Plethora of Pop’s Rate-A-Record

Easy Through the Night

Helping make Country cross over in 1971

Photo by Will Francis on Unsplash

Today is my mother’s birthday. A southern woman who shared a birthday with Abe Lincoln might not be cause for celebration in the older orbs of our region. Yet, as much as my mother admired Robert E. Lee, and especially his horse Traveller, she also admired Abe Lincoln, especially his understanding that God must have loved common people mightily since he made so many.

My mother, a most uncommon woman in so many ways, would have been ninety today. I’m thinking of other pieces in other rooms to write about her, but need to let my heart find the right path, as my wife encouraged/advocated last night when we were having drinks in Greenville’s Bar Margaret, a feminist-centered venue in the Villages of West End. Their “Cola-Old Fashioned” was, as “Jeopardy” once categorized it, a true “potent potable.” And I had two.

But I started thinking about my mother and music, which artists and genres she favored and which she didn’t. She kept up, my mother, and professed love for such diverse acts as Lionel Ritchie, Linda Ronstadt, Chicago, ABBA, Willie Nelson, Elton John, Ray Price, Loretta Lynn, Nat King Cole, Johnny Cash, and Elvis. Sometimes she even liked Alice Cooper, so getting inside another’s musical taste proves yet…