Sunday Morning Coming Down

By Jez on June 30, 2024

Once again, I find myself starting a Sunday morning post with some thanks: to all who read and commented on my post last week about my recently-passed Dad, thank you for your messages. As you can imagine, it was extremely important to me that I got the balance right, and it was immense releif that I got messages not just from regular readers, but from members of my family, directed to the post by my Mum, all commending me for the post. So, again: thank you.

You'll forgive me then, I hope, if I continue to post songs which remind me of Dad for a little while here. Besides, I figured you might need a break from all the political records I have lined up for the next few days.

A few years ago, when I invested in a new turntable, I set about searching out records I used to own, but which had disappeared from my vinyl collection. There were various reasons they had gone: either I'd sold them in a moment of skintness, some had been leant to people I was no longer in tiuch with and were never returned. some were discovered to have mysteriously vanished when I moved house once. But I also decided to source and purchase records I remembered and loved from Dad's collection.

It was important to me that I bought the same copy of the record which I was replacing: so, all of my albums by The Smiths were once which mysteriously vanished (by which, I mean, stolen, although I can't prove it) and I wanted to repurchase the original Rough Trade releases I used to own, not any of the subsequent re-releases on different labels. Similarly, I wanted copies of the exact albums Dad owned. so it was a specific Simon & Garfunkel's Greatest Hits I needed, and it had to be Kris Kristofferson's Me and Bobby McGee album, not the exact same album, Kristofferson, the title under which it was originally released, and subsequently re-released.

Back in 1982, Dad bought a compilation of country songs called Friends. Given its likeness to a certain super-succesful US sitcom, which spawned a few cash-in record releases, you can imagine how hard it was for me to track down not just the record, but also this image of the intended-to-be-cute album cover to include here:

But, success was mine, and I got me a copy a few years ago.

There are no real surprises or unearthed diamonds on it, but it's full of wonderful, classic country tunes by the likes of Charlie Pride, Charlie Rich along with some people not called Charlie: Tammy Wynette, Glen Campbell, Don Williams, Kenny Rogers, to name a few. It's probably the first place that I knowingly heard Emmylou Harris, Bobbie Gentry, Linda Rondstadt.

Unsuprisingly, many of these songs ended up on a cassette to be played in the car on those obligatory Saturday afternoon family visits, or as the soundtrack to an argument or a fight between my brother and I as we waited in the car waiting for our parents to emerge from the pub, including this one, which is a saucy little number, extolling the virtues of keeping the bedroom-side of a long-term marriage alive via al fresco "nudey-prod-games", as my cousin used to call that sort of thing: