Category: Personal

Gracie – Purple Dahlia Studios (Etsy)

My final post for this Women’s History Month is a reprint of portions of a piece I posted in November, 2016, saluting the Queens of Country Music I will always love, thank you very much, Dolly. So many conversations recently about the Man Who Would Be King in the USA – my thanks to those who organized and marched against him yesterday from sea to shining sea. Let me close the month on a more positive “note” to celebrate Patsy Cline, Dolly Parton, Anne Murray, and the power of storytelling in song.

When I was a little tomboy growing up in Grimes County, Texas, which was one of the poorest counties in the rural southeastern Piney Woods side of the state, my dad’s brother, my Uncle Ray who lived in the big city of Houston, was a huge country music fan…and when I say huge, I do mean huge. He was like the most faithful Saturday night radio Grand Ole Opry  and Louisiana Hayride kind of country music fan.

The rest of my family was luke-warm to what are now considered the country music classics because they were all gospel music folks, snow white Southern Baptist church music kind of folks: quartets, singing conventions on Sunday afternoons with dinner on the grounds, Baptist Hymnal songs played on the organ and piano on Sunday mornings for the congregational singing.

Out of that place I began to sing solos in the little country church we attended before I could read the words to the songs. My mother taught them to me by repeating the words over and over until I could remember them. Then she would have me stand on a little folding chair on the floor just below the minister’s pulpit on Sunday morning to sing the “special music” for the service while she accompanied me on the piano.

I could look out on a congregation of maybe 50 people that included my two grandmothers, my dad, my grandfather, and at least two of my uncles…sometimes one more if my Uncle Ray came from Houston for Sunday lunch at my grandmother’s house. They all beamed back at me with love and great appreciation for my singing talents.

So much so that my Uncle Ray paid me the highest compliment he could give one Sunday after church when I had graduated to standing without the chair and actually was able to read the words to the music on my own. I must have been eight years old at the time.

Sheila Rae, he said, you sing as good as Patsy Cline. You should be on the radio on the Opry or the Louisiana Hayride.

This suggestion made quite the impression on my prepubescent self – remember this was in the 1950s before American Idol, Dancing With the Stars, The Voice and reality TV – and that comment sparked my interest in country music that has lasted for the past 60 (now 70) years. Could I sing as well as Patsy Cline? Clearly not, but I could fall in love with her music.

In times of trouble and deep distress, therefore, I am more apt to listen to the Country Classics. I think they’re good for what ails you.

Album Cover

Dolly Parton remains the last one standing of my favorites, but thank goodness for YouTube and the memories of Patsy Cline and Anne Murray. I saw Anne Murray in Vancouver, British Columbia, in concert in 1969 when I lived in Seattle, Washington. I had a huge crush on an older married woman at the time, and she invited me to go to the concert with her…and her husband. Anne Murray sang the right words to ease my naive heartbreak that evening and again in 1983 with A Little Good News that I believe is appropriate for the No Kings Days protests in 2026. The names need to be changed, but the problems remain oddly familiar 43 years later.

“A Little Good News”

I rolled out this morning…kids had the morning news show on
Bryant Gumbel was talking about the fighting in Lebanon
Some senator was squawking about the bad economy
It’s gonna get worse you see we need a change in policy

There’s a local paper rolled up in a rubber band
One more sad story’s one more than I can stand
Just once, how I’d like to see the headline say
Not much to print today can’t find nothing bad to say

Because…

Nobody robbed a liquor store on the lower part of town
Nobody OD’d, nobody burned a single building down
Nobody fired a shot in anger…nobody had to die in vain
We sure could use a little good news today

I’ll come home this evening…I’ll bet that the news will be the same
Somebody takes a hostage…somebody steals a plane
How I wanna hear the anchor man talk about a county fair
And how we cleaned up the air…how everybody learned to care

Whoa, tell me…

Nobody was assassinated in the whole Third World today
And in the streets of Ireland all the children had to do was play
And everybody loves everybody in the good old USA
We sure could use a little good news today

Nobody robbed a liquor store on the lower part of town
Nobody OD’d, nobody burned a single building down
Nobody fired a shot in anger…nobody had to die in vain
We sure could use a little good news today.

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Until we meet again, I leave you with this Irish blessing: may all of your troubles be less and your blessings be more and may nothing but happiness come through your door.

Thank you for sharing Women’s History Month with me. If winter comes, can spring be far behind?