Circling Round on the Unbroken Circle

Like so many others, my Movie Man and I watched all ten episodes of Country Music, A Film by Ken Burns (2019). And like so many others, I realized that I have internalized the entire history of whatever this thing is called “country.”

If you asked me today what music I like, I’d answer along these lines, “Everything but teen pop and country.” But to hear me squealing my excitement and singing along with every episode of Country Music, you’d rightly call that out as a bald-faced lie.

It turns out that my musical roots, tended by my parents, reach further than I realized. My mother gave me my first album, Abbey Road.  She shared her enthusiasm for “Mr. Tambourine Man” as early as I can remember. It was under her watch that we attended Christmas Eve services at the Lutheran Church. No “Rocking Around the Christmas Tree” for us. My father, on the other hand, blamed the Beatles for what he called the destruction of America’s moral compass, and he boasted about falling asleep during a chamber music concert. “Can’t stand that deedle-deedle-deedle,” he’d announce, obnoxiously imitating a squeaky violin. But he could carry a tune, and he sang songs to my brother and me that he’d heard from his father, long forgotten songs like “The Old Apple Tree,” and “Barefoot Days,” the latter which my grandfather may have written. My childhood was full of a wide variety of music, for which I am thankful even if it did contribute to my parents’ inevitable divorce.

From the Fireside
Book of Folksongs

With high expectations, I settled on the couch with Joe, a glass of wine, and three small dogs to watch the first episode of Ken Burns’s documentary. Immediately, I was transfixed. I recalled the exact moment I discovered the Carter Family. I used to pore over my mother’s album collection, selecting them by the cover. I’ve long forgotten the cover but not the eerie sound that came from the speakers when I put that Carter Family album on the turntable. I listened over and over, trying to place those hard consonants into a familiar category of sounds. I had to make a whole new category.

Watching the documentary night after night, listening to Jimmie Rogers, Hank Williams, Buck Owens, Roy Acuff, Loretta Lynn, Merle Haggard, Little Brenda Lee, Tammy Wynette, George Jones, Johnny Cash, Patsy Cline, and so many others I was swept away in a tumult of memories: the aforementioned record collection, my parent’s parties, sitting in the Lazy Boy with my father listening to tunes, lying on the floor leafing through the Fireside Book of Folksongs while my mother played her beautiful Spanish guitar and sang…on and on, I swam and swam in the music and the mixed-up wash of memories it brought.

My Granddaddy Logan at his desk, National Life Insurance

As well as relishing the curious combination of bittersweet, flat-out sweet, and downright melancholic emotions I experienced during our binge, I learned a lot. Of course I learned things about the music and the artists I’d never known, but I also pieced together the origin of a family legend. My dad, who could whistle out of both sides of his mouth in harmony, told us that his father, Logan Mount, was also an excellent whistler, and in fact had whistled at the Grand Ole Opry under the name, “The Dixie Mockingbird.” I was never able to find any evidence of this, but watching the documentary I learned that the National Life Insurance Company started the Grand Ole Opry to support its radio station WSM (“We Shield Millions”). My Granddaddy Logan worked for National Life Insurance, and now it all makes sense.

I wonder what my own children would say about growing up in our house. My Movie Man is also a Music Man, and he has seen to it that our home is full of a variety of music encompassing a span of a hundred years. One of the reasons I fell in love with him was his introduction of Joseph Spence to me. But that is a whole ‘nother blog for a whole ‘nother day.