Blog 206 – 01.13.2016

I mentioned in a previous blog that I love to sing, do Karaoke every chance I get, and that I recently recorded a CD. My former wife, Sandra, and my daughter Emily, by her and now deceased, taught me that the emotion behind the voice is what touches. It is the “lounge singer,” the chanteuse, that people long to hear.

David Allan Coe has a song about getting a ride from Alabama to Nashville from the ghost of Hank Williams called The Ride and he quotes the ghost in the chorus of the song, “He said, Hey, drifter, can you make folks cry when you play and sang? Have you paid the dues? Can you moan the blues?  Can you bend them guitar strings? He said, Mister, can you make folks feel what you feel inside? But If you’re big star bound let me tell you it’s a long hard ride.”

I may never be a big star or be able to bend those guitar stings but I think the real key to a successful song is making folks feel what you feel inside, making a joyful noise or moaning the blues both of which can touch and lift the heart of your listeners.

Music not only, “Has charms to soothe the savage beast,” but music has an uncanny knack of slipping by our “rational mind” to our subconscious mind that “hopes all things, believes all things” I have not been a great country music fan most of my life. But you cannot grow up in Tennessee without hearing a lot and learning a lot about the country music industry.

Mel Tillis, a rather well known country singer a few decades ago has a speech impediment. He can hardly talk it is so pronounced, pardon the pun, Mel. But it does not affect his singing voice. If you saw the movie King’s Speech you know that stammering and stuttering are often caused by childhood traumas like left-handed children being forced to write with their right hand and other types of child abuse and tragedies in childhood that befuddle and confuse their young rational minds and even their tongues.

I cannot imagine a life without music. It would be like watching a great movie like Gone With The Wind without the sound track. My taste in music has grown greatly from that young boy who was forced to watch the Wilburn Brothers, Porter Wagoner (Nobody had to force me to watch him sing with Dolly Parton), and Flat and Scruggs every Saturday afternoon because my parents loved country music. I rebelled and loved Rock and Roll which I did not know at the time had it’s roots in Country/Western and Rhythm and Blues music. I love all music and look for the message in every form. I believe it is the same subtle theme whether you are talking Opera/ Classic Orchestra Music, the Psalms of David sung by a Cantor, or Ernie from Sesame Street singing, “I love to sing, sing in the bath tub.” or “Rubber ducky you make bath time so much fun.” There is a song in each of our hearts, planted there, I think, by the Great Songster, put there to remind us when we hear our own melody in the world of Who and Whose we truly are. Listen and sway to the music of your own heart and that of the Universe.

Your friend and fellow traveler,
David White