Cowboy's Sweetheart
(CD)

Inside CD cover,When Betty Jean Newell visited her daughter, Judy Jean (aka JJ) Hollingsworth after 32, in San Francisco for her 76th birthday in August '07, she did not realize she was ill--nobody did. She brought with her two reel-to-reel tapes which were made in the early 60s when the family lived together in Hotchkiss, Colorado. These were especially fond years for the children, Lynn, Cody (aka Jimmy), Judy and Tami.Betty Jean was a self-taught and accomplished musician by the time she was a teenager with radio performances and contest winnings to her credit in the late 40s. She made sure that all of her children received musical training. All of them took to music like fish to water with each one prodigious in their own way.Creativity was encouraged and each child composed (or made-up music) at an early age. Examples of the are Lynn's Cowboy Movie Theme, Cody's Cowboy Saddle Song, Judy's If I Had a Penny, and Tami's take on a commercial jingle, Palomino Pigs. Eager to share, the Hollingsworth kids had no problem being prompted into performance. The result is charming and ofter humorous home recordings - a glimpse of a family happy with simple farm life. They studied piano with Alice Hickok of Hotchkiss, and tap dancing with Marilyn Hausman in Delta. The youngest, Tami, wasn't old enough yet to take lessons, but she was precocious and joined in on the recordings with glee. The household had a collection of well-worn recordings and these were used to learn music by ear. A good example of this is the Polish Dance by Xaver Scharwenka which Lynn learned from an old 78 rmp record. Both the source and the result are included in this album.Shortly after Betty Jean's return to Karval, Colorado, she was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer on October 5, 2007. She passed away on November 2, 2007. We will always have these wonderful memories of this happy period of her life because of her fine tape recordings. While Jude was sorting through some of her mother's things, she came across a very worn handcut 78 rpm record which Betty Jean must have made in her late teens or early twenties. One side had a dynamic delivery of Cowboy's Sweetheart complete with yodelling pyrotechnics, hence the album's title. The music on this album is truly "roots" music and includes spirituals, cowboy songs, family Christmas songs, children's inspirations etc. music and all its sharing from a bygone era.Jude is currently a professional composer living in San Francisco, and Lynn composes music for his church in Bingham, Nebraska where he runs Hollingsworth Land and Cattle, Inc. Cody passed away in 1982 and Tami resides in Colorado Springs, a proud grandmother and computer whiz who travels all over the country. The father, Vade, moved back to Hotchkiss in 1996.During their San Francisco visit, Betty Jean and Cody's first daughter Ami, helped Judy begin the process of restoration-splicing the pieces of broken tape back together and transferring them from reels to CD at my studio where Judy records her music. The process of audio restoration is arduous (if done correctly), and Judy wasn't able to complete the project before her mother passed on. Betty Jean would have truly loved the final result. --Dick Wahlberg