Lullabyes

So a couple of weekends ago we had one of L's co-workers over for brunch, and he and his wife were good enough to bring some snappy gifts for Cleo, including a CD entitled A Child's Gift of Lullabyes. Featuring original tunes sung by a certain honey-voiced Bonnie Nichols and other rent-by-the-session crooners, it's a gentle, collection of soft music, and I've been playing it in the mornings while Cleo does her morning calisthenics (on one, squirm, and a two and a three...). And every now and then, in between propping up our sagging daughter (who likes to try to sit upright, but usually succumbs to gravity within four or five second) and trying to come up with a silly face that I haven't tried yet, I catch a few of the lyrics: something about raindrops being nice; a quiet, soothing suggestion that a baby go to sleep; a promise that the next day's fair will be wonderful. When that CD's playing, it seems that we're in the Little House on the Prairie, or on the glorious homestead that's featured in the first few shots of Shane. Nothing can go wrong; cars and mortgage payments don't exist; the world is an essentially generous place. There are no tornadoes in the forecast, and Alan Ladd hasn't yet ridden into the picture.

Such a message is fully appropriate, of course, in a collection of lullabyes. There's a lot of debate, apparently, about the etymological background of the word lullaby, but apparently it first appears in English in the 1500s, and seems to be a simple mash-up of the words lull and bye. Shush, little one, and good night.

But Cleo doesn't fall asleep to these; instead, she vigorously tries to stuff a soft toy monkey that's roughly her size into her mouth. So let's think, for a minute, about the soundtrack that's backing such a violent scene of cannibalism (because eating your favorite stuffed animal does, I'm afraid, have to be considered cannibalistic on some level).

It was the work, largely, of two men, J. Aaron Brown and David Lehman, who - according to the website of their company, Someday Baby, Inc. - distributed the collection of songs out of their novelty store in Nashville in the mid-1980s. Relying on what they called "word of mommy," they saw interest in the album gather momentum, and eventually it was nominated for a Grammy for Best Musical Album for Children. And, more than 20 years later, it's still earning 5-star reviews on Amazon, where it's no. 2,214 on the list of best-selling music. That's 8 spots behind the 1990 CD of Glenn Gould playing the Goldberg Variations.

And Bonnie Nichols, who sings to our daughter each morning about Hushabye Street? She's still going, thanks much, and presumably cashing small royalty checks derived from the lullaby CD. Based in Alaska, she's done a number of projects for children, but also composed and performed the soundtrack to "King Season," a TV program about Alaska. In fact, I think that that's her, holding the huge salmon on the program's promotional materials. And if she just leans a little closer to the large fish, and tries to take a ridiculously large bite of it, she'll look just about like Cleo did this very morning.