My love affair with music

I’ve started ripping CDs to my hard drive at work, and also buying downloads (I have a few CDs I need to burn and ship, and yes, it’s a legal burn LOL). I have music going, albeit quietly, all day at work and I’m loving it. The CDs I’m making are going to be full of guitar music… one acoustic, or at least acoustic-friendly, and another with some more skillful electric stuff. At least, that’s the layout I’m looking at right now. I’m a guitar gal at heart. See, my daddy is/was a guitar player, and so was Papa, my mama’s daddy. My Daddy used to be a rock-n-roller, but pretty much stopped before I was born. When I was growing up, all I heard was what he played in the church choir, though I have to confess that as Catholics, we had some of the better church music! When I was 11-ish, he started taking flamenco lessons, which was SUPER cool. And finally, once, when I was a teenager, I got to listen to him spend an evening going back to his roots, playing 60s and 70s rock.

Papa wasn’t a rocker; he was more folk/traditional type stuff. When Chet Atkins passed away, it made me miss Papa all over again; that was his type of stuff. Roy Orbison too. Papa was actually a professional musician when my mama was small. He played with people like Buck Owens and Bob Wills. In fact, apparently most live recordings of Bob Wills feature Papa on the guitar, because Bob Wills could stay sober long enough to cut a studio album but not to actually tour it. One of the best memories I have is when my oldest daughter was born, and we took her out there to see the family. Papa hadn’t played in years because his hearing was so bad. In fact, I hadn’t heard him play since I was a wee one. But Mom and Mike and my husband and I coaxed him to play for us a while, and we caught it on video. He played the old stuff I remembered like “Mama Goes Where Papa Goes” and “A, You’re Adorable.” He also played songs I had long since forgotten, like one that he wrote when my Uncle Bob, his first child, was born. Remembering it now has me misty. That was the last time I ever heard Papa play, and the last time I ever will, since we lost him several years ago. Nic is the only one of my children who ever heard him play, and she was so tiny, she will never remember. But I will.

So the fact is, I love the guitar. And also have a bit of a soft spot for those who play it. Well, for those who play it well anyway LOL. Even though these CDs are for someone else, they’re kind of a labor of love. Not love for him, though he is a sweetheart and I love him as I love all of “my boys n girls.” Love for the music, for the medium, for the instrument that imprinted on my heart before I was even born.