"I Am Always Remembering..."

Today is my mother's birthday.  She would have been 88 today.  I think of my mother often, in fact, everyday.  She loved to sing and was a very early member of the New Bethel Baptist Church when she came to Detroit after WWII.  In the 1950s she sang in the choir with a then young Aretha Franklin, who was the daughter of its pastor, C.L. Franklin.

"Mary Don't You Weep" was one of my mother's favorite songs.  I remember quite distinctly when we first heard this famous performance of the song.  We were driving in my mother's brand new 1974 Cadillac Coupe de Ville and it was playing on a radio station and my mother talked about singing this song herself when she was much younger.  We went right then and there to a record store to buy a copy of the 1972 album "Amazing Grace" that this track is from.

While I don't remember what it cost, I remember where we got the record.  We bought it at "Peaches Records" on Schaefer Street in Dearborn, Michigan.  My mother, my sister and I went in and asked a clerk to help us find it.  We bought it, took it home and immediately played it on my mother's beautiful Motorola console stereo that still graces the living room of the home I grew up in.

I remember hearing this song played many times on that faithful old Motorola in the thirty years that passed between 1974 and 2004 when my mother left us for Heaven.  And every time I've listened to it since, the memories of those 30 years have come flooding back to my mind.

My mother was a wonderful woman and I will always love her and always remember her... I am always remembering... "Happy Birthday Mother."

"Fear Eats the Soul"