Reminiscences and musical connections

For the past week or more, I haven't been able to get this song out of my mind. Can you believe the recording is 50 years old? I was in college at the time, in North Carolina, and not even 20 years old myself. I remember attending a concert given by Linda Ronstadt and the band she was a part of back then.

The event took place outdoors, in the beautiful Sarah P. Duke gardens in Durham, N.C. It was what was called a "be-in" at the time, a celebratory event in the age of sit-ins and other protests on campuses and in cities all around the U.S. Students splashed around in fountains and sprawled on the lawn, soaking up the sun and the music. It must have been April 1968, and I hadn't yet traveled to France. The Vietnam war was a major preoccupation for people of my generation. Martin Luther King had been or soon would be assassinated, and so would Bobby Kennedy.

It is immensely saddening to me that Ronstadt can no longer sing and give concerts the way she used to, because Parkinson's disease has taken away her ability to control her voice. I just bought one of the last studio albums she recorded and have been enjoying listening to it. It's called Adieu False Heart and was released in 2006. Ronstadt and a Louisiana singer and musician named Ann Savoy perform a series of solos and duets that include some Cajun French songs and a beautiful fiddle-music version of the 1930s French classic titled Parlez-moi d'amour, on which Ronstadt sings harmony.

I truly wish I could attend one of the live events Linda Ronstadt is currently doing in California and around the U.S., and in which she sings some songs but mainly talks about her career and music. Walt and I were lucky to attend a couple of major Linda Ronstadt concerts in Washington D.C. and New York City back in the 1980s, and several in California in the 1990s. During the time when Ronstadt's big hit song was Blue Bayou, we saw her perform in a huge arena in Maryland. We were also in the audience at Radio City Music Hall in New York when she gave her first What's New concert with conductor Nelson Riddle and his orchestra in about 1985. Reminiscences...

In California, we saw Ronstadt and Emmylou Harris (who has strong North Carolina connections) perform together in a theater in San Francisco — we were in the front row, I believe. And once in San Francisco, we attended a very intimate concert given in a small theater by Kate and Anna McGarrigle, the bilingual Quebec sisters whose music we as well as Ronstadt and Harris loved. At the end of the concert, the now late Kate McGarrigle announced that Ronstadt was in the audience and was going to sing a song of theirs that had been a big hit for Ronstadt — Heart Like a Wheel. When Linda stood up to make her way to the stage, we realized she had been sitting literally right behind us in the audience for an hour or more and we hadn't even noticed.

Here are the lyrics to High Muddy Water, which of course makes me think about what is going on in my native eastern North Carolina these days. A lot of events, including the huge North Carolina Seafood Festival and Morehead City's annual multi-class high school reunion, which my mother (class of 1948) attended many times and really enjoyed, have had to be canceled as the community struggles to recover from the wind and flood damages that hurricane Florence brought to the town recently.

(Up to my Neck) In High Muddy Water

Yes and now I'll swim ashore for I must make it

Although I'm up to my neck in high muddy water

Now the water's deep and wide

Can't hold out long this way

If I could spend a time

Perhaps I'd find a way

So now I'll swim ashore for I must make it

Although I'm up to my neck in high muddy water

Now I see the distance stir and I hear reckless sound

And something seems to say well I'm bound for higher ground

So now I'll swim ashore for I must make it

Although I'm up to my neck in high muddy water

Now the sun has risen late

But I'm safe at last my friend

Deep water was my pain

But now I've reached the end

Yes now I'll swim ashore and I know I'll make it

Although I'm up to my neck in high muddy water