As so often happens while swimming around on the Internet, one site leads to another and this morning I found myself watching and listening to a handsome man singing a familiar song. For anyone who grew up in the 1950s and early 60s, Tennessee Ernie Ford, the country boy with the velvety baritone-bass voice, was a mainstay of that era’s television entertainment.
I remember being glad when his show came on. My mother always watched it too and, looking back down the years from this distance, I suspect I was glad because my mother was glad and because we were together. She had a beautiful soprano voice herself and deeply appreciated Ford’s vocal abilities, to say nothing of his neat little moustache. Thanks, “Cousin Ernie”, for making those sweet memories.
And the familiar song I heard him singing this morning? Oh, Shenandoah, of course.