With his latest jukebox selection, Jeb Loy Nichols is plagued by the best kind of memory.

Jimmy Wakely
Tellin’ My Troubles To My Old Guitar
1949
Capitol

So here we are. The days are shorter, the nights longer, it’s wet and grey and  it’s getting colder. Happy days. I’m told to stay in the moment but the moment’s miserable. I try to maintain my focus; I tell myself to be mindful. As I’m chopping wood or making soup I try and be here, try to keep my head full of Now. But memories come sneaking through the backdoor. Memories are bugs in the brain. They enter and buzz around. There’s nothing you can do about them. They stand in the corner and won’t leave. They’re unreliable. They flatter. They conceal. They terrify. And like bugs, I don’t want to kill them, I just want them outside, where they belong. As the Zen monk Ryokan said: To forget is happiness.

I spend the night in a storm of anxiety, listing my failures, my shortcomings, envisioning new disasters. I wait for the morning. I watch a single crow land in the sycamore tree. The crow is a scrap of darkness. I imagine myself inside the bird, my bones suddenly light, my feet sharp. My feathers ready.  I look around at my doings, my house, my muddy pond, my weed choked garden, lift my wings and fly away.

I discovered Jimmy Wakely amongst my grandmother’s records. I remember thinking: what’s up with this guy? I played it and was instantly in love. It was everything I wanted. I was a strange little kid; I was in my grandmother’s house and I was tiny. I had peanut butter cookies. I was bored. I didn’t like the things other boys liked. The world was rough and unwieldy; it was often dangerous. It was full of bigger, angrier kids. Jimmy Wakely was there to see me through. He stood by. He seemed to me that summer the kindliest, most gentle thing I’d ever known. It was years before I realised how deeply melancholy the song is.

I was once, I thought, in all ways unhappy. Frustrated by the facts of my life, taunted by circumstance, unable to make my mark. I shouted and I fumed. I blamed all manner of things. Then a friend came and without a word took me walking. The friend showed no temper, no personal interest, no desire to do good. He used neither force nor muscle. He remained silent. He uttered not one word about duty or common good or nobility. He showed no concern. He barely acknowledged my existence. We walked without talking. The birds in the bare trees looked down on us. A wind blew. Grass, even in winter, crept higher. The sun, for a while, was there. Nothing laid claim to any other thing. From that moment on, slowly, I felt better.  

That’s the way I feel about Jimmy Wakely. He comes, he sings, he leaves. He feels no need to impress, doesn’t try to push his way into the centre of my life. It’s not about him, it’s about the song. And the song is what? Two minutes long. No fireworks, no hysteria, no tears, no drama. He’s humble in a way that seems to have been forgotten. He’s reassuring without being sentimental.  If I’m going to be plagued by memories, he’s the best kind.

I play the record and think of my grandmother and my father, both of whom loved Jimmy Wakely. I think of the three of us, side by side in these short, mid-winter weeks. They’re good company, and for a while, I don’t mind.  I tell them both how good it is to see them, and to come again if they’re passing, but right now I have things to do; I must try to get back to the task at hand, living life in the eternal baffling now; in the rain, the dusk, the slanting wind. 

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You can follow the Jeb’s Jukebox Spotify playlist here.