The list

As I drove around town last week, listening to NPR as usual, I stumbled onto an interview of Rosanne Cash. The interview was focused on a list that her famous father had given her when she was 18 years old. The list contained the 100 country songs that her father considered to be the most influential and crucial songs in country music and implored his daughter to get to know the songs intimately as they were the backbone of his musical heritage and hers. She admitted that at first she was unimpressed but gracious at the gesture. As the daughter of Johnny Cash she was swimming in a sea of country music and musicians and this seemed merely another drop in the ocean.



As she grew into her own musical identity she said that the list began to make more sense to her, along with the giving of the list, especially coming from her father. As she revisited the list several times over the following decades she realized that what her father shared with her was a part of his musical soul, his country DNA, a legacy that she shared with him both as a daughter and a musician herself. For years she resisted the urge to record any songs from the list in fear of being accused of “trading on her father’s name.”


In 2007 she revisited the list. Her father was now passed and she felt a need to feel the connection to him that the songs represented. In the years following she began to seek out and become intimate with the songs that made up the list and eventually began the work of recording a few of the songs herself. Not covers of the songs. Not her father’s renditions. She recorded the songs as her own and felt ownership of them, after all her father gave her the list, it was her property and recording the songs was her birthright. The CD was released yesterday, October 6th, 2009. Here’s what she said about it:


It is perhaps the only record I could have made at this point in my life, and it is deeply thrilling and very emotional for me to claim this legacy in this way, and, after a lifetime as a songwriter, to showcase some essential and truly great songs as a singer, an archivist, and as a daughter. And mother. This list now goes to my children.


I must admit, I am not a huge country music fan, though I am a fan of many of Johnny Cash’s classics. I’m not at all familiar with the music of Rosanne Cash. I simply find the story behind the list touching. As a parent it makes me think a lot about what “lists” I want to leave for my children. Would I leave them all the same lists? Would I cater the lists individually for each? What type of list would make up my musical DNA?


As I sit and think about it, the task seems like one that would have to be dealt with very circumspectly. I wouldn’t want to have it misinterpreted. I would want to have it represent who I am.  Would it be books?  Music?  Movies?  Places I've been? I have no idea...but I am going to start thinking about it.

If you were to make a list what would you include? Who would you give it too that could possibly decode it. Break it down. Use it as a means to know more about who you are and what’s inside your soul.

For some reason it makes me want to watch the movie High Fidelity. 

It seems there's a John Cusack movie for every occasion. 

Interesting stuff.