Music to Die For Read Online Free PDF

but they were obviously quite conscious of their music. They’re really accomplished professional musicians, Carrie thought. At least for the moment, the problem of Dulcey seemed not to be affecting them at all.
    The audience stood to applaud and cheer after the last song. Then a few people began calling, “Lying to Strangers, Lying to Strangers,” and soon almost everyone in the dining room, including Carrie, was chanting the name of Chase and Tracy’s best-known recording.
    Finally Chase held up a hand.
    “Thank you, thank you all very much. As you know, no music written after 1940 is performed here at the Ozark Folk Center, and,” he laughed and looked at Tracy, “since Tracy and I wrote the song, we can’t claim it’s that old.”
    He paused to allow the audience to laugh too, then continued. “But seein’ as how this is a private party...”
    Applause interrupted him. The three musicians exchanged glances, then looked down at their instruments until the noise subsided and the dining room fell into an expectant hush.
    In a moment the familiar melody began on Tracy’s guitar, then Aunt Brigid lifted her fiddle and joined in, playing harmony. Chase strummed the rhythm on his banjo and started to sing, very softly:
    “When she was only one day old
    She stole her daddy’s heart.
    And by the time that she was four
    They were n’er apart.
     
    “But she’d be lying to strangers,
    Lying to strangers.
    Never any other man,
    He’s the main one in her heart.”
     
    Carrie marveled at the smiling, bland faces that Tracy and Aunt Brigid turned to the audience as they accompanied Chase. These women were incredibly good actresses.
     
    “And after her own momma left,
    People saw ’twas true.
    She would always stay by him,
    He was the only man she knew.
    “And she was lying to strangers...”
     
    Carrie looked around the room. Everyone was gripped by the emotion that had now begun to fill Chase’s words.
     
    “A sixteen year old’s beauty
    Turned many a young man’s head,
    But still the same old story came,
    ‘I’m Daddy’s, I’ll not wed.’”
     
    Aunt Brigid and Tracy were still cool—mere background figures. Chase wasn’t. What if Dulcey had been here? Would Chase have sung the song to his four-year-old daughter? That would certainly touch every heart in an audience.
     
    “Then, when she was twenty-one
    The stranger came to town.
    He swore that he would make her his,
    She’d wear his wedding gown.”
     
    As the next chorus began, Tracy’s voice, then Aunt Brigid’s, backed up Chase’s strong tenor.
     
    “But she kept lying to strangers,
    Lying to strangers.
    ‘Daddy’s the only man I love,
    The main man in my heart.’
     
    “The stranger stayed a single man.
    He bought the farm next door.
    The years went by, the two would smile.
    Folks saw that and nothing more.
     
    “And she kept lying to strangers,
    Lying to strangers.
    ‘Daddy’s still the only man,
    The main one in my heart.’
     
    “When the two were fifty-one
    Daddy died in his own bed.
    Three months later she became a bride.
    ‘What a shock’ folks ’round there said.
     
    “But they’d been lying to strangers,
    Lying to strangers.
    The man next door was not strange,
    He was the main one in her heart.
    The main man in her heart.”
     
    As the last note faded, the entire audience rose to its feet again, stirred, Carrie knew, not only by beautiful music, but by an emotion most would never know the reason for.
    Finally, Chase held up his hand for quiet.
    “I should tell you that the term ‘lying to strangers’ originally had nothing to do with this love song. It comes from a popular saying among us hill folks...‘We only lie to strangers.’ But,” he continued over the laughter, which his voice quickly silenced, “I’m not lying when I say how much Tracy, Momma, and I enjoyed performing for you. Thanks, and good night.”
    Before anyone in the audience had time to ask for another encore or could rush forward to