Stories

I Never Knew my Mom Could Play the Guitar!

By Melodie Jones


Last month I sent in an old audio tape (from the early 1960s) to be digitized by FOREVER, not knowing what was on the tape. It turns out… it's priceless!

The audio tape is a recording of my mother from when we were living in Iowa around 1960. She recorded the tape for her mother, as if she were on a phone call, talking about what was happening in her life and what her kids (me included) were doing.

When I first heard the voice, I didn't know who it was. It sounded like a woman with a bit of a southern accent. It wasn't until she started talking about us kids that I realized it was my mom. She would have been around 26 years old at the time (and already had six kids with another on the way!).

So now I have over twenty precious minutes of my mom's voice - including her singing "Frog Went A' Courting"! As she was singing, I heard someone playing a guitar, and it ended up being her! I never knew she played guitar! I asked all my brothers and sisters, and they didn't know she played guitar either.

If you have any old VHS tapes, audio tapes, or film reels, get them digitized! You'll never know what wonderful memories are on them.

Now I need to go back into the book I made about her and add in a QR code that points to the audio tape!

A snippet of my mother playing the guitar and singing "Frog Went A' Courting" on tape for her mother.

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