My dad, Martin, had a really nice voice. Over the years, many family members would recall him singing 50s and 60s folk songs—pre-Dylan, pre-Baez; we're talking Pete Seeger, the Limeliters, the Kingston Trio—in the living room, strumming his classical guitar in a folk style. He was proud of his voice, and we remembered it as good, but not that good. My mother had a pretty voice, too, and they sometimes were asked to sing at parties. "Martin and Judi" sung the old songs in lovely harmony: Dona, Dona; Yellow Bird; The Joys of Love.

 

At some point they even went to a studio in Chicago and recorded a series of songs that were put on a little red album. I remember coming upon this disk in a drawer when I was about 12; it was small, red, opaque, and very heavy; it could not be played on modern turntables. We lost track of it until decades later, when my sister found it in a box in my dad's basement (this is many years after the divorce) that had taken on water at some point. The disk, which was probably made of lacquer and acetate, was severely scraped, warped, and full of craggy holes; it would never play again. 

 

We lamented the loss of of this recording until about 2018, when we decided to transfer some old, unlabeled 1/4" audio reels that had been jumbled among my dad's things; he was at the time languishing in a nursing home near Chicago. We were amazed to find emerging from the speaker not only a child, me, speaking full sentences like a champ, and in some my infant sister gurgling and cooing, but several hours of my parents singing. We believe

    these were their practice sessions before they made the album, because they seem very "formal"; some are even

      accompanied by narration about the songs from my father. Sadly, he was too short on memory to recall the source,

        and indeed continued to find it hard to understand it was him singing in the recordings.

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        They are also, unfortunately, almost all accompanied by a shrill budgie named, if my memory serves, "Bird," who

       shrieks like a banshee incessantly throughout the recordings, making them unsuitable for any sort of further life

   except as mementos. Those that have no bird, have me, a very chattery toddler. I say this because we discovered one thing about my dad: he was really quite good. Like—with the right producer—could-have-released-an-album-good. And so, Friend, I thought I should post here some excepts from these quite phenomenal recordings.