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, and the songs from many years earlier that they brought to prominence. He'd usually be in the living room, strumming his classical guitar in a folk style. A lot of the songs were from the era of the Great Depression. 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 (belying their difficult relationship that led later to somewhat bitter divorce)

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His repertoire over the years included (working from memory and other sources I will explain):

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The Joys of Love; Hard, Ain't it Hard; Bile them Cabbage Down; Turn Around; Times are Gettin' Hard, Boys; There's a Meeting Here Tonight; Dear Old Girl; Lorena; I Believe; Anna Laurie; Copper Kettle; Potato Song; Johnny is Gone for a Soldier; Whistling Gypsy; I Know I'll Never Find Another You; Shall I Wasting in Despair; Zhankoye; Nobody Knows You When You're Down and Out; He's Gone Away; Look Away Over Yondo; Follow the Sun; I Travel Alone; I Am a Hummer a Singer of Songs; Streams of Blood; Pastures of Plenty; Seven Daffodils; Mount Holly Jail; Raisins and Almonds; Old Tante Kuba; Dona, Dona; The Great Titanic, Yellow Bird; and others long forgot.

 

     At some point my parents even went to a studio in Chicago and recorded a series of songs 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, as if
         made of lead. I believe it was a 78-rpm disk, one that could not be played on today's 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 probably contained 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; we pulled them out while he was languishing in a nursing home near Chicago. We were amazed to find emerging from the speaker not only a toddler's voice (mine) 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—sung in a particular order, one following the next; some are even accompanied by narration about the songs from my father.

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We were thrilled at this find and had the tapes digitalized immediately. And here's what we discovered: Martin was really quite good. Like—with the right producer—could-have-released-an-album-good. Like, at certain moments could stand alongside the Kingston Trio good. This was a revelation, but bittersweet, because playing him the recordings in his nursing home bed, he was too short on memory to recall the recording sessions or what sparked them, and indeed continued to find it hard even to understand that it was him singing in the recordings.

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The songs are also, unfortunately, almost all accompanied by a shrill budgie named, if my memory serves, "Bird," who shrieks like a banshee incessantly throughout, making them unsuitable for any sort of further life except as mementos. Those that have no bird, have me, a very chattery toddler. So it is unlikely any record company, even one preserving the old songs, would be interested. 

 

And so, Friend, I thought I should post here some excepts from these quite phenomenal recordings.