A Black Feather, A poison pen...

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Blues for a Man in Black

I remember my dad's old Johnny Cash records, i think my mom gave the two or three of them he had to one of my uncles. At Folsom Prison, a "Hits" collection and another one i think, but can't rightly remember anymore... It was funny though, a couple of years after my dad died, i started listening to that stuff, where i had been totally ambivalent to any sort of country music before, just some of the things i was up to and living through at those points in time gave me an appreciation for the hard-living types like Hank Williams (Senior, never Junior) Waylon Jennings (who in a different, earlier time raised a lot of hell in some of the same parts of this town that i did) Willie Nelson, and of course The Man in Black himself.

My father never told me all the stories i'm sure he wanted to tell, and i can guess he never crossed quite as many lines as i managed to, but after he was gone, maybe it's the images of that time that Cash's older music conjures up, but i almost feel like i could finally relate to "The Old Man" in ways i couldn't when he was around, as time wore on i found myself drawn to a lot of the music i associate with my dad...the old style Mexican music, groups and people like Los Alegres de Teran, Ramon Ayala, and Pedro Infante (though i still prefer the swing of good Cuban music a little more)