Songs My Mother Taught Me . . . Ebb Tide

{This is the fifth in an undetermined number of songs my mother taught me I'm posting this month in her memory. For background, please visit the post containing the first song, Ivory Tower.}


Thursday and Friday, both days and both nights, were heavenly on the Oregon coast. The predicted storm hit as I was checking out of the motel on Saturday morning. So, once again, my October soul journey to the beach included hours walking on the sand. Thinking. Not thinking.

One thought that came into my mind on Thursday evening when I took these shots at Lincoln City beach was a song, one that I hadn't thought of for so long and that was not on my list of possibilities for this month's series of songs my mother taught me. It came gently into my memory as I marveled over the silvery sunset and the beauty of everything in my view. Ebb Tide.

My mother had an album with a photo of the ocean on the cover, and I think the title of the album was Ebb Tide. In any case, it was not an album that I, as a child, appreciated in the slightest. I don't remember any other songs on the album except Ebb Tide, and it was a ghastly organ piece that made me say Ewwww. To this day organ music (with some few exceptions in the classical genre) is about the only music that truly repels me. I hated this instrumental piece as much as my mother loved it. Even when the Righteous Brothers came out with their version in the mid-1960s I rejected Ebb Tide, while very much loving their other work.

So it was a real surprise for Ebb Tide to come to me at the beach, and an even greater surprise to find myself singing the song as I walked (at least the few words I remembered from hearing the Righteous Brothers version on the radio), and an even greater surprise to find myself actually enjoying selecting the version I liked best from numerous versions by many artists in videos at youtube. No surprise, however, that my favorite rendition would be sung by Frank Sinatra. I love Frank Sinatra.......and my mother? She hated him. She didn't have one of his records, so I came to my appreciation of his work later as a young adult. That makes this particular post a real compromise!

Ebb Tide. One of the songs my mother taught me because she so loved the ocean after spending her 'tween and teen years in Santa Monica. She was so content retiring in Oregon an hours drive from the coast, where we scattered her ashes as she requested, and where I feel closest to her.

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