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Memphis, TN -I hope many of you will respond to my request to rate the slow songs of our day. The article is in the right column at the bottom.Please include your class year with your e-mails.Thanks to all of you that have responded to the reunion letter that was sent out a few weeks ago. If you are reading this and have not received a letter detailing the reunion plans please send an e-mail to your class contact so that we can update your info and get the letter out to you so that you can make plans to attend. Please send an email to your contact and include: Class year, first name; last name at time of graduation; married name (if applicable); spouse’s name (if applicable); street address; city; state; zip code; home ( H ) or cell ( C ) phone number (which ever you prefer); e-mail address; and occupation.Even if you do not plan to attend or are not sure if you’ll be able to attend the upcoming reunion, please send in your information. And please encourage other classmates that you may be in contact with to do the same. And check the Traveller each week for planning updates.
In writing about his favorite “city” song, Marty Robbins' ’“El Paso,” in last week’s Traveller, Tommy offered two reasons for his choice: “I think one of the reasons must be the pure voice of Marty but the story of unconquerable love must have hit me at a time in my life when it seemed noble.”I agree with Tommy’s first reason. However, I don’t think I ever considered the song as philosophically meaningful as he did back then. I have to admit, though, that romantic love was a constant concern amongst us teens at the time that song came out. But I have other reasons for enshrining that song among my favorites.I don’t know if my brother was thinking of our earlier history when he chose Marty Robbins’Gunfighter Ballads and Trail Songs album (which included “El Paso”) as a birthday present for me in 1959, but El Paso was the first American city we lived in (actually if you want to get technical, it was Ft. Bliss, right next to El Paso) when we came to the United States in 1947. I was way too young to form an attachment to the city, so I can’t say I left my heart there when we moved to Huntsville in 1950. But as the place where our American journey started, El Paso holds special significance for us. Perhaps my brother was feeling some of those vibes when he selected the album. In any case, I fell in love with it immediately and especially “El Paso,” the song that elevated Marty Robbins career above his earlier success.This song of love and violent death was the complete hit package. Marty’s singular, passionate voice delivers a story straight out of the Wild West. It’s close to 5 minutes long (quite a bit longer than most pop tunes of the time), but its musical drama moves at a swift pace, swept along by its dancing Mexican guitar accompaniment and beautiful vocal harmonies.You may remember that television westerns (each with their own theme music) dominated the networks at this time. Robbins and Columbia Records wisely cashed-in on America’s prime entertainment genre with their initial record, and More Gunfighter Ballads and Trail Songs (including the classic “Streets of Laredo”) appeared in 1960. Robbins revisited his El Paso themes in two other tunes: “Faleena” (1966; 8 minutes long!) and “El Paso City” (1976).Finally, and this may be a matter of splitting hairs, but I would argue that “El Paso” is not really a “city” song. A city song should pay homage to its subject, shouldn’t it? As much as I love Marty’s song, El Paso is just the setting for the song; he doesn’t sing the city’s praises or his love for its charms. “What song does that better for a city than my favorite, Tony Bennett’s masterful “I Left My Heart in San Francisco”? By the way, my favorite Marty Robbins song is “Is There Any Chance.” (1960; 2:11). Man, talk about the trials of romantic love. Anybody remember that one?
It wasn’t that easy, not for many of us guys. It wasn’t easy to walk up to a girl in a crowd and ask her to dance, at least not at first. It was probably just as bad for your girls. The fear of humiliation and the fear of rejection were always there. The butterflies fluttered more in the stomach than they did on a warm spring night. But the music demanded that you dance.I got my practice at Carter’s Skateland asking girls to skate during the “Couples Only” periods. But that was skating, not dancing. That was just rolling around a big wooden floor with other couples and just holding hands with the girl. The mood was set when they lowered the lights, but it was all still very public and very sterile. As I got better I could couple skate holding her left hand in my left hand and putting my right hand on her right hip as we skated, but that was as intimate as it got.Then the parties and the dances started. That was different. The vastness of the skating rink shrunk to a smaller area, the lights got dimmer, the songs got slower, the bodies got closer, the asking got harder – at least at first it did. My early problem was that the only dance I knew was the two-step, the only way I had ever been taught to dance. But that got easier too, as my confidence grew. And the songs got slower, the mood more intimate, the dance steps went away, and soon it was just two bodies, close together, moving in unison. Slow dances – the joy of my puberty!I remember parties with the record players and the old music. Sure we had fast songs and fast dances that even had names like the Twist, the Monkey, the Mashed Potatoes, and the Dog. But we had slow dancing too, with no names because they didn’t need them. It was two bodies, moving in harmony to songs with words and music that touched our hearts and souls.We didn’t even really have to have dance floors. Long before we had Bradley’s we sill had dances. I remember dancing in the grass in Dianne Hughey’s back yard. I remember one party at Randy Duck’s house, up by the cemetery, which was also in a back yard and illuminated by a bare bulb hanging from a clothesline. I remember dances at the Big Springs Park Recreation Center and up on Monte Sano with the Boy Scouts – our first couple’s party. I remember one party with my Central Presbyterian Westminster Fellowship group at a Huntsville High School girl’s house near Parkway City. It was down in her basement and we had slow music and the parents stayed upstairs. It was dark and the music was moving. I even remember one at Carolyn McCutcheon's daddy's meat market on Oakwook Ave. Later we added the Madison County Coliseum and the Aquatic Club. For some of us, the ultimate dance place was in the Lee High School cafeteria for our senior prom. For many it was the last time we would all be together and able to dance intimately with multiple partners without fear of jealousy.That was a great time for slow dances – when we were going through the transition to becoming a teenager. It was a time of innocence and puppy love. It was a time to look back upon and remember with a smile. It was a time that will live in my memories forever.With those thoughts in mind, I want to take you all back on a journey. I started making a list of some of my favorite slow songs from those early days. I didn’t realize how many of them there really were and the more I thought about them, the larger the list grew. I have collected a group of over 60 slow songs of our times already. I am sure my list includes songs that some of you do not remember. I am also sure that many of you would remember them, if you just heard them again. I had a little advantage as a teenager. I had a brother that was three years ahead of me, so I probably started hearing many songs a few years before some of you. I also had a melancholy mother who loved music and would often sit by the record player and play a lot of slow songs that touched her heart. I grew to love them myself. I was amazed how many "country" records were in my list.I want you to help me with this project. We’ll call it a warm up for the reunion. For the next few weeks I would like to reintroduce you to some of the slow songs many of us slow danced to back then. I would like for you to take a few moments, put yourself back into the state of mind you were in at one of those parties, and help me come up with a Top-10 song list we loved to slow dance to. If you will click on the link below, it will take you to a page with 20 songs. I want you to listen to a little of each of them, and then send me a list of your 10 top ones out of those 20. We’ll do that each week and have run offs until we come up with 10 finalists. When I get through my list, I’ll give you a chance to add any other songs you love but that I may have missed.So…ready? If you’re one of the girls, sit on the sideline anxiously waiting. If you are one of the guys, get your nerve up and walk across the floor. The lights are dim, the time is right. Which are your top 10 favorites of these 20 songs that make you want to hit the dance floor and hold your partner’s body tightly against yours? Click on the music then close your eyes - it helps to set the mood.
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