You asked me to write about my time on the Arthur Godfrey farm and I am obliging.
The Arthur Godfrey farm was Godfrey's first home for his family as a recognized television host, about the time he was
hosting his Godfrey Talent Scouts show in Washington D.C. (where Patsy Cline made her national debut singing "Walking
After Midnight") It was built in the 20's and located on probably 20 acres of land. The house itself was off of a 1/4 mile
driveway, nearly hidden behind a grove of pine trees.
I was born to a family of poets, writers, painters, judges, and race horse trainers around the D.C. area. We moved to the
Godfrey farm house when I was about 6. We stayed there for about 5 years. The farm was a 30 minute drive on rural
route 7. The closest humanity was Frank and Thelma's gas and ice cream shop, a red brick, sloped-roof convenience
store that today in my mind seems like a characterture of the ideal way to let life wind down. My family was close to many
of the local artists and printmakers who have since gone on to become established in the D.C. area. The farm was a place
that was known enough in the art community that musicians would come out to get away from the city when they were in
town to play. Les McCaan, the jazz pianist, was a frequent visitor and would sit with me at the house piano and would
also accompany me on the drums, my first instrument. Linda Ronstadt also came out to the farm around the time of her
Prisoner in Disguise album. The house itself and the land around it was idyllic in every way--barns, horses, land, creeks,
snakes, the occasional coyote, tall pine trees, cardinals, jay-birds, and several broken down work shacks and garages
where I pretended to carry on as a singer with a handy bandminton racket. I often thought that the music I loved seemed
to both belong and come from that farm.
My family knew my love for anything from the 20's, 30's and 40's and often took me to the Smithsonian Institute; to look
at airplanes, to buy records of train engines revving up, to hear the strange moan of older country records and blues and to
see the artifacts of history. It seems in retrospect that this all twined into how I feel about music and my philosophy about
making it.
After nearly all my childhood on this farm, we decided to move south. Seeking a good university town to raise a famil, we
nearly relocated to South Carolina where my father had been invited to work with the late James Dickey, whom my father
had met at the University of Maryland when Dickey was Poet for the Library of Congress. For various reasons, we
instead wound up in Oxford, Mississippi. Oxford was very much still a sleepy southern town blissfully and blatently
ignorant of its historical past beyond the Civil War and to say the least not nearly as gentrified as it is today. (And I might
add, quietly oblivious nearly to the history of its native son William Faulkner). Since Oxford had little in the way of book
stores or music, Memphis is where we had to go for nearly everything including entertainment. The Godfrey farm and
south still figure greatly with me. In the ruins of Beale Street and the Peabody I think I learned that an appreciation for both
the city and the country is necessary to understand the relationship between all kinds of music. (We were in a Sears in
Memphis when we heard notice that Elvis had died--a very strange experience.)
I often had a dream in those days, which I associate with this farm, about going to the library to check out a record that I
could sometimes bring home that would have every kind of music--an almost color wheel-like array of songs that would
have every kind of instrument and many kinds of sounds and stories. With that, and the farm in mind, I have hoped to both
find this record and make it.
Yours,
PB