I've always liked music - as a teen in the mid 50's it was Big Band Swing, Dixieland, Rock'n'roll - but in the 1970s I fell into the 1970s and a whole other world opened up - the world of Folk / Rock / Country, and I never really left. It was rich and varied, but best of all I loved the ballads, the stories so many songs of the time told, their narrative, their images, their stories of life and discovery.
About a week ago I overheard someone say "When I was a child..." and they dived into a bit of nostalgia (I love nostalgia!), but it switched on an old memory of a simple 3-chord song I used to do, but obviously had long forgotten. And it mulled around and around and bit by bit some scraps put themselves together and I found "...my family would travel, down to Western Kentucky where my parents were born...", but couldn't remember the singer or the title. So I started Googling - as ya do.
John Prine (1946 - 2020), was something of an inner circle "icon" member of the US music scene in the day, but I never fell over him till now. Except for this one song. More digging and I found that John's ballad is of the loss of his parent's home town of Paradise (you wouldn't be game to make up a name like that!) in Western Kentucky, the place that held treasured childhood memories for John when he visited his grandparents.
I loved this journey through John's life and childhood. I hope each of these tags (YouTube and Wiki) will give you - as a writer and reader of stories - something as well.
Cheers...
Trev
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