At the Writers Club Reception this week Pop said, “If I’d have to choose between music and writing, I’d be hard put to choose.” With this set of articles in The Telegraph this week, looks like he doesn’t have to.
Pop’s a newsmaker! At 92 he’s on a roll! On May 8, 2008 at 11:08PM Telegraph’s […]

My father while going through 100s of hours of recorded music tapes (one of his projects this winter is re-recording), he got fed up with all the “cheating” songs. He thought he would put in his version. He stayed up until Midnight writing it and this note that goes along with it. —JGR

Erwin A. Thompson, […]

Jimmy Cliff’s “Too Many Rivers To Cross” was one of the sound track songs from my time in Botswana and Ghana in the 1970s. There were a lot of rivers to cross, and I learned how to cross them…not all at once, but slowly, and one by one. This also made a great slow dance […]

In 1936, when my father was 21, he wrote a song for Sherman Bowen’s younger sister, Lucille, that came to be titled “The Girl in the Little Blue Hat.” Lucille was sixteen when he composed the song, but had been perhaps eight-years-old when my father started dancing square dances with her at Ben Hill’s dances […]

My father has a phrase for it in his beautiful poem: “Music brings memories.” Yes, indeed it does. Working from that premise, Sue Bilch and Paullette McDougal presented a thrilling cabaret performance for the Story Circle Network Saturday luncheon.
It occurred to me during the performance, as I listened, enjoyed, and looked around the room, that […]

Both my father and I are Holiday Drop-outs, lying low for the most part until after New Year’s Day when the world turns back to sanity.
Our holiday spirit is a quiet one…dedicated to continuing to do the things we usually do…and keeping it all on a small, human scale.
Last night was one of those quiet […]

I asked my father, who in the Second World War was Sergeant Erwin A. Thompson, “I” Company, 36th Armored Infantry Regiment, First Army to write a post honoring Pearl Harbor Day.
My father is a man who served in that war and still has scars around his scrapnel wounds to prove it. I know, because I […]

My father and our long-time neighbor Jim Weeks (one of the three guitar players who, my father jokes “makes me sound good” when he plays fiddle) sang this quite movingly on the TV profile of my father. I always love watching and listening to this on tape.
My father is a combat veteran of World War […]

Pop says, “And here is a song from the First World War that still lives in my memory as one of the most beautiful pieces of music that I know.” Folks ask what kind of music we play during our Sunday musical open houses. This is one of the pieces…and I agree with my Pop […]

The good thing about knowing a song and its lyrics is that it doesn’t have to be sung out loud to hear it in your mind. When I walked into the Konocti room that fronts Clear Lake and hosts their weekend buffet, the Swingtones were playing this tune, “Give Me the Simple Life,” and I […]