The New Christy Minstrels

Usually when a musical personality passes away that I haven't heard of I read the obituary, see what music they've recorded, and then I sample it from iTunes. If it sounds good, I purchase a few selections and add the track to my iTunes library and queue it up for copying to one of my Nanos. I have downloaded a lot of selections from deceased musical artists over the years.

But not this time. The news that Randy Sparks, founder of the New Christy Minstrels has passed away left me with two reactions. The first was that I haven't been thinking about him at all, and quite honestly didn't know if he was alive or dead. I did know of him, however and the group.

The second was that there was no need to download, purchase, or in any way acquire some of the New Christy Minstrels' output. I already have it, and have been enjoying their songs for maybe 60 years.

I had a friend who used to tell me his roommate in college in the 60s drove him nuts by his love of their music. When I told him I liked/loved their music as well he made me promise never to play it when he was around. I complied.

I know one aspect of their music that I loved was the banjo. I didn't know Randy Sparks got Steve Martin started. Steve Martin aside from being an actor and a comedian is of course first a banjo player—a good one—who would drive late night host Johnny Carson bonkers with his banjo playing.

My love of the banjo probably started on a trip with my mother back to her hometown of Tampico, Illinois in the mid-1950s. I've written about Tampico before. (https://onofframp.blogspot.com/2009/04/my-midwestern-roots.html; https://onofframp.blogspot.com/2012/04/small-town.html; https://onofframp.blogspot.com/2016/03/nancy-reagan.html) 

I will forever remember one evening when I must have been five or six and the adults gathered on the front porch one evening after dinner and listened to my mother's oldest brother, Howard, play the banjo. There was singing, of course. Growing up in New York City with my father's Greek relatives I had never before been part of such a family gathering. I loved the spontaneity of it.

Uncle Howard was famously a schoolmate of Ronald Reagan in Tampico as seen in the 1919 third grade photo in front of the Tampico schoolhouse. Reagan is in the second row, left with his hand to his chin, and my uncle Howard Cook is in the third row, third from the left in the white shirt and tie. When my uncle wasn't working in his father's restaurant he had a band, "Cookie and the somethings," probably playing the banjo.

New Christy Minstrel music is lively, upbeat, and sentimental, even a tear jerker (Today).  Many of their songs are my favorite, but I'll single one out, The Cat Came Back, one because we have a stray cat that has adopted us since 2017 that we could no more get rid of short of stealing away into the night and getting in the Witness Protection Plan. Even the, I'm not sure.

I marvel at how loyal Socks is, a neutered Tuxedo female (she showed up that way) who rarely strays off the property and will follow me across the street if need be. We don't see her much at all during the day and night, but she certainly doesn't miss any meals. She doesn't want to come in beyond the vestibule, and only when it is extremely cold out can we mange to fool her and get her in the garage where's it's warmer. Other than that, she's ours. She's an outdoor cat with no collar, and no chip in her ear. She won't stay still long enough for any of that. 

Lyrics to the ditty go:

But the cat came back,
It just couldn't stay away.
Meow kitty, meow such a pity.
Meow such a pity,
But the cat came back.

If the capable Clay Risen of the NYT hadn't written such a comprehensive obituary of Randy Sparks, the world might not have ever heard about the New Christy Minstrels ever again, unless they stopped by the house and I was in a New Christy Minstrel mood.

http://www.onofframp.blogspot.com