Country Music

When it was reported that the music concert shattered by gun fire was a Country Music Concert, I thought of my sister Adeline. She is no longer with us, but she was an avid fan of country music and performers. She followed their careers and subscribed to magazines with articles and photos of them. Adeline and I, and of course my brothers and other sister, grew up with country music. We heard the songs on the radio and sang them.

In those years, there was a radio program on Saturday nights the family often listened to. It was a live broadcast of a stage performance in Des Moines, Iowa, called The Barn Dance Frolic. It was an evening of country music, much like those held in Nashville, Tennessee at the times. As a young adult, I once attended a performance and remember how much I enjoyed seeing the performers on stage that I had heard on the radio.

I often think about the preferences my family had for music. Mom loved listening to piano music. One of my brothers loved Opera and another brother collected country music records. I enjoy the sound of violin, but listened to orchestral records of Mozart when I painted. My son likes Blue Grass. Adeline liked all kinds of music. When her children were young she checked out library music records by the arm load,; much of it, Broadway musicals. In later years when she visited me, she liked listening to one of the three famous tenors. Even so- she never gave up her love of country music.