chain, and rattle. Then she watches me roll the carriage carefully out the door, returning quickly to pick her up, and carry her outside. Snapping the seat onto the stroller, and arranging the toys, diaper, and blanket at her feet, we begin our journey. Our conversation is limited, and I do most of the talking. Once the stroller wheels begin rolling eastward along 162^nd Street toward Gardena, Sarah turns silent and leans forward in her seat. She alertly inspects the colorful houses, green lawns, and purple trees on one side of the street, then turning to the other side to follow the sounds and sirens of passing cars, ambulances, and trucks. The only interruptions to her visual explorations are my exclamations of “Nena Chula, Nena Chula”, which make her smile. On this trip I also brought my camera, taking pictures of Sarah and the scenery as we went along. It had occurred to me that Sarah would one day ask, “What did we do when you babysat me, Poppy?” I wanted to be able to give her a comprehensive answer, while showing her pictures of what we saw.

Sarah lives at the easternmost part of Torrance, right on the border of Gardena, and near the Gardena Civic Center, with many commercial enterprises nearby. Reading the signs, billboards, and lettering on buildings, restaurants, and even homes, one is immediately struck be the rich Japanese-American traditions that are connected with Gardena. It is a friendly place to live and explore, and I never tire of walking its streets, seeing the sights and greeting the residents. However, the best part of the walk is having Sarah seated in front of me for the entire trip. I love seeing her manipulate toys with her hands and fingers, biting and gnawing her teething rings and rattles, and staring at the objects we pass. Watching Sarah is the best part of the walk, even when she falls asleep. Rather than time or distance, I’ve come to associate specific buildings and landmarks along our route as signals to Sarah’s actions on our stroll, and today she was very predictable.

When we reached the Japanese Cultural Institute, Sarah stopped reacting to the ambient noises and the people we passed. She listlessly held her rattle, making no attempts to shake it, and started turning her head from side to side. She stared hypnotically at the lining of the seat, pressing her lips against the fabric, as if wanting to taste the material. By the time we passed the VFW Hall, near Crenshaw Boulevard, she was struggling to keep her eyes open, while flexing her hands and fingers in slow motion. Walking through the long stretch of buildings in the Civic Center complex, her eyes would slowly close, unless an unexpected sidewalk bump, or jarring noise from passing vehicles, startled her awake for a second or two. The P.E. fields and crossover bridge of Peary Middle School marked the eastern limit of our route, and the point at which Sarah was always deeply asleep. Still grasping the plastic rings she had been biting, her head was slumped down and turned to the side. I heard long, luxurious breaths escaping her relaxed form. This was the part of the walk I loved the most - looking down on this beautiful baby, so chubby and peaceful in sleep, as I walked past the long classroom building. This was the part of our walk where I could long for the impossible, and wish that Sarah would never change. That she would remain a baby of six months, so I could carry, feed, play, and sing to her twice a week, for years to come. But reaching the Gardena Public Library always brought me back to the reality that babies grew up, became little girls who would talk, read, and go to school, and then turned into young ladies who went away to college.

When I experienced these same magical moments with Toñito and Prisa when they were babies, I didn’t have the wisdom to realize that they were merely thoughtful pauses in my mind, as ephemeral as mist. In those youthful days, I just took it all in - our surroundings, their smiles and faces, and the tangible connections of our love. I thought I could remember those moments with the same clarity as the air I breathed in and held, in that extended period of reality. But those memories faded as both infants moved on to other moments in time that I also wanted to breathe in and remember. I’d be alone with my private thoughts of infancy, time, and change, until I passed the vast expanse of the Crenshaw Lumber Company on 166^th Street, and Sarah start awakening. First a hand flexed, then an armed raised, and finally her head began turning from side to side until her sleepy, blue eyes slowly opened. She never cried or complained, simply moving her eyes to get her bearings. This orientating silence continued until we reach Lincoln Elementary School and I finally greeted her aloud.
“Hello, Nena Chula,” I said softly. “You had a wonderful nap, and now it’s time to go home!”

On the journey back, Sarah’s eyes became more and more alert and alive. It was as if she had crossed a bridge from dreams to the present, and was still trying to figure out which place was real. I sang two songs to her as we walked along - my version of Frank Sinatra’s You Make Me Feel So Young, and as much as I could remember from Cri-Cri’s song, El Ropero. As we quickly crossed Van Ness Boulevard, Sarah leaned forward to reach a rattle at her feet. She held herself in that position, with back straight and head erect, for the rest of the trip, and it dawned on me that she was outgrowing this seat. Very soon I would need to discard this seating capsule and sit her correctly in the stroller, facing forward. My days of eye-to-eye contact with Sarah were fading even as I finished singing in Spanish. Sadly, I knew Sarah would continue growing and changing, and yet, in the deepest recesses of my heart, I hoped that she would remember these first six months of her life. I knew that was impossible. She couldn’t remember them as I did, but at least she would see the pictures, and hear the stories of those days: stories of her loving parents, and her crazy Mexican-American grandfather, who sang songs to her in Spanish, and took her for long walks in Gardena. Those tales would form the first chapters of Sarah’s life - chapters of language, of love, and of songs during her first six months on earth.

If you are interested in seeing my Flickr albums of Sarah at Six Months and Strolling Through Gardena, click on the links below:

2011-05-12 Six Months Old

2011-05-12 Gardena Stroll

But old E.A.Stuart, he was going blind
And he said "Before I go, I gotta drive her one more time"
So people came from miles around, and they stood around the ring
No one said a word
You know, no one said a thing
Then here they come, E.A. Stuart in the wagon right behind
Sitting straight and proud and he's driving her stone blind
And would you look at her
Oh, she never looked finer or went better than today
It's E.A. Stuart and the old Campaigner, "Sweetheart On Parade"
And the people cheered
Why I even saw a grown man break right down and cry
And you know it was just a little while later that old E.A. Stuart died

And the sun it is going down for Mister Bouie
As he's singing with his class of nineteen-two
Oh mother country, I do love you
Oh mother country, I do love you

(Mother Country by John Stewart)

I had a REALLY fine time in college during my junior year at UCLA in 1969. Everything just seemed to come together that season, a year before the Cambodian Invasion, Kent State, and the college strikes of 1970. I had committed to a history major, and my classes were great; I was involved with very interesting people at the Newman Center; I had a convenient, well paying, part-time, and full-time summer job at ADT Alarm Company; And, surprisingly, I had a very busy social calendar with friends (especially girl friends) at school, and my old, high school buddies (Jim, John, Wayne, and Greg). It was during this idyllic spring that the UCLA Associated Student Body was also booking some particularly outstanding musical entertainment for the Ackerman Student Union Auditorium. I still recall hearing the jolting sounds of the Ike and Tina Turner Revue as they rocked and gyrated at a noon-time concert that year. But they did not create the same lasting impression that one tall, long-haired performer in a cowboy hat did. On a warm spring afternoon, I walked into a half-filled auditorium to hear a former member of the Kingston Trio performing songs from his newly released record album. As many songwriter/singers of the time, he introduced each song with a story about what inspired it, and what it was about. All of his stories were about California; he spoke about places, sights, and experiences that I recognized and longed for, stories of California girls and youthful lust, of cars and highways, the Sierras, the San Joaquin and Salinas Valley, farms, horse racing, Pomona, and the L.A. Country fair. His name was John Stewart, and he knocked me out with his exuberant “folk-rock” style of singing and playing, and the vivid and memorable images created by his lyrics. Song after song just blew me away; California Bloodlines, July, You’re a Woman, Missouri Birds, The Pirates of Stone County Road, She Believes in Me, You Can’t Look Back, Some Lonesome Picker, and Never Going Back. I loved every song, and each one seemed to speak to me at many levels. He closed with the rousing and uplifting song, Mother Country, and I walked out of the auditorium vibrating with energy and enthusiasm. I felt that I had encountered my first real troubadour of California (much as Bob Dylan was the troubadour of our generation). There will never be another California songwriter/singer quite like him; he was a uniquely talented native son.

It has been almost 40 years since I first watched John Stewart perform at Ackerman Union, and last week I learned that he died on Saturday, January 19, 2008. I received the news during a weekend trip to Lone Pine, CA. with Greg, John, Jim and members of his family (see tag, amigos). I was surprised (he was only 68 years old) and saddened, but I probably would not have felt a need to write about him if it wasn’t for an email I received from my younger brother Ed, (see tag, brothers):

“…when an artist with a ‘small, but devoted following’ dies, it seems more personal to those fans than when a major celebrity passes away. Let's face it, everyone knows songs by John Lennon, but how many people know all the words to "Mother Country" and "July, You're a Woman". It will be interesting to see what will be said about his career over the next day or so”.

Those words (from a brother who was only 11 years old in 1969) pushed me past the ambivalent feelings I was experiencing, and got me thinking about John Stewart, and the uncommon relationship I have with him and his music. It was a relationship that grew beyond my first contact at UCLA, to include my friends, my siblings, and my family (wife, children, and in-laws), and then floundered on the rocks of disillusionment with his fading abilities.

My friend Jim really solidified my connection to John Stewart’s music in the 70’s. I don’t know how or when he had his “Road to Damascus” experience, but Jim became a St. Paul-like disciple of John Stewart. Although I was the first to see Stewart perform live, Jim was the fanatic who religiously played and promoted his latest albums and concerts, and purchased the tickets to watch him perform at the Troubadour in West Hollywood, and later at McCabe’s in Santa Monica. Jim always traveled with his music (on vinyl, tape, and CD), so in get-togethers, card games, parties, and visits, he would play the latest John Stewart albums. He ultimately influenced and created a Stewart fan base which included his and my siblings and our friends (who in turn converted their friends, and so on, and so on…). We all grew to love Stewart’s music, making it a litmus test for new friends and acquaintances. If my dates didn’t like John, there was no point in pursuing the love affair. Needless to say, Kathleen Mavourneen loved him, and so did her siblings (my future in-laws, and their spouses), especially Greg, Meg, Tootie, and Beth. Actually, I was never exactly sure if Kathy and I introduced her sibs to John Stewart or her brother Greg. Greg was a music savant who was independently discovering alternative and folk-rock musicians of the 60’s (Bob Dylan, Mary Travers, and John Stewart). He very well could have been the causal factor for the family’s early and continued interest in Stewart’s music.

John Stewart’s popularity among my siblings, my friends, and family, was never matched by the public. I was always perplexed by his inability to “hit it big” in the music business. None of the albums after Bloodlines had the same impact or popularity, even though they all contained some great songs. In fact with each new album release, commercial interest seemed to wane. This was clearly documented by his brief associations with many recording companies. Capital Records dropped him after two albums, California Bloodlines (1969) and Willard (1970); Warner Brothers after two albums, Lonesome Picker Rides Again (1971) and Sunstorm (1972); RCA Victor after three albums, Cannons in the Rain (1973), The Phoenix Concerts (1974), and Wingless Angels (1975); and RSO Records after a single album, Fire in the Wind (1977). Bombs Away Dream Babies (1979) was independently produced. I never knew the cause of these breakups. Was it because of poor sales, insufficient promotion, artistic differences, or temperament? I suspect, a little of each. One hint is found in his song Durango (Cannons in the Rain:1973), where he describes losing the lead role in Sam Peckinpah’s movie, Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid, to Kris Kristofferson (“Rita’s man”). On another occasion, during a live performance, he mentioned that the song Armstrong (Cannons in the Rain: 1973)was being considered as the NASA theme song for some anniversary of the Landing on the Moon, until some political bureaucrat complained that it dealt with too many social issues, and sounded critical of the government. So the idea was dropped. John was a great talent, but he was never lucky; he never got the big break.

Stewart was a great songwriter, and his songs will live forever in his recording, but he was at his best as a performer. It was hearing him play at the Troubadour in West Hollywood that I noticed an evolution in his music, style, and voice. From the acoustically driven, folk-rock songs in Bloodlines and Willard, Stewart developed a louder, more powerful sound, led by electric instruments (guitars, fiddles, keyboard). There was a lot more rock, in those country-folk songs of the 70’s, but his voice stayed deep and rich. We always went in groups to see John Stewart perform. Jim would organize the evening and we would bring friends, family members, or dates. That was the golden period of Stewart’s music, for me. As his popularity declined, his playing venues changed to accommodate a smaller, but devoted group of fans. By the time I resumed catching his live performances (always arranged by Jim) in the 90’s, he was playing at McCabe’s, a small guitar shop in Santa Monica, with a large backroom. Stewart had lost the “band sound” with its booming, electric backup, but his voice continued to be rich, and his lyrics clear and poignant. Those evenings also allowed me to get together with friends and family, and reconnect with Stewart’s music, by buying tapes and CD’s that were no longer available in commercial stores.

I last heard John Stewart perform in 2004. I was on his mailing list, and received notice that he would be at McCabe’s in April. For the first time, I took the initiative and put together a party to hear him play. It comprised of Kathy’s brother and 3 sisters, Greg, Beth, Tootie, and Beth, and their spouses, Anne, Luis, and John (pictured below). I invited Jim, his most ardent fan, but he couldn’t join us. I didn’t recognize it at the time, but his absence was an omen. The evening was a disaster. The best thing about it was standing in line to enter (at McCabe’s its first come, first served, and the best seats are limited), and interacting with the other loyal fans who were waiting. Stewart was accompanied by his wife Buffy Ford and another guitarist. At first I couldn’t believe my ears, and kept making up excuses to cover-up my discomfort; the sound system was bad, the accompanists were off beat, or they hadn’t found sufficient time to rehearse. But no amount of excuses made up for the fact that Stewart’s voice sounded harsh, weak, and strained, or that the music was cacophonous and out of sync. It was the worst performance I had ever witnessed by seasoned professionals. I called Jim the following week, and told him what had happened. I warned him that if he wanted to remember John Stewart at his best, he should avoid future live performances. I believed that John was past his prime and needed to concentrate on writing songs, not singing them.

The thought of that last performance haunted me after I heard the news of John Stewart’s death, and I felt guilty about what I had said to Jim. As I started writing this piece, questions kept going around and around in my head. Was he truly past his prime? Did he just have a bad night? Had I been too harsh and critical of his performance? If Stewart was so bad, why did he continue performing, and why did people continue buying tickets?

An explanation occurred to me at the 4 mile point of a jog I finally took to get some exercise and clear my head – old E.A. Stuart. Just as blind E.A. Stuart, in the song Mother Country (California Bloodlines: 1969) insisted on driving “her one more time”, John Stewart insisted on singing to the bitter end, even with his voice fading as surely as the setting sun. And you know, “people came from miles around, and they stood around the ring”, and “no one said a word, no one said a thing”. To his devoted fans, John “never looked finer, or went better…, and the people cheered…, why, I even saw a grown man break right down and cry…, and you know, it was just a while later that old” J. Stewart died. I suppose John would continue singing as long as people came to hear him. He was the old Campaigner, “Sweetheart on Parade”. He was scheduled to appear at McCabe’s in February, 2008. His music will never die.

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The Dedalus Log

Flights of Fancy

Entries tagged with music

Based on a True Story

My Blues Period

Mr. Tambourine Man

A Guiding Beacon

Heart Like A Wheel

Small Lusty Dreams

Cosas Maravillosas

Old Campaigner