August 26, 1997. I heard a lonely sort of hum.
My world is so much about sound. As I sit here typing these words I am listening to The Moody Blues with the Colorado Symphony Orchestra at their landmark September 1992 25th Anniversary concert and the first time they ever performed with an orchestra.
I have listened to these sounds thousands of times and they still make sense to me. I feel better hearing this in the room. If I did not hear this right now, I would hear a lonely sort of hum.
My mother does the word jumble in the Courier Journal (or what is left of it) each day. On Monday she read the letters of a word she could not decipher. I heard them. I put them together to form the word rather quickly.
On August 25, 1997, I heard the voice of my friend Corner King Lincoln for the last time. We were wrapping up a phone conversation. He from his home across the street from the church at Hancock Chapel where this photo was taken on my wedding day in 1996, and me with one foot on the living room carpet and one foot on the kitchen linoleum of our house in New Salisbury. Our sign-off of a phone call was standard.
Corner King: “Later on, brother!”
Me: “Later on now!”
That was it. The next day I got a phone call from the Harrison County Hospital. It was a cousin of my dear wife, Carrie. She was in the ER that day as a nurse. She called, as she knew my relationship with Malcolm Todd “Corner King” Lincoln, Sr and his family. She called and told me how it did not look good. She promised to call me with any update.
No more than fifteen minutes later I had this conversation:
Me: “Yes?”
Tammy: “Danny.”
Me: “How is he?”
Tammy: “He didn’t make it. I am so sorry.”
Me: “Okay, thanks for letting me know, Tammy.”
I threw the phone down on the chair next to window in front of the bathroom door and went to pieces.
I remember very audibly every thing I heard. I can still hear it today clear as all get out in my head.
This season never comes around when I don’t tell the story.
When Todd died I was a mess of a human being. A month and a half later, to get me moving in a better direction, my dear wife, Carrie, got me a guitar and some informal lessons.
In less than a year I was singing and performing songs I had written. I wrote a song for Corner King, as it was the impetus that led me to record my first CD. I was determined to record this song. It was first recorded in 2001 on my Leap of Faith CD. In 2016 we recorded it again and included it on my Take Me There CD released in 2019.
Don’t Miss The Last Dance
There were so many things that I wanted to say There so many time we had to go our separate ways And one day the phone was ringing, I picked it up and you’d gone away
Did you ever leave a party without dancing the last dance Did you ever stare at the ceiling at night when you knew you had a chance at romance
There’s a force of nature that science can’t explain And the Lord leaves us to wonder why some go and some remain
But we’ve got our memories and believe it or not they help to pull us through And we’ve got our hopes and dreams where there’s still a little piece of me and you
Did you ever leave a party without dancing the last dance Take the hand of someone you love tonight while you still have a chance
And Don’t Miss the Last Dance
Music and the audible side of it has been good to me. But I have never forgotten why I threw a guitar strap over my head the first time. Thank God for Carrie. So many sounds inside of me needed to come out and I did not have a clue. It took grief and a smart wife to forge them out of me. And now, we I need it, I grab my guitar and something always comes out.
I told someone recently that there are things we never get over, we just try to make it through.
Speaking the rights.
Danny Johnson