Songs For Sally & Family (MMM6)

Welcome to another edition of Rock and Roll Flashback!  This episode is going to be highly personal, featuring songs that I wrote for my family and demo recorded.  Honestly, unless you knew Sally Lehman or personally know me, this podcast may not be of interest to you.  At any rate, I'm Jumpin' John, and the story of my life revolves around the wonderful relationship that I had with the love of my life:  Sally Lehman McDermott.  Sally was my everything.  She was my best friend, my soul mate, my confidant, my beacon of light, my true love.  Had I never met her, I would neither have enjoyed our fifty years together, nor the lives of our daughters or of our granddaughters.  

Music has the mysterious power to trigger deep emotions and re-awaken memories.  The My Musical Memories series here on Rock and Roll Flashback Podcasts explores the various ways that music was an integral part of my life with Sally.  I'm calling today's podcast, Songs For Sally & Family.  It is Part 6 of the My Musical Memories series on Rock and Roll Flashback podcasts.  Part 6 will focus on some of the hundreds of songs that I wrote for and about my sweet Sally and our daughters.  

All podcasts on the Rock and Roll Flashback Podcast are produced by brothers-in-law Bill Price and "Jumpin' John" McDermott. The Podcast Theme Song, "You Essay", was written by John. It was initially recorded by Bill and John on April 1, 2004 with several revisions since then.
Multiple promo videos and photos for Rock and Roll Flashback Podcasts are available on the following social media sites:

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Bill and John welcome your feedback and comments, and they can be emailed to rockandrollflashback@outlook.com.
Thank you for listening to Rock and Roll Flashback Podcasts!
Until next time...
Rock On!

Transcript

Thank you for that introduction and welcome to another edition of Rock and Roll Flashback!  This episode is going to be highly personal, featuring songs that I wrote for my family and demo recorded.  Honestly, unless you knew Sally Lehman or personally know me, this podcast may not be of interest to you.  At any rate, I'm Jumpin' John, and the story of my life revolves around the wonderful relationship that I had with the love of my life:  Sally Lehman McDermott.  Sally was my everything.  She was my best friend, my soul mate, my confidant, my beacon of light, my true love.  Had I never met her, I would neither have enjoyed our fifty years together, nor the lives of our daughters or of our granddaughters.  

Music has the mysterious power to trigger deep emotions and re-awaken memories.  The My Musical Memories series here on Rock and Roll Flashback Podcasts explores the various ways that music was an integral part of my life with Sally.  I'm calling today's podcast, Songs For Sally & Family.  It is Part 6 of the My Musical Memories series on Rock and Roll Flashback podcasts.  Part 6 will focus on some of the hundreds of songs that I wrote for and about my sweet Sally and our daughters.  

Ever since I was a young boy, I fancied myself as a writer.  As a young teenager, I began writing poems and songs.  The teenaged writings were often naive, immature, and trite - but I nevertheless persisted.  Having taken piano lessons, I can read music scores and am self-taught on guitar.  Using either a piano or guitar, my usual songwriting method was to come up with a melody or chord progression before writing any lyrics.  I typically wrote the songs in the keys of C, G, or F, as these were the chords and keys I frequently played on the guitar and piano.  My usual piano technique was to play chords or a rolling bass line rhythm with my left hand while my right hand played some melody notes or full chords.  My lyrics tended to be rather simple, with rhyming a priority.

At a fateful Saturday night party on October 16th, 1971, an 18 year old girl was sitting across from me.  She told me that her name was Sally.  My first impression of her was how genuine and unpretentious she was.  She was so easy for me to talk to, and I was entranced and captivated by her.  Over the years I came to appreciate her intelligence, her kindness, and her sense of humor.  I fell deeply in love with this wonderful, sweet woman, and Sally Lehman McDermott became my inspiration for everything I have done since 1971.  

Paul McCartney once sang that [and I quote] "some people want to fill the world with silly love songs" [end quote].  Well, Sir Paul, I am guilty as charged!  I am a romantic and very sentimental.  Almost immediately after meeting her, I began writing silly love songs for Sally.  Over the course of almost fifty years, I would write over 200 songs, and I recorded rough demos of most of those songs.  In this podcast I will share a Sally Song Sampler of a few of those demos with you.  The lyrics of many of those songs I wrote for her still ring true today - singing of my joy at knowing her, my loneliness when away from her, and my profound love for her.  

After October 1971 the subjects of my songs had quickly begun to reflect the love I felt for Sally - and that she felt for me.  Sally was somewhat involved in this effort.  She was self-taught on piano, and she willingly let me teach her a few basic guitar chords.  When we both returned to our parents' homes over the Christmas 1971 holiday, I sent my acoustic guitar along with her.  I also had put music notation for some of my songs onto blank music staff paper, so that Sally could play them on piano when we were apart.  

Together we occasionally wrote out rough music scores for popular rock songs, so we could play them on piano and guitar while singing together - songs like Chicago’s “Colour My World”, the Moody Blue’s “Nights in White Satin”, Jethro Tull’s “Teacher”, and others.  We even transcribed the lyrics and melodies of some of the popular Penn State University songs, such as "Hail to the Lion", "Fight On State", and the "Penn State Alma Mater”.  For those who are unfamiliar with them, here are excerpts of those songs, as performed by the Penn State Blue Band.

That Christmas holiday vacation in 1971 was an especially lonely time for Sally and me.  We had both returned to our parents' homes and were separated by 219 miles for two weeks.  We wrote each other letters, and I phoned her every day, at a time when expensive long distance landlines were all that was available.  Before we were able to rendezvous again, I wrote a song expressing my longing to get back together.  It was called "What's Wrong With This Christmas".    

Sally appreciated my song writing efforts.  She patiently listened and encouraged me.  I can still see her looking at me, while I was singing her a song.  She would often have a smile and a bemused expression on her face.  A few of my early love songs had titles like “Carefree Feeling”, “Closer to You”, “For You”, “Happy With You”, “I See You”, “I'll Never Forget You”, “Let's Go On Our Own”, “My Treasure”, “The Source”, and “Thinking of Sally”.  Since Sally was a French major in college and would eventually teach middle school French students, I also tried my hand at writing French love songs.  Here are two of them:  “Toi” and “Je T'aime Beaucoup”.

My song writing efforts quickly expanded from love songs to also include a variety of other topics involving Sally.  I was soon writing songs about our time together, about the simple things around us, and about the everyday activities that we enjoyed doing together.  Some of those song titles included “31st Day of October”, “Autumn”, “Beautiful Day”, “Changin'”, “Fall is Coming On”, “January 27th, 1972”, “Limitless Sun”, “Relax With Summer Rain”, “Saturday Morning”, “Summertime”, “This Summer's Vacation”, “Watermelon”, “There's Water On My Mind”.  I wrote songs about specific locations such as “Pennsylvania” and “York County Morning”.  I wrote a song about the Lehman family’s dog, called “Joe”.  I also wrote a philosophical song called “The Road”.

When I was very young, my father used to play his mandolin at bedtime and sing to me and my siblings.  His singing was often off-key, but we nevertheless appreciated his efforts.  As Sally and my two daughters came into our lives, I included them in several of the new songs that I wrote.  I wrote specific songs for each daughter when she was born, as well as specific songs for each granddaughter at their birth.  Often at my daughters’ bedtime, I played guitar and sang an assortment of songs to them - campfire songs, silly ditties, and songs that I had written specifically for Sally or our daughters.  With the nightly repetition, it got to the point where our daughters knew the melodies and lyrics and would sometimes sing along!  A couple examples were “Hold Me Tight” and “Our Mountain”.

Other songs that I wrote for our daughters and family in general included titles like ”Do Right”, “Dodie”, “Fall of '78”, “Hay Fever”, “Horizon”, “Let's Run”, “Playing My Guitar”, “Somebody Lands in a Desert”.  Since we were living nearby at the time, I wrote a specific song after the nuclear accident at the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant.  It was called “March to April ’79 (Together Our Love Gives Us Peace)”.

Love songs that I wrote for Sally in the 1980’s and 1990’s included titles like “Burning Love”, “It's Good To Be Home Again”, “Our Emotions Are So Real”, “Smiling Eyes”, “Too Late”, “We Wish”, “You're Wonderful”.  Two song demos I will feature here are “Thinking of You” and “Once Upon A Memory”.

After almost 50 years in each other’s company, I miss everything about Sally.  Every day I spent with her was precious to me.  I miss her playfulness, her laughter, and her steady, calming demeanor.  So these songs that I wrote have a very special meaning for me, reflecting the deep love that we shared.  I guess by placing them in this podcast, I am also archiving them for her peeps.  Here is another song, written in the 21st Century, called “Panoramic View”.

Thank you for listening to the Rock and Roll Flashback podcasts.  In this podcast episode, Songs For Sally & Family, My Musical Memories, Part 6, I focused on a few of the hundreds of songs that I wrote for and about my muse and my true love, Sally, and for our daughters.  I will close this episode with another one of the tunes that I wrote in the 2000’s:  “Docks of Dover”.  This podcast, as are all of those in the My Musical Memories series, is dedicated to the memory of Sally Lehman McDermott.  So, for now, I'm Jumpin' John McDermott, and until next time….Rock On!