Thank You, Richard Penniman

I was on my way last week to pick up my son from a small, liberal-arts college in north central Massachusetts. The day was brisk, the sun bright and the wheels on the Windstar hummed with vigor. I had my satellite radio tuned to the "50's" channel
.
Satellite radio is one of the few extravagances I allow myself during these times of family economic hesitations.

I, myself, was humming. Happy at the thought of picking up the next-to-youngest of my nine kids, and bringing him home to begin his last summer with us before graduating and hurling himself headlong into that thing we call life.

There was nothing else on my mind.

When suddenly, erupting from the speakers in the van came that high "F" shriek and the words:

"Well, Long Tall Sally
She's built for speed
She's got everything
That Uncle John needs. Oh baby, oooh, oooh, ohhh baby."

It was a bolt of lightning. My face split into a grin and I twisted the volume knob as high as it would go. Without even thinking.

And I burst into tears.

I'm almost 68 years old, and it takes a bit to pop the pipes in my tear-ducts. And yet; unbidden, tears streamed down my face and I wept like a baby. It frightened me for a moment. But I kept on driving and Little Richard kept on singing, the sound of his driving, boogie woogie piano ricocheted around the inside of the vehicle like some thing gone mad.

What was it? The song? It's a 12 bar blues, written in part by Enotris Johnson, Robert Blackwell and Richard Penniman (The erstwhile "Little Richard). You can barely understand the lyrics, what there is of them.

The singer? The slick-haired, massacred son of a preacher who was to become one himself and invent his image dozens of times throughout his career, eventually winding up in Cleveland at the "Rock 'n Roll Hall of Fame"? He beat his piano's unmercifully and screamed out songs with the intensity of a holy-roller.

My buddy's room in the summer of 1958 when I learned to dance, to snap up my collar and love the colors pink and black? Perhaps so.

This friend, who I haven't seen in years, is now old and heavy set and in the middle of the worst financial disaster to hit the small town I live in since the depression. Millions of dollars were mis-spent by him and a partner in a Ponzi scheme that defines the words excess and greed. And he pleads ignorance. They all do.

Were the tears for him or were they for the Thomas Wolfe axiom? Yes. The book, "You Can't Go Home Again" details the illusion of prosperity and the unfair passing of time.

It was this passing of time that caught me off guard and caused the cascade of tears. This old man in a van, weeping his heart out with "Long Tall Sally" and a host of ghosts and regrets. But it was also tinged with real joy and happiness.

Have you ever wept when you heard a song that at first made you laugh?