Bluegrass Music

There was always music in our home as I was growing up. The radio in the kitchen was usually tuned to WINN 1240-AM (the advent of FM was still almost a decade away).

My parents gave me a love for (if not a talent in) music. “I love you a bushel and a peck, a bushel and a peck and a hug around the neck,” Mom would sing as she hugged me in passing. I loved to hear her sing Doris Day’s “Secret Love” (from Calamity Jane) and I had memorized the song long before I ever watched the movie. Patti Page’s “Cross Over the Bridge” is the one that makes me smile whenever I think of it for the playful look on Mom’s face every time she sang it.

Dad’s genres were 50s and country music. I think he knew the words to every novelty song ever recorded – “I hear they’re gonna start making dresses out of wood. It’d be good if’n they could. Just one thing they ain’t thought about – whaddah they gonna do when a knot falls out? Knothole!”

Dad also loved bluegrass music. One of his cousins, Don Parmley, founded a bluegrass group called, “The Bluegrass Cardinals”. The group headlined the Louisville Bluegrass Festival one year in the late 70s and my sister and I were introduced to the bluegrass music circuit.

There was one album by the Bluegrass Cardinals that my family listened to a lot as we made our way from Louisville to my parents’ hometown in Wayne County. Sometimes Dad played the tape of the Cardinals and sometimes he had his “girls” serenade him. Karen and I regularly sang, “Are You Missing Me?”, “Prisoner’s Song” and others.

Today I received a box from Amazon.com which contained a whole lot of memories in the form of two CDs. One was that first Bluegrass Cardinal album. Recorded 30+ years ago, its sound is sometimes tinny, but I don’t care. As I listened, I remembered car trips with my family, bluegrass festivals in the spring and summer, and so much more. I can’t wait to listen to the other CD and see what memories it brings back.