You’ve got to be kidding
I’m sure we all face the dilemma of missing an opportunity or forgetting to do something and having it lost forever in the annals of time. I
have recently completed a 45-year quest, and was able to check off another entry on my bucket list.
Back in the day, many years ago when I was still in radio, I met a country singer from Seattle, who was visiting Toronto. I had just finished my show and was introduced to him. Bob Weymouth was a tall, good looking guy with a dozen or so records under his arm. He offered me one and asked if he could get as much air time as possible.
He was a nice guy, and his lead record, ‘Lucky Born’ was a pretty good
hit, but only for a short time. I quite liked it and listened to it a fair bit. Then came the nineties and CDs were all the rage. I was tired of all my albums taking up space and gave about 300 of them to a friend of a friend. Among them was ‘Lucky Born’.
I never gave it much thought until one day, a few years later, I wanted to listen to the song. I realized it was among the albums I discarded, but headed off to HMV to pick up the CD. I stood aghast when the clerk, after checking, explained ‘Lucky Born’ had never been made into a CD. I was stunned, and scoured record stores, catalogues and even called my old radio station to see if they still had a copy. Alas, there were none.
Time passed and I developed an underlying obsession with ‘Lucky Born’. I
sang it in the shower, hummed it in the car and from time to time, even played it on my guitar. No one I ever mentioned the song or Bob Weymouth to, had heard of them. I felt very alone.
As with all good stories, this one also has a happy ending. The music industry has gone from vinyl to cassette, Eight Track to Compact Disk, MP3 to downloading, and now streaming. Nowhere has Bob Weymouth surfaced. Every so often I dive into the internet to search, but alas no luck, that is, until a few months ago.
Whenever I can, I listen to an internet radio station, 20th Century soundtrack, on Tunein.com. I stream the app from my phone through my car speakers and listen to it on Google Home. They play all the hits from the past 100 years, including TV show intros and commercials. I decided to email the station and ask if they had heard of Bob Weymouth and ‘Lucky Born’. I received a reply rather quickly, but the station owner,
a former Disc Jockey, had never heard of him or the song. He did say he had a friend who knew everything about music.
To my pleasant surprise, I received a reply from the friend with a short bio on Bob Weymouth and a link to one of three copies of his album. $22 dollars and three weeks later, I held an original copy of ‘Lucky Born’ in my hands. I resurrected my turntable, and now happily listen to Bob Weymouth crooning his greatest song, Lucky Born… after 40+ years. It just goes to show you, what goes around comes around.
Jonathan van Bilsen is a published author, an award-winning photographer, columnist and keynote speaker. Contact him at jon@photosNtravel.com.