Friday, September 30, 2011

3 Chords & the Truth: 'Round and around


You want to know where 3 Chords & the Truth started?

Right here . . . or there, in that old snapshot. In Baton Rouge, La., deep in the troubled, segregated South, during a time we called the Space Age.

On the picture, it says "Christmas 1963." And that's me, doing at age 2½ pretty much what I'm doing now. Now, I do it on the Internet.


Then, it was an adventure, watching the records spin while the music boomed out. "The music goes 'round and around, whoa-ho-ho-ho-ho-ho . . . and it comes out here."

3 Chords & the Truth. It comes out here, the latest link in an unbroken chain from 1963 and my parents 45 r.p.m. records, and LP albums, and old 78s.

ALMOST 48 years later, I'm still playing those same records. Wonderful 45s from the 1950s -- Jerry Lee Lewis . . . Ivory Joe Hunter . . . Elvis Presley . . . the Everly Brothers . . . Ferlin Husky . . . the Kingston Trio . . . you name it. Now, you get to listen along with me.

This week on the Big Show, I've dug through the old 45s from a lifetime ago, and you get to hear a couple more of them. You get to hear lots more stuff this (and every) week, but the old 45s are what's nearest and dearest to my heart -- they helped to make me who I am. Maybe some similar old records, nearly lost to time and fading memories, helped to make you who you are, too.

Perhaps you can listen to this and think of that, and we'll both enjoy the journey.

You know, it's not like I haven't written about this stuff before . . . or dug into the vaults of old vinyl and old memories for a weekly episode of 3 Chords & the Truth. Then again, who goes to a favorite restaurant only once? Listens to a favorite song only once? Revisits what made you you only once?

IF I QUIT doing that, going there, I die. And a whole world dies.

No longer would the music go 'round and around. Or come out here.

It's 3 Chords & the Truth, y'all. Be there. Aloha.

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