Singing a Song for My Mother

Hamilton Bohannon - Singing a Song for my Mother


This Mother's Day inspired me to sort through my knowledge of songs dedicated to the joyful force of motherhood. Nothing, and I really mean nothing comes close, to Hamilton Bohannon's wonderful tribute, "Singing a Song for My Mother." The jam is cushioned by other extraordinary grooves off Bohannon's first album, Stop & Go, a monster funky soul soundscape released on Brunswick Records in 1973.

Bohannon's composition for Singing a Song rides a delicate tension between melancholic estrangement and effusive love. He makes this feeling of distance from the comfortable security of one's mother a mood of intimate warmth rather than of hopeless alienation. And the song sways with an endless joy, just charged with a vulnerable yet affirmative solidity. It truly encapsulates the sensual resonance of a grown child's relation to his mother in sonic form. So what do you think, does anyone have Hamilton Bohannon beat on the ode to the mother tip?