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By Homer Hirt
On a recent foray from eastern Jackson County into the Center of the Universe (AKA Marianna, our county seat)) I parked alongside The Gazebo, as is my wont.
It was early morning, and my body craved coffee: black, strong and hot, and Evan’s place fits the bill for me. As I parked my F 150 Ford pickup I looked back into the traffic. Bearing down on me from an easterly direction was an iridescent green automobile, wheels seemingly going every which-a-way, a whup antenna whirring and, from the open windows, a song blaring. It was a ditty for the day, a tune with words that seem to appeal to young folk.
I remember those words, but not the tune. Here they are: “UM—–UH—–WH—-ER—UNGH”. As they put on shampoo bottles: “Apply, rub in, rinse, repeat” and repeat they did, on until the splendiferous sedan was out of sight.
The reason for the blank spaces above is that this is a family oriented blog, and the words that should go there shouldn’t go here. Other than that, it is the modern version of popular music.
I began thinking about what has passed for modern music throughout the ages, or, more precisely, through my ages, which began with my infancy, progressed through teenagery into adultery and on, on into the dim mists of whatever future is out there for a nonagenerian.
I came up in a home where Miz Rossie insisted that classical and church music was the only way to go, whether played on a piano, her banjo or sung out loud. I grew to appreciate it, except for the times when, at a very impressionable age, Miz Maude and others in the First Methodist Episcopal Church, South, sang “Washed in the Blood of the Lamb”. I wasn’t too certain what a dead lamb looked like, but I had experienced a couple of hog killings and sausage makings, and I was turned off by them, music or no.
So when the Big Bands came around, first over the Philco and then on the seventy-eights at Galloway’s Restaurant, I listened I listened, and gloried in the instruments and the vocals. I recall some of the songs, even today. Who could forget: “Three Little Fishes” who “Swam and Swam right over the Dam”. As PBS says, frequently, “all music was once new”, although I suspect that they are speaking of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and fellow harpsichordists and flautists.
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Soon it was off to the Navy for me, and I was plunged into an entirely different genre of music. Of course, we all learned “Anchors Aweigh”, but other songs arrived with that one. Few of my generation can forget Groucho Marx’s “Lydia the Tattooed Lady”. From that we learned an entirely new meaning for geography. However, with the modern trend of marking one’s body, the words are not very risqué today.
Rusty Warren was a piano player who entertained in bars with “He’s Got the Cutest Little Dinghy in the Navy”. Rusty was the equivalent of the ladies at Pat O’Brian’s in Nawleans, who light up the room with “You Picked a Fine Time to Leave Me, Lucille”, a lament about a farmer left by his roamin’ wife with “nine head of young’uns and a crop in the field”. It all described life a we knew it, or thought we knew it.
We soon moved over into rock and roll: the Beatles, Elvis, the Big Bopper and others, ad infinitum. I suffered through it, trying to appreciate the new music. I made it with the help of The Beach Boys, and Chubby Checkers doing The Twist, which brings us to modern day music.
I will always remember that iridescent green sedan, wheels spinning ever-which-a-way, dragging down Lafayette Street into the west, modern music blasting.
We must learn to appreciate the music of today, I suppose, and the only way to appreciate it is to sing along.
So, facing traffic and with a cup of black coffee in your hand, join with me:
“UM—–UH—–WH—-ER—–UNGH”. And don’t forget to apply, rinse and repeat….
over and over and over…
Lagniappe: “You may be disappointed if you fail, but you are doomed if you don’t try.
– Beverly Sills
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