i am sitting here as i normally do. What television we normally watch in the evenings didn’t demand our senses tonight: we left it off.

We had a wonderful repast of Maureen’s renderings. She is taking her bath and will retire with her kindle until she falls asleep. The fire is slowly dying as i sit besides the warm remnants. i will not last much longer. The night is calling me.

i just finished Joseph Conrad’s “Heart of Darkness.” It is an amazing, dark tale, captivating to me. Conrad’s talent in deep thought writing continues to blow me away. It occurred to me not many people nowadays would enjoy his work, or even finish it. It takes work. Good work with a reward if you think about it. Conrad takes me to the depths and width of human nature.

i should stay up a little longer to escape an absurd early rising, something for which i have gained a reputation. Nightly old age meds have been taken.

So, i simply am listening to music, my music, i have turned off Apple music and all of the other streaming music services. My library is about 4500 tunes of my music. i am going down the list, picking out the ones i want to listen to this solitary evening — the Everly Brothers’ “All I Have to Do is Dream” just finished playing.

Lately, i have found a great deal of comfort in my music. In the beginning of this week, i pulled out the LP “The Essential Hank Williams.” A great playlist including “My Bucket’s Got a Hole in It,” “Move It On Over,” “Honky Tonkin’,” and two that mean a great deal with me. “I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry,” has been covered by a seemingly unending list of artists and almost every genre and remains one of my all time favorites. It is my “lonely” song. Then, there is “Kaw LIga” about the wooden indian standing outside the antique store who was in love with the wooden indian maiden who was bought by a rich man and taken away. But he stood there and never let it show. Such a wonderful story of human tragedy with so much meaning, deep meaning if you think about it.

And i got to sing it. Knew it by heart. My older cousin, Graham Williamson, who later played fiddle for Roy Acuff, was baby sitting me with his wife Mary Ellen and his band in their home — i think it was over on Sunset Drive — when i was about ten. His band was practicing. Then, he asked me to sing “Kaw Liga” with the band. i belted it out, knew every word, with feeling.

After listening to old Hank, i pulled out my Platter’s albums. Oh, “The Great Pretender” brought tears to my eyes. 1955, i was a blubbering, heads-over-heels in love as an eleven-year old and they played it at the soda fountain. i almost cried. And their songs accented my romances until i was well into my thirties.

And tonight, as i scrolled though my library, i thanked the gods of ancient wax for my appreciation of music.

Most of that story has been told here in various posts of the past. Perhaps the most impact on my music appreciation journey was WCOR. i worked AM, 900 on your dial on the weekends as the “weekend warrior with sounds to lay down…they may sound scratchy but it’s just the gold dust in the grooves.” i also worked 107.3 on your FM dial, which boasted of easy listening music and a plethora of public service announcements. My shift was weeknights from 7:00 to 10:30 P.M. when i shut down the station for the night. i also worked Sunday mornings on FM, following with my afternoon Top 40 stint.

For the first couple of months on FM, i played just what was required. i would pull down an easy listening LP from the shelves surrounding the studio from floor to ceiling. i would put it on the turntable, announce the artist, and let it play. When side one was over, i would play a public service announcement while turning it over and then play the other side. i would read a short news summary and the weather report on the hour and half-hour. i got quite a bit of studying done. i also got a little bored.

So sometime around the turn of the year, i invented the evening show, “A Potpourri of Music.” i played jazz, classical, show tunes, big band, and all sorts of other things i found in those shelves except for country and rock and roll — those records were down the hall in the AM studio. i would announce the artist and read some of the attributes from the back cover of the LP jacket.

In the summer after the station had revised the AM and FM formats, FM had a short headline or weather every ten minutes under the umbrella of “accent” news. i turned my “Potpourri” into “Summer Accent.” i would lead off with Tony Bennett’s “Once Upon a Summertime” over which i related the theme for the next three and one half hours.

It was enjoyable, i was learning a lot, but my studying took a hit. i then had to find time for that in between my work as the Wilson County correspondent for The Nashville Banner in the afternoons as i was commuting to MTSU in the mornings with Jimmy Hatcher and others.

Tonight, i listened to the Platters again. “Twilight Time:” “Heavenly shades of night are falling / It’s twilight time / Out of the mist your voice is calling / ‘Tis twilight time. // When purple coloured curtains / Mark the end of day / I’ll hear you, my dear, at twilight time / Deepening shadows gather splendour / As day is done / Fingers of night will soon surrender / The setting sun…

Ahh, visions of past loves, innocence, the coolness of a summer night in that little town smack dab in the middle of Tennessee.

They don’t make ’em like that anymore.