Country Music Blog

My taste in music has always been very eclectic. I used to say the only music I didn’t enjoy was heavy metal and country. This ecleticism began in my early teens when I asked my Mother for a record player. She got me one offered by a record club which she got at a very low price as long as you bought 20 records. The common practice of these clubs is that they send you a letter and you choose from a list what record you would like the following months selection to be . If you did not respond then they would send you their choice. I remember the first time I forgot to reply they sent me a Moody Blues album. I had never heard of them. I decided to keep the record and expand my horizons. The first time I listened to it I didn’t like it. But I owned it now so I kept listening to it and slowly began to appreciate this new genre. From that point on I just took what ever they sent me and learned to enjoy classical, rock, jazz, pop, etc.

Recently after the death of my Dad, I began to reflect on my love for music and where that had come from. You see my mother and father didn’t listen to music much. My mother had a transistor radio that I got her for Christmas one year and she would listen to it every once in a while. I don’t remember my dad listening at all. When I left home to join the Navy I bought a very nice stereo system at the base exchange. I didn’t have anywhere to keep it because I was living on the ship then so I left it at their house. I showed them how to use it even though it was very simple. I wanted them to enjoy it. When I returned months later they had never touched it. I was flabbergasted!! Here was this top of the line music system that put out incredible sound and they couldn’t have cared less. The thing that really makes it seem so odd to me is that my dad was a very accomplished pianist at one point. He could play a mean boogie woogie. In fact I found out as I was visiting my sister, at the time of my dad’s funeral, we used to have a piano in our house when I was very small but they got rid of it soon there after. I had no memory of this.

Early in my marriage I used to have light hearted conflicts with my mother-in-law about our difference in music choices. At that time my main musical love was called “Space music” There was a show on PBS called “Music from the Hearts of Space” It was synthesized music. Very light and airy. Something you would expect to hear in space. I used to stay up late on Friday night and lay on the floor with headphones listening for the uninterupted hour in the dark. It was soooo cool drifting in and out of sleep “floating through space”. I tried to share my love for this music with her but she wasn’t having any part of it. She loved the realness of country music and that stuff I listened to was “gay blade music”. I was embarrassed by this so I would shoot back you wouldn’t catch me listening to her soap opera county music songs all about cheating and divorce and crying in your beer. We usually avoided discussing music at family gatherings from that point on.

Later in life I began to teach the teens bible class on Sunday mornings at church. The kids would share their love for a particular song with the other kids. I often knew these songs and knew some of them had a immoral theme to them. When I pointed this out to them they were surprised. They didn’t know the words they just like the sound and the beat. I felt they needed to be careful as professed Christians what songs they sang with their friends. They might give people the wrong impression. So to encourage the teens to learn the words to the songs I created a puzzle called the “Top Twenty Musical Mystery.” I gave the puzzle to them in class and they would do it and bring it back the next week. The puzzle is a collage of pictures. Each picture is numbered and represents a “word picture” from the lyrics of one of that week’s top twenty songs. They would match the picture with the song that the lyrics came from. If you would like to see one of these and try it out go to www.CountryMusicTopTwenty.com.

When I went to Nashville to visit friends my good buddy suggested I try it with country music. He would show it to some one he knew from CMT and see if they would like to promote it. So I began to make the puzzle using the top twenty country music songs. Through this process I began to develop an appreciation for the stories told in these songs. For example the mixture of feelings a father feels when his daughter gets married that you hear in “Stealing Cinderella”. You see I have a daughter that is turning 21 this month and is very seriously involved with a young man. She hopes this will progress to a proposal some day soon. I’m not sure I like that idea that much.

So here at midlife I have begun listening to country music and enjoying it very much. I am a midlife country convert. Here in this blog I will be sharing mine and other’s thoughts on the latest county music top twenty.