Sunday Concert: Four Strong Winds

The Brothers Four
Four Strong Winds

A child of the sixties I was an inbetweener in my music tastes. I was just ahead of the Beatle babies and barely missed the Elvis craze. True, my first 45 as a fifth-grader was Elvis's Hound Dog. And I liked the Beatles all right, but thought their fans a little immature. I spent my teen years immersed in "folk music". I was a "sophisticate" who loved the smooth harmonies and humor and social awareness of the Brothers Four; The Kingston Trio; The Chad Mitchell Trio, The Limelighters, and Peter, Paul and Mary. I also enjoyed the rougher folk/topical songs of Pete Seeger, Tom Paxton, Bob Dylan. Here's an old video of the Brothers Four and an old folk standby, Four Strong Winds. They're a little hokey, but still sound good after all these years.

Even today my friends and I get together occasionally for a "hootenanny". Richard brings his guitar and we sit around and sing all the old Peter, Paul, and Mary songs. Sometimes there are ten of us, sometimes fifty.
Richard and Teresa and Sheila and I reserved tickets to a PP&M concert next month. We had just made our non-refundable overnight hotel reservations when we read that Mary's recovery from surgery is not going well and the show has been cancelled! Oh, well. We'll find other entertainment for that evening. Maybe we'll just sit around the hotel, and sing the songs ourselves. Richard can play them all and knows all three parts.