60 Second Stories By Cal - Country Music And Conway Twitty

My dad was a big fan of Johnny Cash and country music. The first album I can remember him ranting about was 'Hank Williams' - Luke the Drifter'.

One summer we were visiting his side of the family in the arm pit hell of a city that is Trail B.C. before we moved to Europe. It was 1972 and everyone was cleaning out his mother's old house so that they could move her into a smaller place. He was offered many things but all he wanted were the family's old record albums.

Some of my earliest memories have a soundtrack to them. Since we only had German television for five years, music was huge in our house. The military base had one radio station so every kind of music you can imagine was played. It was the best musical education I could have gotten.

Of course Country music was tops and we had records from all the greats - Johnny Cash, Roy Orbison, Hank Williams, Charlie Pride, Jim Reeves, Marty Robbins, Buck Owens, Merle Haggard, George Jones and of course the most hated (in my mind) Conway Twitty.

I don't know what it was about him but even at an early age I hated everything about him. I hated his hair, his voice, and the smug look on his face that grinned back at me from the cover of every record of his that came into our house.

As he and I got older he did nothing that would prompt me to change my opinion of this hillbilly goober. He even ruined every episode of 'Hee Haw' that he was on and that was just sacrilege.

However, the FINAL straw for me was when I read that he had opened a resort/amusement park that he called...wait for it...TWITTY CITY. Do I need to tell you which animated character was the mascot to this dump? It was Twitty Bird. That damn bird sold out to Conway after all the support I gave him over the years. I always had his back when Sylvester was trying to turn him into lunch meat.

TWITTY CITY?? - lame, lame, lame

I may have branched off from Country to give more attention to other genres of music but I appreciate any song that is a good listen regardless of what category it comes from. I like to believe that it's because my father made sure that I had a strong foundation to build my enjoyment of music upon.

Once again I am reminded of why, for a thousand different reasons, he was the greatest man I ever knew and that I am only cool because I was lucky enough to be his son.