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I know I've told you about my background, right? Cajuns on both sides, French-speaking grandparents who didn't want their kids to speak anything but English. My last living grandparent, in fact, sounds quite a lot like Justin Wilson. He's a charmer, my grandfather, and also a little bit of a ne'er-do-well. I don't know him all that well, because when my grandmother divorced him, things were roughish for a long time between him and my mother and aunt. We saw him at holidays; he charmed us, nursed his second wife who was bedridden throughout my childhood, earned his living doing odd jobs, and spent as much time playing music as he could. (He tried to teach me guitar, I remember. Even aside from being hopelessly unmusical, I never really had a chance to catch on, with just one or two lessons a year, but I remember sitting with him, so excited to have his attention, so pleased to be not answering questions about school or straining to be polite and well-behaved, but actually doing something! With! My grandfather!)
So I obviously knew he was a musician, and he even played real songs for us sometimes, but I never saw the bands he played with, never heard him as part of a whole. And then came Mother's Day this year, and my kidnapping of my mother's old records and tapes so that I could convert them to mp3s for her, and I came across some old recordings of Cajun songs. And since my mother's tastes, in general, do not run to Cajun waltzes and novelty songs, I knew this when I found them that they had to have something to do with my grandfather. And it turns out that they do -- he was a studio guitarist for a while.
Want to hear my grandfather play? He's right here, in two waltzes and a fast dance tune and a song about what happens when you lose your cow, and of course you can't really hear the guitar over the accordion, but he's there, and I'm so thrilled to be able to introduce you, it's even more thrilling than learning how to play a g chord. If you can imagine that.
He's still playing, by the way, still doing odd jobs, hanging in there, eighty-nine and counting.
So I obviously knew he was a musician, and he even played real songs for us sometimes, but I never saw the bands he played with, never heard him as part of a whole. And then came Mother's Day this year, and my kidnapping of my mother's old records and tapes so that I could convert them to mp3s for her, and I came across some old recordings of Cajun songs. And since my mother's tastes, in general, do not run to Cajun waltzes and novelty songs, I knew this when I found them that they had to have something to do with my grandfather. And it turns out that they do -- he was a studio guitarist for a while.
Want to hear my grandfather play? He's right here, in two waltzes and a fast dance tune and a song about what happens when you lose your cow, and of course you can't really hear the guitar over the accordion, but he's there, and I'm so thrilled to be able to introduce you, it's even more thrilling than learning how to play a g chord. If you can imagine that.
He's still playing, by the way, still doing odd jobs, hanging in there, eighty-nine and counting.
