Memphis, Tenn.
Cover by Edward Shaw and his daughter Sarah Shaw
This video is a cover of Johnny Rivers’ version of Chuck Berry’s song “Memphis, Tenn.” The song has always blown me away for the story – a six year old girl named Marie calls her father long distance and does not reach him. He, in turn, tries frantically to get back to her, though by song’s end is unsuccessful. Whatever it was that Marie needed haunts the listener as her dad gives the long distance operator the information that the last time he had seen her she “was waving me goodbye, with hurry home drops on her cheek that trickled from her eye.” In the last verse, he tells the operator, “I miss her and all the fun we had.” Like the dad in the song, I long to reach through time and space, to help that little girl. Well, I have my own little girl, grown now to young womanhood, and I have been there to help her every day of her life. If she ever needed me, I was there for her as I still am today. I am very pleased to have her perform this song with me, a song about a father and a daughter performed by a father and a daughter. This effort of ours is dedicated to all those daughters, and sons, separated from their fathers who long for reconciliation.