Mama Didn't Lie

Nothing says the '70s like Curtis Mayfield.  If you haven't listened to him for awhile, I'd suggest you pop open a bottle of strawberry wine and get a big glass of ice from the kitchen, then sit back to listen for awhile.  You might want to add in some Issac Hayes for balance (link).  And when you are good and stoned, watch "Superfly" and "Shaft" back to back.  That's what I'm talking about.

But before he became the seventies, Mayfield wrote "Mama Didn't Lie."  Dylan played it on his "Theme Time Radio Hour," and I put it in my iTunes mix.  Yesterday as I sat working on pictures of a young girl, I just couldn't get enough.  I listened to it over and over again.  I didn't and don't like the 1970s and much prefer the way the late fifties and early sixties sounded with its primitive sophistication.  There are things going on in that music, recorded in small studios, often with a single microphone hanging from the ceiling, that are so subtle as to be lost.  Anyway, take a listen and tell me if you had to play it twice.

Or you can go here and here for other versions.

And I'd like to know "from all you woman out there," (in a fifties radio d.j. voice) if it's true.  Did mama tell the truth?  And if so, were you listening?  And if you listened, how'd that work out for you?  I'm collecting stories and will publish the best told tales.  And. . . let's see. . . the winner gets a dinner for two at Mel's Drive-In Diner.

My favorite story about the relationship between a mother and a daughter is Joyce Carol Oates' "Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been" (full text here).

Or maybe its just the diaries of young Sylvia Plath.