Friday Funtime: I Think I'll Color This Man Father

Sorry for the lateness in posting - I can hardly call this Friday now - but articles don't copyedit themselves and beer doesn't drink itself. Always there are priorities.

So happy Father's Day this weekend to all the dads out there, and the dad-lovers too. Alas, there's not much in the Great American Songbook or the pop annals to celebrate what fathers are and do. I'm inclined to think it's partly because so many biological fathers have proven themselves unfit for the task ... and partly because so many of the great pop songwriters were/are gay men, and gay men tend not to have the sunniest of relationships with their fathers.

But that's a subject for another day. Lacking a true 10-song set of tunes appropriate to the day - and really, what does Fleetwood Mac's "Oh Daddy" (or Adrian Belew's "Oh Daddy" or the Turtles' Oh Daddy," for that matter) have to do with fathers as such? - I'll spotlight one song that I've always found especially touching. "Color Him Father" was a 1969 Top 10 hit for a one-hit-wonder R&B outfit called the Winstons that I know next to nothing about*. All I know is that they wrote a beautiful ode to a stepfather's love (which they present as unconditional: no easy feat for any male, much less a nonbiological dad) and that their name has additional resonance in my life (Winston was also the middle name of John Lennon, the first man I ever admired, as well as the cigarette brand of choice for my own biological father, one of few character traits I remember about him). Enjoy the day.

PS: I'd like to think that the sister Nell mentioned in "Color Him Father" is the same sister Nell who was bitten by a rat in Gil Scott-Heron's "Whitey on the Moon."

* I'm told the Winstons play a role in the "Amen break," but I don't know that story and it'll have to wait for another day anyway.

ETA: PS: I'd be remiss if I didn't take the occasion of Father's Day to mention Elton John's "Last Song," a beautifully honest appreciation with a perfectly emotionally manipulative video to match. Also check out Elton's comments on the song.