The Intelligence Estimate

I borrowed two CDs from a friend of mine the other day: Johnny Cash at San Quentin and Johnny Cash at Folsom Prison. I don't have a lot of Johnny Cash so I figured this was a good way to get to know him. I was surprised at how much of the music I recognized from other artists who have covered the songs. I remember seeing Bruce Springsteen cover Give My Love to Rose. I think Kris Kristofferson still does Sunday Morning Coming Down wherever he performs and everybody's done Ring of Fire. These songs have just seeped into the collective consciousness of the culture. Walk the Line, Folsom Prison Blues, I Still Miss Someone. A lot of them have accidentally slipped into my head.

However, I was surprised to find one song in particular lurking in a dark corner of my head: Daddy Sang Bass.... The story of the song is very sparse. The narrator is yearning for simpler times when the family used to gather together and sing hymns. The song even interpolates the spiritual "Will The Circle Be Unbroken." At the chorus Johnny Cash intones, "Daddy sang bass..." and June Carter-Cash sings "Momma sang tenor..." and the back up singers chime in with, "Me and little brother join right in there."

The reason I "know" this song is because whenever anything musical was going on my dad would throw out, "Daddy sang bass..." and then wait for someone to answer his call with the appropriate parts. Usually no one, especially me, knew what he was doing so he took to just finishing the line himself rather than waiting on help that wasn't forthcoming.

When I was loading the songs into my iPod I finally listened to "Daddy Sang Bass..." all the way through...and I got it. I got it for a lot of reasons.

When I was little my dad had a lot of records. Most of them were of The Statler Brothers. Short Stories, 10 Years, The Country America Loves, Atlanta Blue, The Statler Brother Christmas Card, all of them. And the whole family used to spend a time huddled together around the record player singing those 4-part harmonies. And, true to form, dad sang bass. Mom sang whatever the person next to her was singing even if it was dad who was next to her. She was never very good at holding her own part although, left to her own devices, she is naturally an alto. Me and my brother (who is actually older than me and a good two or three inches taller, so not "little brother" by any stretch of the imagination) would join in where and when we could. Eventually we knew the whole Statler Brothers catalog. That is how we learned to pick out and sing harmonies: by listening to Statler Brothers records.

And the back up singers on Johnny Cash at San Quentin were those very same Statler Brothers.

"Will the circle be unbroken, by and by lord, by and by."