Recess! Media

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That’s Townes van Zandt with a chorus from “Hey Willy Boy” — a song about the seasons that he wrote for his son, Will — from a CD called Daddies Sing Good Night. It’s Father’s Day this weekend, and there isn’t a better time to put on this run of finger-picked delights. Michael Doucet offers a Cajun chanson for his son, Ezra; Tim and Mollie O’Brien have a duet on “Hush While the Little Ones Sleep” that is so good it will make you weep; and then there’s Leon Redbone’s haunting version of Irving Berlin’s “Russian Lullaby” that you won’t ever forget.

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Fathers aren’t usually thought of as being the lullabye singers, the soothers at night, even though for centuries there have been volumes of rhymes and songs attributed to Father Goose; and certainly there have always been dads who have, in their tender, off-keyed ways, managed to rasp out a “hush little baby” or two. And then, of course, there are the cowboys who had to know how to calm little doggies on the range, like Doc Watson does in his “Prairie Lullaby” that every father might want to keep tucked away in his saddle bag.

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