Don't Let Your Sweet Love Die

I decided to upload some songs that Pap and I recorded on cassette tapes when I was in my late teens. I considered uploading a bunch of them in one video, as I did with the compilation from Pap and Granny. Instead, I decided to upload them individually so someone who doesn't even know about our channel might find them by searching for the song titles. I'll add them to a playlist as I upload them, in case some of you want to hear them back to back. Most of the songs that I'll upload were recorded with a Tascam 424 or 464, 4-track cassette recorder, so they are better quality than the cassette tapes that Pap and Granny made together. This song was recorded in stereo, on a metal tape that was moving at a much faster speed, which increased the sound quality, along with Dolby noise reduction. We recorded this song in Pap's living room while granny was cooking and washing dishes in the kitchen. Pap sat on the couch, and I sat in the small rocking chair that you see him sitting in during many of the BPA videos from years ago. I'm sitting in that same rocking chair in this picture of me and him in his backyard. The photo and recording are from pretty much around the same time. In this picture, I'm playing the Taylor, and he's playing the Dove, but in the recording of the song, I'm playing the Dove in G major position, and he's playing the Taylor with a capo on the 5th fret, in the D major position. Some have wondered why I play the Dove more often than the Taylor, though Pap bought the Taylor for me. Contrary to what Corie of the Pressley Girls believes, it wasn't because the Dove is easier to play. It's because the Dove is a superior guitar in many respects. One aspect that can be heard in this recording is how good the bottom E-string sounds each time I strum down the C Major chord. The bottom string doesn't sound that good on most guitars in the standard C position. Several things in this photo catch my eye: there's Tipper's Ford EXP in the background, a car that Ford stopped making a long time ago. There's Pap's guitar strap hanging on the back of my rocking chair (it must have been on the Taylor and I removed it because it was in my way). There's the gold-colored Kyser capo on the Dove (the guitar Pap is playing). It was the first Kyser we ever owned (invented by Little Roy Lewis). And there's Pap's highly polished boots, showing the lifelong habit he picked up in the Marines. Don't Let Your Sweet Love Die is one of my favorite love songs. I learned it from Reno & Smiley and from the Louvin Brothers. Though it would be impossible for me to say which version is better between those two, the R & S version definitely had the bigger influence on me. One listen to their version will show you how much of my picking was patterned after Don Reno's picking on that song. Don picked the song in F major. I picked it in G major (a much easier position). When Don and Red sang the song, they came back on a high note in the middle of each verse, in their case, a C note. Charlie and Ira sang the song 2 frets higher, and they cleverly came back from the low chord on more of a mid-level note, a G note. If they had sung the song like R & S, the note would have been a D note. In my teens and early 20's, I understood very little about singing, and the way I approached this song forced Pap to sing his harmony in the key where the Louvins sang it but using the higher note path that R & S used. It would have been no problem for him or for Ira in the key of F (where R & S sang the song), but in G, it was a big ask. He got it. What listeners wouldn't know without me telling them, is that he actually got it much better than you hear in this recording, but because I missed the picking over and over, he had to sing the song with me over and over, until he was beginning to get tired. That's why his voice broke a little in one of the verses. This recording is the 5th take. Knowing that makes my picking less impressive but his high tenor singing much more impressive. :-) I was surprised to learn that Zeke Manners co wrote this song and even more surprised when I learned he was from San Francisco! I was confused because I remembered reading that Don Reno learned the song from Zeke Morris. A little research proved that to be true. Reno played with the Morris brothers when he was only 13. That both men were named Zeke is just a huge coincidence. Another wild coincidence is that Zeke Morris played a Gibson Dove, the same kind of guitar I used in this recording! Songs often travel through twists and turns before we hear them. Compare our recording to others by searching YouTube. See a rare video of the Morris Brothers at this link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QzoA4AaZi44

Original singles on Spotify:
https://open.spotify.com/artist/5VX6ZKjBvDB31BhNdR7EXC

Original singles on YouTube:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC2WQqe6yfRH2zahVpfZ_teg

Shepherd of My Soul (Album released in 2016):
https://open.spotify.com/album/4VnoOyUTOtSqrmVKinmSJz