Happy birthday

You may may noticed that music creeps into this bike blog on a regular basis. Usually it is squeezed into some other topic.

This time it doesn’t fit with the next scheduled post, so Charlie McCoy gets his own. Charlie McCoy is one of the greatest harmonica players out there and you have probably never heard of him. He mostly works as a sideman in the country and western genre but I’d put him up there with the blues greats.

One day my roommate came home with an album by this guy I never heard of. We played it constantly.

We think of this as a fiddle tune, but the harmonica was made for railroad songs.

Jazz standards, anyone? (Written by Hoagy Carmichael, best known for Ray Charles’ rendition.)

Gospel

Yes, he plays the blues and he pays his dues to one of the greats.

How about The Beatles?

One of his earliest recordings, with Roy Orbison

Charlie McCoy was born in West Virginia on March 28, 1941. He has been active as a Nashville session player and is one of those people you have heard many times without knowing it, having played on up to 400 sessions per year at the height of his career. He also plays guitar, bass, trumpet, and drums in addition to his better-known work on harp. He sings now and then. He played guitar on Bob Dylan’s “Desolation Row” and “Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands”. He was the bassist on all of Dylan’s album “John Wesley Harding”. He was probably best known as Musical Director for the TV show “Hee-Haw”, source of the first clip here. For all of its corn, it had some amazing music. He has also worked with Elvis Presley, Kris Kristofferson, Buffy Sainte-Marie, Ringo Starr, Steve Miller, Johnny Cash, Joan Baez, JJ Cale, Al Kooper, and Paul Simon, among many others.

Happy birthday, Charlie…and thanks to My Old Pal Ovaltine for introducing me to his music some 50 years ago.

Contrary to the proverb that “March comes in like a lion and goes out like a lamb”, this year March came in like a lamb with a temperature of 49 degrees F (9.4 C) and is going out like a lion with a temperature of 26 (-3.3 C) as I write this on 3/28 and a forecast for snow on 3/31.

Diamonds

The ride to work started like an ordinary day. Temperature 0 degrees Fahrenheit (-18 Celsius) with a light wind. As I turned onto the lakeshore path it turned magical.

There was a thick, low-hanging fog over the lake. I was in it, so I couldn’t see the fog, just the effect of the fog. Visibility out toward the lake was maybe 5o feet. Walk out 100 yards and you would be lost. Those who have read this blog before know what happens when it is cold and foggy.

Light was beginning to creep into the sky from behind me to the east. My headlight striking the hoarfrost on the eye level shrubs reflected back as diamonds. I rode through a moving wall of diamonds. I wanted to shoot video so you could see what I saw. But work beckoned.

I can’t show you the diamonds. You’ll have to trust me as I didn’t have time to get the lighting that I saw. Or you can get up at 5 and wander along this path or some other low-lying land on a cold and foggy day.

As I entered a grove of trees, the entire world lit up around me. I knew what Bing meant when he sang:

I wanted to lie in the meadow, look up at the trees, and make snow angels. Maybe I could shine my light straight up and have those diamonds shining back at me. Alas, work called to me again.

I floated into the hospital. Since the fog only appeared along the lake, I didn’t know if anyone else had seen it. I wondered if I’ll get up at 5 and ride this path after retirement, when I can stop for as long as I want, bring the “real” camera, take pictures and video until the sun comes up, try to light it the way I see it.

I started seeing patients and got to a fifth floor window that looks out over the woods. The fog hung low in the valley and the trees in that valley were coated in rime. The trees on the hillside answered back in evergreen. The fog was visible and there was a sharp demarkation between bejeweled trees and regular trees. I asked my patient if she wanted the shades open. She looked out and could see those trees from her bed. She agreed to get out of bed and sit up in a chair for a better view. My work was done.

More snow is coming tomorrow, heavy and wet, then an arctic cold front. A high of zero F is forecast for Sunday and Monday, with morning lows of -15 (-26 Celsius). Don’t you people down south wish you lived here?