“Early one mornin’ while makin’ the rounds
I took a shot of cocaine and I shot my woman down
I went right home and I went to bed
I stuck that lovin’ .44 beneath my head…”

-Johnny Cash – “Cocaine Blues”

Johnny Cash’s “I Walk the Line” was one of Z’s favorite antenatal songs. I knew that he could hear music in the womb and that he responded to a lot of it, but I wondered how much of an impression the music we played for him before birth actually made on him.

One of the problems with being trained as a biologist is that I have the set of tools required to research nearly any parenting issue that comes my way but lack the training to really understand a lot of the research outside of my specific discipline. I’ve been enjoying the time I spend with Z playing him my favorite music and singing along, but the scientist in me wanted to know more – what should I be playing him? So, the scientist in me got to work. I have been reading Daniel Levitin’s excellent book on music and the mind for ages now – one of the side-effects of parenthood is that I struggle to get through a couple of pages a night. The last chapter of “This Is Your Brain on Music” was dedicated to babies and their musical perception and preferences. Levitin reports that Alexandra Lamont at Keele University here in Britain found, in unpublished research, that babies recognized and preferred songs that they were played before birth a year after a birth even if they had not heard them in the interim. These results, if verifiable, imply that my musical choices had a big impression on developing Z.

What is more germane is what sort of music I should be playing Z now and on that point there are as many opinions as there are research groups studying the role of music in infant development. Traditionally there has been a bias towards classical music for babies – which explains the number of CDs targeted to the anxious parent. However, as Levitin writes, the study that established this was riven with errors and there is no firm evidence that classical music is better than any other genre just that its better than no music at all – the so called “Mozart Effect” is now considered to be a scientific legend. This leaves me flummoxed – what kind of music is the best for me to play for the boy?

The opinions vary massively on this one. There have been studies, largely inconclusive, regarding pitch and familiarity of lullabies. It seems that there is a cognitive advantage if the babies direct the musical sessions, though I haven’t a clue how this works and it seems to have a negative correlation to verbal development. A third study found that two-month old babies preferred consonance to dissonance – so The Beatles are better than Sonic Youth – but I kind of would have guessed that. One study reported that babies were more open minded than their parents about music while a second claimed that babies preferred familiarity. And the list goes on…

Crap, no further toward the answer. This reminds me of the first time I tried to grow tomatoes in the States. They were brown and wilted and I thought that I would consult the primary scientific literature for help – I am a plant geneticist after all. I found out a lot about tomato molecular genetics, but not a single journal article that said if your tomatoes are withered then water them. I think we’re treading on similar ground here and the best article I found on PubMed was one by the aforementioned Alexandra Lamont in which she found that children enjoy music that is loud and fast in tempo regardless of style. Really. In other words, babies, like Adrian Cronauer’s artilleryman in “Good Morning Vietnam” will listen to “Anything! Just play it loud! Okay?“

Which brings us back to Johnny Cash. I’ve already written a post about my life long musical love affair with The Man in Black, so I’ll spare you all the repetition. What brought it to mind is that we were watching the excellent Cash biopic “Walk the Line” the other evening and during one of Joaquin Phoenix’s live perfomances, Z perked up and became very interested in what was happening on the TV. To be fair, he’s becoming a little bit of a telemonkey, but this was genuine interest and as he was feeding and facing away from the television it was the sound that piqued his interest. And right then I made the most important scientific discovery I could of – Z is pretty much going to decide what he likes and what he doesn’t and the best thing I can do is expose him to what I like. Chances are, in a few years he’s not going to like any music that his Dad does anyway.

So, yesterday morning, I broke out my own “Walk the Line” playlist for the boy – original recordings only, thank you very much (see below). I realized that for Z, right now, I need to follow the KISS strategy – Keep It Simple Stupid. He often finds overly complex, multilayered music – of which his Papa is disproportionately fond – a little bit much. But early Sunday morning – it’s alway early Sunday morning when we do this – the simple rock-a-billy rhythm and Cash’s unmistakable voice were perfect. He loved the songs with a slightly faster tempo and he liked them loud. Maybe there’s something to this science business after all.

On top of a simple rhythm and rollicking tempo, Z seems to have a preference for songs that are lyrically disturbing and yesterday was no different. His favorite – met with all disarming smiles and coos – was “Cocaine Blues”, Cash’s story of a guy who gets coked up and kills his philandering wife. Don’t worry, we’re keeping the guns and cocaine locked up at home. At least, I guess if you’re a fan of remorse and recovery, things end well:

“The judge he smiled as he picked up his pen
99 years in the Folsom pen
99 years underneath that ground
I can’t forget the day I shot that bad bitch down
Come on you’ve gotta listen unto me
Lay off that whiskey and let that cocaine be…”

Image credits:

The Cash’s

Headphone Baby

Chris’s Walk the Line playlist:

  1. “Home of the Blues” – Cash
  2. “Get Rhythm” – Cash
  3. “I Walk the Line” – Cash
  4. “Wildwood Flower” – The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band
  5. “Ring of Fire” – Cash
  6. “Folsom Prison Blues” – Cash
  7. “That’s All Right” – Elvis
  8. “It Ain’t Me Babe” – Johnny & June Carter
  9. “Milkcow’s Calf Blues” – Robert Johnson
  10. “Cocaine Blues” – Cash
  11. “Jackson” – Johnny & June Carter
  12. “I Got Stripes” – Cash
  13. “Hey Porter” – Cash
  14. “Highway 61 Revisited” – Dylan
  15. “Long-Legged Guitar Pickin’ Man” – Johnny & June Carter
  16. “Rock & Roll Ruby” – Cash

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