My father’s birthday was this past week, and I thought a lot about how he had fostered and cultivated in me a love for music. It began when I was quite young, some of my earliest memories include sitting on the floor in the living room, and listening to records with these puffy, yellow headphones on. Being a librarian, my father loves a good story, and that extends to music as well. He played me “Up on Cripple Creek” and “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down” from The Band’s The Brown Album and “Guns of Brixton” and “Spanish Bombs” from The Clash’s London Calling. I love both those albums dearly, a poster of London Calling has adorned almost every room I have lived in since my sophomore year at Bates. Vividly, I recall how my father explained that the pinkish and green coloring of the cover's layout was chosen by The Clash in homage to Elvis Presley’s debut record.
Like many young children, I was often sung to sleep. One of my particular favorites was the country classic “The Streets of Laredo,” which was sung to me almost exclusively by my father. A sad, lonesome ballad about a dying, young cowboy, who relates his story of fast-living, gambling, and womanizing to a passer-by. Plodding along with a tempo very much like the death march that the song mentions, the rendition by an aging Johnny Cash is truly gripping (though that is not to snub the Willie Nelson version, which I quite enjoy too). The cowboy’s words drip with repent and a longing for comfort after his spirit has fled the earth: “Then beat the drum slowly, play the fife lowly / Play the dead march as you carry me along / Take me to the green valley, lay the sod o’er me / I’m a young cowboy and I know I’ve done wrong.” The song fascinated me when I was younger, trying to visualize how the cowboy would have been wrapped in linen, not quite understanding what exactly linen was. No matter the circumstance, it is a song that gives me calm and I emerge from listening to it breathing easier, my head cleared.
Like many young children, I was often sung to sleep. One of my particular favorites was the country classic “The Streets of Laredo,” which was sung to me almost exclusively by my father. A sad, lonesome ballad about a dying, young cowboy, who relates his story of fast-living, gambling, and womanizing to a passer-by. Plodding along with a tempo very much like the death march that the song mentions, the rendition by an aging Johnny Cash is truly gripping (though that is not to snub the Willie Nelson version, which I quite enjoy too). The cowboy’s words drip with repent and a longing for comfort after his spirit has fled the earth: “Then beat the drum slowly, play the fife lowly / Play the dead march as you carry me along / Take me to the green valley, lay the sod o’er me / I’m a young cowboy and I know I’ve done wrong.” The song fascinated me when I was younger, trying to visualize how the cowboy would have been wrapped in linen, not quite understanding what exactly linen was. No matter the circumstance, it is a song that gives me calm and I emerge from listening to it breathing easier, my head cleared.
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