Theme Song

THEME SONG

To this day I can remember the summer of 1948. We lived in a shotgun house in the oilfield town of Luling, Texas. My brother Fred and I had pooled our money and bought a battery powered radio from Western Auto. We could reach out to Austin and San Antonio, the rest of the world. Clear channel station 1200, WOAI and KONO, 1050 played mostly country music that we had grown to love.

The formative years 14 to 18 solidify the type of music you like. My mother, Bettina had a yearning to play the guitar and sing old country ballads. Her favorite performer appeared on the radio every Saturday night for thirty minutes advertising Philco radios. She collected 78 rpm records of Burl Ives and a few other performers.

I loved the quiet guitar plucking of Ives and his beautiful voice singing ballads from the 1800’s. That love carried through the mid 70’s when country music became country western music but it quickly died as CW slid into urban pop, today’s noise.

Even now I can hum a tune and know a few words of some of Ives ballads. There was one haunting melody carried by Ives voice with no more than the plucking of a few strings. I searched for years on old Burl Ives records and albums for that song. I had to guess as to the name, “THE TROUBADOUR SONG” name nagged me. No one had it or had even heard of it. Recently I found a record site on the net that had such Ives ballads. The second batch of CD’s had a song called “The Troubadour Song.” No data on its origins were included with the CD.

Upon playing the CD, I traveled back in time to the back porch of our little house where Tina plucked her Gibson guitar and tried to pick out Burl’s melodies. Yes, it was my song, the one I had hummed for years, picked out on the piano and worried people about, “Where can I find it?”

Today, Jason Rooks at his R/R STUDIO www.jasonrooks.com has recaptured the melody with professional players Jody Cameron on the Steel and Dobro, Frenchie Burk on the fiddle with Jason playing the acoustic guitar, bass and keys.

I am very happy to include it on my web site for your entertainment.

This melody can be obtained from Jason Rooks’ studio at the above mentioned website or through my email @ guy@blackmarstuff.com.