Boomer, Party of Two, with a Side of Inspiration

(Disclaimer: if you’re under, oh, say 60, you might not know who some of the people mentioned here are. But inspiration comes from many sources.)

My husband, Richard, and I were born in the same year. We graduated from high school in the same year. We have a lot of the same memories, especially involving cultural literacy. We were teens in the free-wheeling sixties, but we were about as far from flower children as you can get. Our parents grew up in the depression and still held onto lessons learned, as well as being Christians. Our experiences growing up were different mainly because Richard grew up in the city (the big one—the greater LA area) and I grew up in a very small town.

He had lots of TV channels and we had only three. He remembers so much more about old shows than I do because they were always in reruns on one of those many channels. I saw most of the episodes only once. My parents weren’t really into watching the summer reruns. In fact, we didn’t even have a TV until I was 5, and we didn’t have a color TV until I was 13. I know, we lived in the dark ages. Sometime I’ll tell you about the party lines on our phones. But our shared memories, our divergent memories, and the knowledge we continue to seek out result in some interesting conversations.

Today we were listening to a very eclectic (in this case that means weird) selection of songs. I don’t know if I can even explain it to you, but because we love to reminisce and we love to know stuff, we often start out innocently listening to a song and end up following “connections” that take us down rabbit trails, searching and researching for info to fill in missing pieces of our composite memories.

Richard is reading—aka listening—to an audiobook by Peter Asher, “The Beatles from A to Zed: An Alphabetical Mystery Tour.” He is a Beatles aficionado and knows way more about them than I do (okay, he knows way more about lots of things than I do. He’s a treasure-trove of trivia). So he tells me that this author is the Peter of Peter and Gordon, a British pop duo that provided part of the soundtrack of our teenage years.

Turns out Peter was working with Paul McCartney shortly after the Beatles broke up (who knew?) Paul was dating Peter’s sister, the actress Jane Asher, and staying with their family for awhile (see, I just didn’t keep up with any of this stuff). Paul had started writing a song that John (Lennon, of course) didn’t think was right for the Beatles, so he didn’t finish it (are you following all that?). Peter heard the song and liked it, so he asked if he and Gordon could record it. Paul said yes, finished writing “A World Without Love,” and it became a global No. 1 hit for Peter and Gordon. And that’s the way our conversation started. And yes, of course we listened to the song.

Talking about Peter and Gordon naturally (for us) led to thinking about Chad & Jeremy, another duo who contributed to our teenage soundtrack. They were sort of interchangeable with Peter and Gordon—think of them as the boy bands of that era. They are so interchangeable that Richard told me Peter toured with Jeremy in 2018. Half of each group makes a whole duo, I guess. Again, who knew? (Well, Richard did.)

Next thing I know, Richard has tapped into his Apple Music and is playing a Peter and Gordon cover of “Do Not Forsake Me, Oh My Darlin’,” otherwise known as “The Ballad of High Noon.” You know, High Noon, the famous cowboy movie with Gary Cooper and Grace Kelly and some other actors you may have heard of, like Lloyd Bridges (remember “Sea Hunt”?) and Harry Morgan (if you don’t remember him as Officer Bill Gannon from Dragnet, you most likely know him as Colonel Potter from M*A*S*H). This took us to a bunch of different recordings of the High Noon song sung in the movie by the singing cowboy Tex Ritter, star of the Grand Ole Opry. Tex Ritter, for you young’uns, is the father of John Ritter, grandfather of Jason Ritter (both actors, if you’re unfamiliar with the names). From there we jumped to Frankie Lane, who sang the theme song for “Rawhide.” Rawhide was one of my favorite TV shows, and it launched Clint Eastwood’s career as he made the ladies swoon over his character, Rowdy Yates. I liked the other guy better—the trail boss Gil Favor, played by Eric Fleming. I just know you were wondering.

Now we were deeper into the topic of Westerns, and Richard was flipping through YouTube when he ran across “My Rifle, My Pony, and Me,” sung by Dean Martin and Ricky Nelson and accompanied by Walter Brennan on the harmonica in Rio Bravo, a John Wayne western, so of course he played it for us. I get warm fuzzies just watching Walter Brennan. I loved him as the cantankerous Grandpa in The Real McCoys, didn’t you? We were just kids when that was on, but it was so much fun. Back to the song from Rio Bravo—Richard shared with me that Dean and Ricky only sang together that once because they were in the movie. John Wayne also sang in a movie one time, before he began to have control over what he was required to do in his movies. And then Walter Brennan. We talked about the way he spoke his songs, with accompanying music, rather than actually singing. He had the most amazing, touching way of speaking a song, and they tend to bring tears to my eyes. One of my favorites is “Mama Sang a Song”—he reminisces about his mama singing hymns, with snatches of the hymns in the background music. It makes me think of my mama.

Music can evoke so many emotions, bring back so many memories, make you feel what you felt the first time you heard it. It can inspire tears, laughter, hope, joy, and love. Music truly is the soundtrack of our lives.

Following rabbit trails like we did today is lots of fun and part of our modus operandi. And we totally strayed from our usual music by making all those connections and following them. Random Boomer stuff. We could have wandered around and made connections in so many other directions, like skipping on over to Ozzie and Harriet (Ricky Nelson’s mom and pop on their eponymous TV series), John Wayne movies, or other singers who spoke their songs, like Lorne Green, William Shatner, and even Telly Savalas (Kojak—“Who Loves Ya, Baby?”) So much to talk about when you’ve lived as long as we have.

In fact, I just thought of another connection—my father’s first cousin was Roy Orbison. His dad, Orbie, was my grandmother’s brother. The cousins played together growing up, but Dad never saw him In my lifetime, and I never met him. When the Beatles were an up-and-coming group, they were the opening act for Roy on his UK tour in 1963. That’s how big Roy was. But there was such a huge reaction from the fans that the Fab Four were promoted very quickly to co-headliners with cousin Roy. A quarter of a century later, in 1988, Roy and former Beatle George Harrison were reunited as members of The Traveling Wilburys. And so we work our way back to the Beatles and beyond.

One of our teacher friends just posted on Facebook that it’s Beatles Friday in his Zoom class, which prompted my husband to respond, “Zoom is a lot like the Yellow Submarine, for our friends are all aboard and many more live next door.” And that’s the way it goes. Our random, meandering conversational connections are a lot like Facebook threads!

Do you ever find yourself wandering into a conversational maze like this? What connections popped up in your mind as you read this? I’d absolutely love to hear them. Drop them in the comments below. And sign up if you’d like to stay connected…to my blog!