Hoping the music never stops

Having written a recent column about movie tropes, I expected, and received messages about ones that I missed. This means you're likely to see a sequel soon. This is known as "a columnist's best friend," because you do the work for me. In fact, one of your ideas has turned into today's column. It is a familiar trope for sure: two characters, usually a romantic couple, suddenly hear "their song. For instance, at the moment their relationship seems to be souring, "Can't Help Falling in Love With You" by Elvis begins playing, and (spoiler alert) they realize they can't live without each other. Tears flow, they live happily ever after, and the audience cheers. Sure, it's sappy and predictable, but I must be honest with you. The trope rings true. We do indeed have "our songs." As much as I write about music, it should come as no surprise that the soundtrack of my memories is connected directly to the radio. So many of life's ups and downs are accompanied by a song. I can't think of my late mother without cracking a smile about her connection to music, which I discovered in the final years of her life. I knew she enjoyed singing in church, but as her memory began to fade in her 80s, I learned just how important the songs of her youth were to her. Long after names, faces, and her morning breakfast were impossible for her to recall, those songs were deeply ingrained in her mind. She sang every word, flawlessly. The church songs didn't surprise me that much. She had heard many of them, week after week, for going on 90 years. But then one day after church, I tuned the car radio to a station that played music of the 1940s big band era, when she was in her 20s. I was with her a lot when I was growing up, and I never heard those songs. My two older sisters played the hits of the 1960s (Elvis, the Beach Boys and more) on their transistor radios constantly, and when they left home, my radio was blasting out the hits of the 70s. Mom had to endure that "noise." So as I drove Mom for a Sunday lunch at the Western Sizzlin, Dinah Shore's voice was on the radio. It was "Buttons and Bows," a song she had recorded 60 years earlier. The lyrics were complicated, almost a tongue twister: "East is east and west is west, and the wrong one I have chose. Let's go where I'll keep on wearin' those frills and flowers and buttons and bows...." And on it went, each verse more clever than the last, with very few repeated words. Mom knew every one of them, as if she had been rehearsing them for weeks. I can assure you that was not the case. I was never good at memorizing lyrics, but I do associate many songs with indelible scenes from my life. One of my uncles died in his 40s. His daughter, my cousin, was a few years younger than me. We were in our teens. She asked me to ride with her in the funeral procession. On the way to the cemetery, a Mel and Tim song came on the radio. "Starting all over again, is gonna be rough, so rough, but I pray that the Lord will help us make it." It was actually about a romantic break-up, but at that moment, it was an apt description of her heartbreak. It really hit home, and we both cried. When I hear that song today, that's what I think of. I still remember the first song I played on the radio ("Heart of Gold" by Neil Young), the first song I heard after a girlfriend broke my heart, (the appropriately sad "Ain't No Sunshine" by Bill Withers), the first song I heard in stereo (the glorious "Goodbye Yellow Brick Road" by Elton John), and the best song I've ever heard performed live in concert ("Bridge Over Troubled Water" by Simon and Garfunkel in Atlanta, 2003). So many songs, so many emotions. I hope I have inherited my mom's gift of never letting them go. David Carroll is a Chattanooga news anchor, and his latest book is "I Won't Be Your Escape Goat," available from his website, ChattanoogaRadioTV.com. You may contact him at 900 Whitehall Rd, Chattanooga, TN 37405, or at RadioTV2020@yahoo.com