Your Song

This One's For You (Non-fiction) (Based on a Prompt)

Author’s Note:

This story was inspired by a prompt from MJ Polk and his publication, Stories from the Jukebox.

Your Song

Your Song by Elton John.

I’m a bit late with this submission but I want to thank MJ for the opportunity and for creating this cool concept.

I also have a story titled, Elixir, first posted to my Substack on 6/16/25, regarding my love for music.

Elixir

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The very first memory of music I can remember is from the late 1960’s. I was sitting in the floor of our small house as a young child, listening to records from my oldest brother’s collection of LP’s and 45’s.

I had discovered an old record player housed in a small mellow-green box. A box filled with magic.

The entire experience absolutely mesmerized me.

I would plug the power cord into the wall socket, unlatch the top, open it up, place a record on the spindle, lift the arm and watch it spin. When I lowered the arm and carefully set it down onto the groove-less section at the edge of the vinyl disc, I was spellbound.

At first, I didn’t care if it was the Archie’s, the Cherry Bombs, Tommy James and the Shondells, or Tommy Rowe singing Dizzy. Those little 45 rpm records changed my world.

Forever.

I soon graduated to my brother’s Motown LP’s and my lifetime musical journey was underway. Day after day, I would sit in that floor and play record after record after record.

I also dabbled with my parents collection of Country and Western, Hawaiian and Variety show records, but my heart and my ears were tuned to those Pop and Motown sounds.

The Four Tops, Martha and the Vandellas, Stevie Wonder, Marvin Gaye, Smokey Robinson, Glady’s Knight and the Pips. The cool names alone invoked awe in my young and yearning brain.

Those intoxicating early days started me off on a lifelong search for new music. A search that has continued until this very day, as the 17,638 songs I currently have on my Spotify-liked list prove. By the end of the day that number will surely climb.

As I grew older, my days were mostly filled with sports and school, but my old friend music was still hovering around. In the early 70’s, I was introduced to Country music by my father and the local AM radio station blaring out hit songs by Dolly, and Hank Sr., and Waylon and Willie.

Later on, as girlfriends began competing with stolen bases and free throws for the top spot in my internal rankings, radio in another form, entered the fray.

A popular program on our local, late night, weekend, FM radio station in the mid 70’s, was a song dedication show. The DJ’s would take requests for songs that listener’s would then dedicate to their sweethearts. Those silly shows struck a major chord in me.

My friends and I would listen for hours trying to hear someone’s name we were familiar with. Hearing a song like, Olivia Newton John’s – I Honestly Love You, dedicated to your own bad self was heady stuff. It felt like Nirvana and you were Walkin’ on Sunshine for the foreseeable future.

At least, until the next Friday night, when that same song was dedicated by that same girl to some other guy. The very first vestiges of jealousy and envy, awakened in me by my local deejay and the hit songs of the day.

When I think of Elton John, my mind immediately goes to, Harmony, Bennie and the Jets, Rocket Man, Captain Fantastic and the Brown Dirt Cowboy, and Your Song, although, I don’t remember focusing on Your Song until my high school days. At that point, some of the lyrics were intriguing to me.

I was beginning to get wanderlust and take a look beyond the borders of my small town and the line - Or, a man who makes potions in a traveling show, definitely got my attention.

My search for new music really ramped up after I moved to Atlanta, in the mid 80’s. A good friend introduced me to the girl I had been looking for, and together we started a musical journey of our own. We were both, music fanatics and we attended big concerts in town, traveled to shows around the Southeast and found local favorites to spend our evenings with, like pop band, Tom Grose and the Varsity, Blues guitar slinger, Tinsley Ellis, and Oliver Wood’s funky band, King Johnson.

We were in our element around music and Atlanta was loaded with music.

I watched Delbert McClinton fling his fedora into the crowd at the fabulous Fox Theater one evening, where it landed directly on Jodie’s head like it belonged there.

We saw the Black Crowe’s at Atlanta’s version of Woodstock, The Great Atlanta Pot Festival, held at Piedmont Park. That show drew a massive crowd of fun seeking, slightly dressed, hooligans on a mission to prove that weed should one day be legal.

And, we found a wonderful record store on Jimmy Carter Boulevard named Eat More Records where we spent many an evening chewing the old musical fat with the knowledgeable and fabulously rotund owner.

We also listened to AOR radio station, 96 Rock, and every single time I heard Your Song, I kept going back to the section of lyrics that stated:

I hope you don’t mind

That I put down into words

How wonderful life is

while you’re in the world

Those lines summed up exactly how I felt about my new girl.

While living in Atlanta, a surprising twist in the music world occurred as Elton John fell in love with the city and moved there in 1991. All of a sudden, Elton was a Southern Man.

Along with writing partner, Bernie Taupin, Elton had become one of the premier songwriters in the history of popular music, on par with greats like, George Gershwin, Burt Bacharach, Leonard Cohen, Hank Williams Sr., Woody Guthrie, Carole King, Joni Mitchell, Paul Simon, Van Morrison, Bob Marley, Chuck Berry, Smokey Robinson, Stevie Wonder, Bob Dylan, Prince, Mac Miller, Kendrick Lamar, John Hiatt and Bob Schneider.

I’m sure those last two names look out of place on this list but Hiatt and Schneider are two of our greatest living songwriters. Ask most any music insider and I believe they will agree.

Austin, Texas, is a world-class music town and Mr. Schneider is widely considered, the King of Austin’s Music Scene.

Years ago, he started a weekly songwriting game that included friends Jason Mraz, Patty Griffin and Matt Nathanson and began putting out songs at an incredible rate. He still write songs at a dizzying pace and has also published a book of poetry, a graphic novel and a collection of his lyrics that includes more than 1500 songs that cover a 30 year career. He is, hands down, one of my favorite current writers.

On an admittedly odd note, during the pandemic’s early days, while sitting at my patio one evening listening to Bob Schneider’s music, I wondered if you could write a story using only the song title’s from his immense catalog. On a whim, I proceeded to write out an entirely fictitious interview for a story I was working on using only those titles. To be honest, it wasn’t even that difficult.

I say all of that to make this point.

On a basic level, I consider songwriters to be some of our very best writers. Of course, I’m not comparing them to the authors of classical literature or scholarly writers, but I stand by my statement.

I may be alone in that assumption, but the emotion poured into writing a great song will be poured right back out by a multitude of fans around the world every single time they hear it. Great songs hold the listeners attention and elicit emotion like few things on earth.

I feel so lucky that I found both, music and books at an early age. They have been constant companions. I’m not sure where I would have ended up without having those books to read and that music to listen to in each and every season of my life.

And, I don’t even want to think about what would have happened to me if I hadn’t met that girl in Atlanta. A girl that changed everything for me. A girl that sang opera in college. A girl that sings her song to me every single day. A girl that constantly tells me, without telling me, My gift is my song and this one’s for you.

To close, I’m posting a short video of a song from a Bob Schneider concert my wife and I recently attended. I believe you will find it funny. The show was held at Gruene Hall in New Braunfels, Texas, the oldest continually running dance hall in the state of Texas. His annual show is always a big event.

This short video begins by focusing on the drummer but stick with it until the very end. The interplay between Mr. Schneider and the crowd proves a point I’ve long harbored and is really hard to argue. Which is, girls are so much better at singing than guys, especially when they are singing YOUR SONG.