My dad passed away in the very early morning hours of January 2nd in 2007. He was 86 years old. He and my mom, who had passed away 9 months earlier, had spent about the last seven years of their lives in a Nursing Home.

Over those seven years I got to know them on a much more personal level than I had in all the years before. Every weekend we would sit and visit and talk. Without getting into details, I connected with them on a deeper level than I ever had before.

My friend Terry Pospisil and I have written songs together for years, and I'm talking decades. In our partnership, I'm the lyric guy and Terry's the music guy and singer. After my dad's passing, I sent Terry some lyrics about him, about his life.

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The opening line of "This Old Man" popped into my head very quickly and captures my dad's feeling for music:

"He loved Roy Acuff and hated the Beatles"

Yep, that simple line told you all you needed to know about ol' Marv's musical tastes. One of his favorite song's was Roy Acuff singing "Great Speckled Bird". And I can certainly recall as a small kid, when the Beatles came on the Ed Sullivan Show, his jaw almost literally dropped to the floor...he hated it. Of course my brother and I, we loved it and love it still.

So here it is, the song I wrote for my dad. And who knows? Maybe it's about your dad, or granddad, too.

Randy's Minnesota Memories

Randy McDaniel grew up on a small farm near Leota, Minnesota during the classic baby-boomer years of the 1960s and 1970s. These are his stories of growing up in the idyllic world of southwest Minnesota.

Gallery Credit: Randy McDaniel

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