Regina and I gave our four youngest granddaughters enough musical instruments and gadgets for Christmas to start a band. Their parents are still not speaking to us.
My favorite was the electric piano with the full-sized keyboard. Fed-Ex left it on the porch. When we tried to move it in the house, I thought Regina had accidentally ordered a baby grand.
We got them a guitar and one of those microphones with built-in speakers. Charlee is just five and didn’t get an instrument. She made her own drum set with some plastic bowls and ball point pens.
They asked us to come out not long after Christmas for a mini-concert and didn’t miss a note on Jingle Bells or Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star.
Then they played a special song for me and caused me to get a lump in my throat. It was You Are My Sunshine. I taught all of them the song, and we still sing it when we are in the car together.
They roll their eyes now when we’re riding around and I start singing You Are My Sunshine and ask them to join in. They appease me and sing, but I didn’t think the song meant anything to them until it was the first one they learned on their new instruments.
Our older twin grandchildren just turned 30 and have children of their own. They often talk about their childhood years when we rode around with the windows down singing You Are My Sunshine and Wings of a Dove.
I taught the younger girls Wings of a Dove too when they were little, and we still sing it. But it’s more complicated to learn on the piano and guitar than You Are My Sunshine.
The simplicity of You Are My Sunshine is one reason it remains so popular 70 years after it was first recorded by Louisiana’s “singing governor,” Jimmie Davis.
A lot of folks think Davis wrote the song, but history shows that he bought it from another singer named Paul Rice. Davis put his name on it since the song belonged to him, and his recording gave the song nationwide prominence.
Ted Jones, a Northwestern graduate and nationally-renowned political consultant and lobbyist, played in the Jimmie Davis band when Davis was campaigning for governor in 1960.
Davis had served as governor from 1944 to 1948 and was running for a second term. Jones said he could not even estimate how many hundreds of times he had played You Are My Sunshine.
If it had not been for Jimmie Davis and You Are My Sunshine, I might not have gotten my first real job at The Times-Picayune newspaper in New Orleans.
George Healy, the editor, responded after I applied for a job that he had no vacancies but would interview me and keep my application on file.
We visited all morning and at lunch. Much of our conversation was about Davis, who grew up near Jonesboro and was governor at the time. We discussed politics, baseball, journalism, country music and You Are My Sunshine. We both knew all the words. He hired me after lunch.
Ted Jones invited me to Jimmie Davis’s 98th birthday party at the Strand Theater in Shreveport in 1997. Davis said, “I’ve gotten so old that when I bend down to tie my shoes, I look around for other things to do while I’m down there.”
The ex-governor sang You Are My Sunshine. Merle Haggard was there to sing with him, and Ted played the guitar with the Louisiana Hayride band that backed them up.
Music experts say You Are My Sunshine perhaps more than any other song blurred the lines between country and popular music after it was recorded by such singers as Bing Crosby, Ray Charles, Doris Day, Andy Williams, Aretha Franklin, Nat King Cole and others.
It was one of the first songs I taught my sons. They still play guitars and sing at restaurants and other places after all these years. I joined them for a song at one of their performances not long ago. We did You Are My Sunshine, and I was on key most of the time.
But one of the best renditions of the song I have ever heard was the one the four granddaughters did right after Christmas. The drum sounds of ball point pens hitting plastic bowls gave it a special touch.
REPRINTED FROM THE NATCHITOCHES TIMES