Covering The Past:
Songs From My Father’s Record Collection
I’ve spent three days now by my father’s bedside, watching as he grows slowly stronger, and learns to measure and monitor the pain of his newly reconstructed back. I’ve held his hand, and learned its lines anew, even as I have learned to work around the bruising from the saline feed.
Each day is more tiring that I could have expected, for both of us. But no matter how exhausted I am, each night, I come home, and sit on his couch, and drink his beer, and play his records alone in the dark, just like he used to when I was little.
The records I treasure have been reorganized in the last few years since the move, but they still smell of my musical awakening — that particularly sweet smell of aging record sleeves, and the cherrywood cabinet they used to inhabit. They range far beyond folk, of course: this is a man whose tastes run deep and broad, from Bob Carlin country to Kool and the Gang funk, from sixties jazzpop to bluegrass, all the early masters of a dozen genres of American music.
One whole side of the collection, in fact — the blues stuff, the jazz stuff, the soul, the R&B — evolved later, and separately, as I grew, so that it never truly seems like it sprang from my childhood as clearly. But the collection in toto contains the origins of my belief that all music has merit, and that all genres have their masters; that it is the performance, the skill, and the talent which provide the platform for success, by even the most subjective measure.
My father’s records have always been organized by personal association; to follow their sequence — from Bob Dylan to Steeleye Span to James Taylor, from Little Feat to Steely Dan to Cat Stevens — is to think like my father, or at least understand the world of musical influence and genre in his terms. And I know this world well. I spent hours lying on the hardwood floor in front of that cherrywood stereo cabinet, head cocked to the right as if listening, running my fingers along these tall, thin spines, sliding precious vinyl in and out of their paper sleeves carefully, as if each album contained the family, the world, the self, the very meaning of life itself.
Looking at these records now, I find many albums I missed then, and have since come to on my own — Loudon Wainwright III, John Prine, John Hartford among them, on the folkier side. Too, some musicians my father treasured took longer to love than others — the nasal voices of Richard Shindell and Lucy Kaplansky, for example, only truly blossomed for me when I was old enough to come to their work with an adult’s mature understanding of memory, love, and other common themes. I’m still working on a love for Richard Thompson.
But there are whole sections that I know as well as the back of my father’s hand.
Indeed, it is not too much to say that somewhere deep in this collection was a kernel of my father himself, though I did not realize it at the time. And indeed, though I never truly saw him listen to these records, or even buy them, more than anything else, the access he gave me to these records — and through them, to him — is the beginning of the bond between us.
Our listening has long been private, done in darkness; I cannot claim that this song or that is his favorite cover of that bygone era, could not truly name his own experience with these songs if I were pressed to do so. But these are the songs handed down nonetheless, through the very nature of their presence, and the very fact of their importance, as shared artifacts in time and space.
And, though it would take years for me to hear their nuances, long before I heard the originals, these songs of my father’s are the progenitors, the soundtrack to an audiophile’s birth. That they would become form and foundation of the deep love and friendship I am privileged to share with my father today makes them all the sweeter.
Not all these albums are still in print, and few are digitized; as such, there’s much on these shelves which cannot be posted. But here’s a few coversongs from those artists and albums I remember best — from those childhood hours sunk deep into my father’s psyche, made manifest in music.
- John Renbourn: The Moon Shines Bright (trad.)
(from The Black Balloon, 1979) - Chris Smither: Sittin’ On Top Of The World (orig. Howlin’ Wolf)
(from It Ain’t Easy, 1984) - Tom Rush: Urge For Going (orig. Joni Mitchell)
(from The Circle Game, 1968) - James Taylor: Oh, Susannah (trad.)
(from Sweet Baby James, 1970) - Cindy Kallet: Sarah’s Song (orig. Joel Zoss)
(from Dreaming Down a Quiet Line, 1989) - David Wilcox: The Kid (orig. Buddy Mondlock)
(from How Did You Find Me Here, 1989) - Rory Block: Frankie and Albert (trad.)
(from Blue Horizon, 1983) - Mary McCaslin: Things We Said Today (orig. The Beatles)
(from Old Friends, 1977) - Bill Staines: Pretty Boy Floyd (orig. Woody Guthrie)
(from Bridges, 1983) - Fairport Convention: Dear Landlord (orig. Bob Dylan)
(from Unhalfbricking, 1969)
Cover Lay Down posts new features every Sunday and Wednesday, come hell or high water. Stay tuned this week for a look at a lovely crop of new and upcoming tribute albums…
Category: Uncategorized
March 8th, 2009 at 8:13 am
Thanks for a wonderful post and some beautiful songs!
March 8th, 2009 at 8:21 am
beautiful post.
March 8th, 2009 at 9:23 am
I already know I have instilled a love of music in my three children (27, 24, 20) since birth, though not necessarily of my favorite genres - I hope that one day they will speak/write of “the things I’ve handed down” as respectfully and appreciatively as you have. Thank, as always, BH… <3
March 8th, 2009 at 10:49 am
Beautiful post, and wishing your father a speedy recovery.
March 8th, 2009 at 11:07 am
thank you so much for sharin’ your dad’s music with us here!
delighted! ;)*
March 8th, 2009 at 8:39 pm
Several thumbs up for “Things We Said Today”…..simply stunning. Hope your dad’s doing better. He sure does have good taste in music. Seems to have rubbed off on his son
March 9th, 2009 at 5:31 pm
What a beautiful post. It’s good to hear that your father’s love of music got handed down to you.
March 11th, 2009 at 11:00 pm
[...] Machine Drops the Little Guys, We All Lose: An Open Letter to Bloggers and Blog Readers EverywhereCovering The Past: Songs From My Father’s Record CollectionHospital Coverfolk: Songs from the Waiting Room(Re)Covered VII: More covers of and from Sometymes [...]
March 12th, 2009 at 1:46 am
This is one of the best posts that I have read all year. I hope everything goes well with your father!
June 13th, 2009 at 9:08 pm
[...] Tom Rush covers Urge for Going [...]