So I sing

I can still remember

How that music used to make me smile.

-- Don McLean,

"American Pie"

I've given up on New Year's resolutions. I never was very good with them, anyway.

But it is a time to look back, so here goes.

The year 2008 shall always be in my mind The Year of the Fire, but I have written enough about that already. Besides, a calendar seems like a relatively arbitrary way of dividing up history.

Regular readers are probably aware of how I preface most of my blogs with the lyrics from a song. I have always loved music. My mother, a frustrated Glee Club member while in high school, used to sing while working in the kitchen and mowing the yard. I started taking piano lessons when I learned my alphabet, eventually studying under a Juilliard School of Music graduate in?Decatur, of all places. In college, I took applied piano and was a member of the college choir. Since moving to Carroll County,?I was a founding member of the Ozarks Chorale.

My biggest frustration, however, is the death of my record player, and I have an album collection of more than 300, ranging from the Animals to Zager and Evans, with classical, religious, comedy and country thrown in for good measure.

Fortunately, I can recall many of the lyrics to the songs I have listened to over at least the last 45 years. Enough so, that I tell folks who come through my checkout line at Walmart that

"I am the singing cashier."

I was also the singing apple grader, hay hauler, and poultry grower. Singing in a newspaper office however, is generally quite distracting.

Back in my farming days, I recall working in the apple packing shed with my cousin, Lou Ann Daugherty, now Lou Ann Sutton of Harrison. At the time my sister-in-law, Rosalie, who lived up the road, was breaking into the music industry, recording in Nashville and playing some gigs at Elks Clubs in northwest Arkansas and bars in nearby Oklahoma, and we both were hanging around the fringes of her performances.

(Incidentally, my sister-in-law has since gone gospel.)

Anyway, Lou Ann and I were into music, and she was more or less my piano playing idol at the time. We both enjoyed that one hit wonder song by Nancy?Sinatra and Lee Hazelwood, "Jackson." I recall as clearly as if it were yesterday how she would take Nancy's part and I Hazelwood's, singing the song while she bagged apples and I stacked the boxes on the floor. It was fun, and no one bellyached about it.

Eventually I made it to college, and roomed with a cousin who, like me, slept best with the record player going. It was only after moving to Carroll County that he finally got around to returning my?Al Green album, "I Stand Alone," to me. I think that experience over three years was an experience in subliminal learning -- The Monkees, The Beatles, Pinkiny Canady, Rhinoceros, It's a Beautiful Day, The Animals, John Davidson, Joy of Cooking, Carole King, and I could go on and on, all produced lyrics and melodies which float through my mind. It is as I say, "I've got a million of them."

Another influence on my music was a roommate in Rogers by the name of, simply, Von, a drummer in my sister-in-law's band, and somewhat of a songwriter, although the only one I can recall is somewhat like doggerel, "Talked to a Blade of Grass Today."

Sometimes the sister-in-law's band rehearsed at our place, since it was centrally located for the band members.

In married life, my wife is a former torch singer on the Tulsa circuit, and we share a common love of music. In fact, one of our favorite games when traveling in a type of categories game where we select a category and see who can come up with the most songs that fit. The competition is usually pretty close, whether the category is colors, natural settings, or whatever else comes to mind.

Anyway, with all that history, you now know why music is a natural part of my life. I would hate to think of life without it.