You may have noticed I had a varied group of road warriors traveling with me last year. One of the things that makes for a successful trip (meaning that the same number of people arrive at the destination as left) is working out the Rules of the Road before you take off.
Friends Jan and Anne were bike riding partners, so we had plenty of time to work out the kinks of our relationships while pedaling down the road. Friend Shari was my first high school girlfriend (which didn’t end well), and we hadn’t spoken in close to four decades, so I had to learn that she doesn’t become close to human until after her first cup of Starbucks coffee, she needs frequent smoke breaks and she gets up about the time I’m normally going to bed. We were stopping often for her to check out antique shops, so the smoke breaks weren’t an issue, and I’d leave her my car keys so she could get her Starbucks fix before I even thought about waking up.
Curator Jessica from Athens, Ohio, was a going to be a challenge. She was half my age (OK, more than half my age, but who is counting) to start off, so I was afraid we would have generational issues. We managed to compromise on a waking and sleeping schedule, types of eating establishments (she wasn’t picky) and where we would stay (no place that rented by the hour or where bodies had been found in a room recently). The only place where we hit a speed bump was when we got to talking about music play lists.
“No Glenn Yarbrough,” she insisted
I’m not really a Yarbrough fan – in fact, I get Glenn Yarbrough and Gordon Lightfoot mixed up, probably because of the G-names – but I wasn’t going to concede all that easy. “Miz Jessica, Ma’am, you’ve read my blog. You know that Baby the Rain Must Fall, Glenn’s biggest hit, was how I met Wife Lila. Surely you wouldn’t make me cut that from the playlist, would you?”
She would. Yarbrough was a non-negotiable with her. She also wasn’t big on C.W. McCall, but she WOULD let me play the home brew Cars & Trucks mix tape that was a Steinhoff family trip staple.
So, when I was editing some of my Ohio film, I was surprised to run into Glenn Yarbrough in concert at Ohio University on March 2, 1968.
Jessica, this are for you.
He is as bland as his music
While I was editing the film, I cranked up some Yarbrough music. Sorry, Glenn, I had to dump you after about the third song. You make Gordon Lightfoot sound exciting. On top of that, the photos are dull, too. I’m only including a bunch of them in case some reader was one of the folks who bought some of his nearly four dozen solo albums. He also sang on almost two dozen albums with the Limeliters. SOMEBODY must have liked him.
I’m sticking in some shots of the guys in his band just in case they became famous on their own later.
Glenn Yarbrough photo gallery
Click on any image to make it larger, then use your arrow keys to move through the gallery.
