Chet Atkins, Stan Boreson, Frank Farrell, Johnny Gimble, Garrison Keillor, Howard Mohr, Peter Ostroushko, Butch Thompson,
Old Family Radio ( Garrison Keillor ) Brand New Pair of Shoes ( Peter Ostroushko ) Just to Watch The Desert Sun Go Down ( Johnny Gimble ) Who Hid The Halibut? ( Stan Boreson ) Never Seems to Rain Here in Seattle ( Stan Boreson ) Life Style Waltz ( Garrison Keillor , Stan Boreson ) Let Them Talk ( Garrison Keillor ) Ain't that good news ( Garrison Keillor ) Bye bye Blackbird ( Chet Atkins ) Fiddling Around ( Chet Atkins , Johnny Gimble ) A Picture from Life's Other Side ( Chet Atkins , Garrison Keillor ) Fiddle Medley ( Chet Atkins , Johnny Gimble , Peter Ostroushko ) More Fiddles ( Frank Farrell ) What a wonderful world ( Chet Atkins , Garrison Keillor ) Vincent ( Chet Atkins ) The Lake Wobegon Anthem ( Chet Atkins , Garrison Keillor , Butch Thompson ) Fiddle Set ( Peter Ostroushko , Frank Farrell ) Joy Joy Joy Up In My Father's House ( Garrison Keillor , Peter Ostroushko , Johnny Gimble ) How Great Thou Art ( Chet Atkins , Johnny Gimble ) Ring Those Golden Bells ( Chet Atkins , Johnny Gimble )
Bertha's Kitty Boutique (Mouse Morsels) Minnesota Church Basement Kitchen of Seattle (Tater Tots & Chicken Sticks, Creamed Corn w/Raisans & Wiener Bean Hotdish) Powdermilk Biscuits (The State of love because of cold weather most of the year!)
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Thank you very much. That's a little song from my hometown, my little hometown, where every week is kind of a quiet wink, and where it is kind of a paradise there, depending on what you mean by paradise, depending on what you mean by kind, I guess. I was in a kind of paradise this afternoon on our broadcast, standing on this stage, and I couldn't think of how else to end the news from Lake Wobegon, and so I stepped forward and looked at those people in the eye and asked them to sing with me, and they sang so beautifully. I could hear all the harmonies, eventually, I mean not right at the beginning. This was not a professional audience. I could hear all the harmonies and hymn tunes that we did today on the broadcast. They hear basses down the tenors and altoes hear the melody. I could hear some other parts, not what they were, but so lovely, listening to people sing. I wonder if you wouldn't try it with me. That's a song that we used to sing in Lake Wobegon. We used to sing this doing dishes, my mother, my sister and I would sing this over dishes. We'd kind of race on dishes, the washer against the wiper. We'd have a competition, we were rules, we'd govern all of that, of course. The dryer had to dry all the dishes, dry them dry and put them in the cupboard, and the person who washed had to not only wash all the dishes but also clean out the sink and wipe the cupboard. So there was a little handicap there at the end for the washer. My sister, however, used to save up all the silverware until the end, keep it in the dishwater, and then dump it in the rack and drain real fast. But during the earlier portion of the competition, when we were going along at a slow rate, we used to sing this song, tell me why the stars do shine, tell me why the ivy twines, tell me why the sky is so blue, and I will tell you why I love you. I'll bet almost two-thirds of you know this song, and the other third would like to learn it. It's in somewhere like in around sea there somewhere in that area which I believe would be somewhere like mmm. That's very close to it. Guys have to sing the melody now. Women get to sing the harmony. I'm sorry. That's how it is. Tell me why the stars do shine, tell me why the ivy twines, tell me why. That's how I show you, and I will tell you just why I love you. Because God needs the stars to shine. Because God needs the stars to shine. That's how I show you. Be much more new. That's why I love you. I always sing that outdoors sometimes under the stars. Under the stars, even when it’s cold out, real cold, it sings songs outside. No, of course, it could kill you and then say. If you breathe through your mouth and not through your mouth, frost your lungs, kill you. I'll just sing in that song and sing it about tell me why the stars do shine. Down you go. Except at Christmas, of course, it wasn't that cold that Christmas so we go around in the street singing everybody sang all the different groups that go around singing Christmas cello thousand girls individuality and spouse who are English so they say not much in lt now is their social go even the old Thanotopsian Society, go around St. Caroll's, all those old ladies, those ruined sopranos marching around, all of us go St. Christmas Caroll's holding candles, wax dripping down the front of our coats, ruining them forever. I loved it. Always thought of the wise men as having been Lutheran, I guess. And walked through the streets of Bethlehem looking for the stable, used to think about them when we were out caroling. All the other people in the Christmas story are, of course, Jews. The wise men, however, came from far, far away. So, they were the only ones who could conceivably have been Luther. So, of course, probably they were Lutherans in the room. They brought gold, frankincense, and murr, which sounds like Lutherans' life. Murr is a kind of a hot dish. I don't know if you know that. I make it from Macaroni and cream of mushroom soup, and I put hamburger in it. That's where it gets its name. Hammer, hammer, murr. The wife of one of the wise men, a wise woman, said, they're bringing gold, and frankincense, fine. But your last name, our last name, starts with ill, and people between age and all were supposed to bring a hot dish for you. Take some murr. Keep this tin foil on top of it, and make sure you bring the dish back when you're done. And off they went on their mysterious mission, trying to find one stable, one stable, just by a star that was hanging, hanging over it. Kind of a crazy idea. Sounds a lot like the sons of Canoot, in a way. But they found it. They found it mysterious, I guess, was the help of the help of angels, I suppose, who were guiding them all the way. Reminds me of the Lutheran Church, Lake Wobegon Lutheran Church, and the times I have been there. I grew up in a fundamentalist group, the Sanctified Brother, we were sacred too, I guess, but Sanctified was what we mainly went in for. We were a little group of people, only about 18 of us at our strong point, sit around in my aunt, flow in Uncle Al's living room on a Sunday morning, and sit there and had our Sunday morning service try to sing a little bit, but 18 people it wasn't easy. And we'd listen to those Lutherans up on the hill, launch into their processional, and they just sounded like an army moving ahead, moving ahead with purple robes and flags flying, marching onward. A Mighty Fortress is our God, and they were marching up into the mighty fortress. And we were down there and kind of one of God's little cottages. Yeah, that was Luther. I think it just used to amaze me. I mean, they all amazed me, Catholics, Lutherans, both. Being fundamentalist, I mean, I kind of wanted to be something else. You know, I wasn't sure what, hard life was being in a fundamentalist family, but the Catholics, my gosh, you smell smoke coming out of that place. Smell smoke and hear bells ringing. You had no idea what they were doing in there. I thought they had elephants or something. I had acrobats singing in a foreign language, father emo chanting, mmm, mmm, nights at Columbus and their black suits and the tricorn hats and the swords at their sides. You'd never know those guys were carpenters and plumbers. The Lutherans too, we grew up there on occasion. I went up there as a boy when Ernie and Erma Lundeen brought the performing gospel birds to town. It's kind of a kind of Lutheran vaudeville, I guess. Attendance at prayer meeting had been low. They brought in other acts, trying to bring in the crowds. They brought in Brother Whipple, who was supposed to be the largest evangelist, the tallest America's tallest evangelist, and also one of the heaviest, the slowest talking. Ernie and Erma Lundeen and the performing gospel birds came in. Everybody went up to see it. They'd never seen performing birds in church before and weren't sure they'd have another opportunity. They dressed them up in costumes as Old Testament characters, the birds, Parakeets and parrots and macaws and pigeons and canaries, couple chickens they had. They had them play hymns on Little Xylophone, packed it out with their beets, a walk in the garden alone, and played as a duet by Parakeet and a canary. Parakeet played the Xylophone, the canary picked up tiny bells and shook them. Taken out a slower tempo than you might have liked, that's still quite impressive. He dressed up the animals, the birds as animals, and marched them two by two into an ark. And the doors were closed, and the roof was put on. And then from somewhere out of the cloakroom, who knows how it got back there, a dove came flying in and around the room twice, three times, with a little olive branch in its beak and landed on the roof of the ark and the roof opened and the birds came out in a cloud. Their costumes removed somehow. Amazing to see. The birds came around the room, flew around the room took up the collection, brought the money back and put it in the basket. People held up dollar bills, and birds came and took them in their beets, and brought them back up. Somebody held up a silver dollar, the pigeon got it lost, altitude buddy came back. Why this hike there? And then Ernie said he wanted all of us to close our eyes and bow our hands for the blessing of the birds. He called it. Every eye was closed, every head was bowed. As we waited, waited, some of us wondering which bird it might be. It took a long time, but as we waited and first we heard a flutter of wings here and a flutter of wings there, all of us thought about how God's love had upheld us. Mysteriously and invisibly we had been upheld in this world and not allowed to fall and how we had already been blessed, doubly and trickly and so far beyond what we ever could have wanted, so that by the time the bird came and landed on my shoulder I felt already blessed more than enough, as indeed I do now. But a single song here, you sing so beautifully. This is for the sanctified brethren who believed in this song deeply. (Singing with audience) My father, how long this poor sinner suffer him and stood in about that same key like this? My father, how long my father, how long my father, how long this poor sinner suffered him and it won't be long, it won't be long. And it won't be long, this poor sinner suffered him. We will walk the mary road, we'll walk the mary road, we'll walk the mary road, till the Lord shall come, come, sorry dear, she's been harming us here and there. We will sing in harmony, we'll sing in harmony, we will sing in harmony, when the Lord shall take a full lifetime of life's children. And it won't be long, it won't be long, it won't be long, this poor sinner suffered him. I'll try one more. And it won't be long, it won't be long, it won't be long, this poor sinner suffered him. Thank you.
Winona Daily News Nov 9 1985
Archival contributors: Ken Kuhl