It was thirty years ago today...

....Elvis died. When Larry and I cruise around the Lubbock grid in Hummercita, we listen to 105.7 KRBL . It just sort of goes with Lubbock. They play "country greats from five decades." Today Ernest Tubbs, Loretta Lynn, Bob Wills, Mickey Gilley, gave way to a lot of cuts from the King.



There's a big tribute concert tonight with a premiere Elvis impersonator. It’s being held at the Lubbock Memorial Auditorium -- the one with the statue of Buddy Holly out front -- on Mac Davis Lane. I stopped by United Supermarket to see if there were any tickets left. Nosebleed section only. Secretly glad. I’m really not up for it.

See, that’s why I wonder if I even have a right to blog about Lubbock. I just never was part of the scene here – unless you count Spanish Club at Coronado High School. I didn’t go to out of town football games, never took one of those famous road trips down to the White River to drink a lot of beer. In high school I didn’t sing in the Baptist Choir, play in any school band, or cruise the Hi-D-Ho after midnight. Heck, my parents wouldn’t let me join the Teen Timers dance club in the seventh grade, thereby deep-sixing any hope of a social life I might ever have had.

So the whole music ethos around Lubbock that you hear about on Prairie Home Companion, or learn about in that DVD Lubbock Lights just passed me by. I kept telling my parents all through school: When you have to be in by 11:00 p.m. you miss stuff. Even now, looking through the local entertainment section, there's a lot of live music going on every night. But Cobbo and I turn into pumpkins if we're out much after sunset.



The fact is that Dad was a music snob. The first LP I ever bought with my own money was an act of rebellion. (It was Meet the Beatles and I was forced to play it at a volume that did NOT do it justice.) When Dad was driving, a twangy guitar didn't have a breath of a chance for air time on our family car radio. Same for rock and roll. I remember sitting in the garage with Mom , back from the grocery store, surreptiously listening to Jerry Lee Lewis singing "Great Balls of Fire," -- hoping that Dad wouldn't come out and find us. He mercilessly ridiculed those who were partial to the "acordeen," and what he had to say about gospel certainly didn't belong in a church.



So last Christmas week, when I found him sitting in the living room with Johnetta, one of the caregivers from Comfort Keepers, gleefully and unabashedly enjoying a black gospel choir on TV, I was somewhat taken aback. One of his favorite things to do, now that he's in the Alzheimer's Unit at Carillon, the senior life care facility not far from here, is listen to the gospel music tape they play most every afternoon. I'm glad he's not afraid any more to let loose a little. Just sorry he never learned the words.

There's a link to more about Lubbock music over there on the side.