Can You Hear the Light?

Songs and stories just naturally go together. Have you noticed that? A lot of songs are born from stories, and a lot of songs are stories. Lately, I’ve come to appreciate a couple of Canadian trios of women—The Good Lovelies and The Wailin’ Jennys. I’d heard of the Jennys before, but not the Lovelies, and I hadn’t really listened to either one until recently. But thanks to a station I built on Pandora, both groups came into rotation. The more I listened, the more I fell in love with their music.

Today, a familiar song came on through the voices of The Wailin’ Jennys, and it absolutely stopped me like a train across the tracks. If you live in East Tennessee, you don’t really have a choice: you love and appreciate Dolly Parton, no matter your musical taste. Usually, nobody sings a Dolly song better than Dolly. But this version of “Light of a Clear Blue Morning”? Let’s just say it brought real tears to my eyes. The purity of their voices, the depth of emotion—they carried something that felt… perfect. It struck me especially in light of the challenges our country faces right now. Regardless of your political perspective, I invite you to listen and see if it doesn’t speak to you on multiple levels. The pain, the weariness in the lyrics leading to an expression of light breaking through—all of it layered into a performance that somehow holds out realistic hope.

I’ve known the song a long time, but I didn’t know the story behind it. Dolly fans will remember she sang with Porter Waggoner for seven years. But she didn’t want to stay in his shadow forever. When she made the difficult decision to leave his hit show, she wrote “I Will Always Love You” for him and sang it to him as she walked out of his office for the last time. We know now what a legend she became, but in 1974, she was taking a huge leap into the unknown. As she drove home through the rain, crying, this song—Light of a Clear Blue Morning—came to her. Just as she finished writing the lyrics in her mind, the sun had came out.

Can you hear the light coming through?

You can read more about her memory of that moment if you’d like.

And if you’re a bit of a story nerd like I am, you might want to listen to a live version of the song, too. The sound quality isn’t as polished (which is why I linked the official version first), but there’s something about the body language and rawness of that a cappella performance—no autotune, no filter—that adds another layer altogether.

Now it’s your turn. Tell me about a song that moves you like that.

Donn King is The Confidence Cultivator, author of The Sparklight Chronicles—a series of business parables you’ll find at DonnKing.com/Books. He’s an emeritus professor of communication studies (which means “a professor of standing up in front of people and saying stuff”), now serving as a pastor, speaker, and communication coach. Want to increase your impact, grow your influence, or build your career? Reach out at donn@donnking.com.

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