Songs in the Key of Life

By James Kissinger

I saw Lucinda Williams perform live this past week.  It was my first time to see her in concert and my expectations for the show were somewhere in the stratosphere.  I’ve been a fan for years … she hooked me with lyrics, and I tolerated her vocals early on. She was kind of like beer to a teenager — an acquired taste. Somewhere along the way tolerance turned to appreciation - she has a raw edge in her voice that brings her songs to life. When she sings about people, you know those people are real. Wednesday night the appreciation gave way to respect. She’s one of those rare artists whose voice has a depth and quality that recording can’t capture. I spent the night fighting back goosebumps.

Music moves me. My earliest memories are of music. I grew up about an hour outside of Memphis, TN. My folks listened to southern gospel and not much else. I remember four records in our home that weren’t southern gospel … Willie Nelson’s “Red Headed Stranger,” Creedence Clearwater Revival (both dad’s), Floyd Cramer, Elvis’ Golden Records (both mom’s). Every Sunday morning when we were getting ready for church my folks had the radio tuned into a local AM radio station playing the “Gospel Jubilee.” My dad loved that music. I didn’t. I liked Edgar Winter, “Frankenstein.”  Heavy guitar and no vocals. 

My first “favorite singer” was Jim Croce. That same AM station that played the Gospel Jubilee played “Bad, Bad Leroy Brown” several times a day. I bought the 45 and then the album. I sat on my bed and cried the day he died in a plane crash in 1973. From there, pop ruled the 70’s for me. Elton John, Queen, Foreigner, Boston.  Outside of pop it was Boz Skaggs and Stevie Wonder. I remember lying in bed one night listening to WLS 89 AM out of Chicago, Bob Seger singing “Night Moves”, and wanting to do the things he was singing about so badly I could taste it. Music had a meaning.

Music came alive for me in the 80’s. K97 out of Memphis turned me onto Rhythm & Blues.  Prince, Rick James, The Gap Band, Cameo, Lakeside, Luther Vandross, The Time. There was more than one concert that I had to be the only white man at. Before Beale Street was developed a girlfriend and I visited a little club on Front Street, Blues Alley, where I saw a little bitty 80 year old woman, Ma Rainey, singing the blues. I’d best describe it as I described the Lucinda show to a friend of mine … a “near-religious experience.”  I knew I’d found something that mattered. 

When I graduated from college I left the delta behind, and with it R&B, though not by choice. There was no internet radio, no satellite radio. The radio stations where I moved apparently had some quota on Bon Jovi and Poison — if they didn’t play them at least a dozen times in each rotation someone would lose their job. I wasn’t Catholic, but I was fairly certain I’d landed in purgatory. Around that time I remember walking into the local Walmart and being greeted by a life size cardboard cutout of Dwight Yoakam in his skin tight jeans, cowboy boots and big white hat. I began to wonder if I’d exited purgatory and inched a step or two closer to hell. I bought a Robert Cray CD and left the store as quickly as I could. Funny thing is, I now like Dwight. 

In 1987 I found salvation in “The Joshua Tree.”  U2 brought soul to the white man, and I knew I was home again. From that point on it didn’t matter what I listened to, rock, blues or country, it was all just music to me. There’s an old saying, “blues is the root, everything else is just the fruit.” Springsteen, Lyle Lovett, Kristofferson, Stevie Ray Vaughan, Travis Tritt, Clapton, they all trace back. 

At the Lucinda Williams show I overheard a guy in front of me comment that she is the “Dylan” of our generation. He’s right. Music is poetry.

“Lemme go and stand awhile, I wanna know you’re there but I wanna be alone

If only for a minute or two
I wanna see what it feels like to be without you
I wanna know the touch of my own skin
Against the sun, against the wind

I walked out in a field, the grass was high, it brushed against my legs
I just stood and looked out at the open space and a farmhouse out a ways
And I wondered about the people who lived in it
And I wondered if they were happy and content
Were there children and a man and a wife?
Did she love him and take her hair down at night?”

Lucinda Williams - Side of the Road

That’s music. Words that you can feel set to notes. It’s Robbie Seay telling me to “run into a field and scream louder than I can, just so I’ll know I’m alive and breathing air” … and me doing it. Music is a gift to discover and to appreciate … songs in the key of life.  JLK.

Photo credit:  gwen