They'll Never Know!

The other night I saw a television program with Kenny Rogers and Lyle Richey. Their music was great, but I was struck by how old Kenny Rogers looked. I should not have been. How long ago was it when we listened to those first great recordings by Kenny and The First Edition? Forty years? Fifty years? I can't remember the dates.

But that started me thinking about the great entertainers of my lifetime, musicians, comedians, dramatic actors, who are now dead.

Yes, I can still enjoy their original works, thanks to recordings and film. And each of those recorded performances brings back a flood of memories from when I first heard or saw them.

Today many young people - who were not yet born when those recordings were made - are also enjoying the works of those great artists. But they did not enjoy the experience of hearing them when they were fresh and new, when the performances were more relevant to the times. So they will never really know what those original performances meant to us.

Eventually the old recordings will finally wear out. The music and the lyrics will become entirely irrelevant, and all the old performers and their fans will be dead. The thrills of the 20th century will be forgotten.

But, hasn't it always been that way? Of course, the great works of art and the classical music scores still endure. But the popular entertainment of the day does not.

Future generations will never know... and never care.