Sightlines Blog Tour Video #7: Interview with Suzy Bogguss at Launch Dinner
Title: CD launch dinner Part 6 (featuring Suzy Bogguss)
Description: Stage 7, celebration: launch dinner at Sportsman Grille and Lodge. Janet reads Pop’s “I.M.A. Fox” that goes with his fox carving he sent as a gift. Interview with Cousin Suzy Bogguss. Janet and Suzy discuss her hard-won Nashville success, their family connection that began at a 1938 Thompson family reunion when Pop and Suzy’s mother Barbara first played music together. Suzy’s American folk music project she’s asked Pop to contribute to.
Length: 9:59
Videographer: Scott Kidd
Very interesting. So Suzy is “catching” and preserving songs, some of which her own mother played and sang. I think it would be so much fun to listen to the music that moved my parents when they were young.
My mother often spoke of her grandfather Burcham who played fiddle. She was reminded of “Eighth of January” in 1994 when we visited The Hermitage, Andrew Jackson’s home outside Nashville. Not until that visit did she understand the significance of the name of the song. A couple years ago, I googled the song and learned it was the root-melody of the Johnny Horton pop hit “Battle of New Orleans.” I found the song in it’s primitive form on I-tunes, downloaded it, and played it for my mother on my IPOD as a surprise. Her eyes flew open, and she said “that sounds just like my grandpa!” It was great to bring to her a song she had not heard perhaps since she was about 12 years old.
It is good to know people like Suzy and your dad, Erwin, are working to save songs from the past. Music tells so much about a culture, and losing these songs would delete information that could not be replaced by any other medium.