Here's part one of a four part series on the Best Music Of 2004. I've selected seven full length albums and three songs I feel are some of the best of the year. Originally posted at Soulfish Stew.

Loretta Lynn - Van Lear Rose: I fell asleep on Saturday nights with cornpone humor images of Hee Haw picking and grinning their way into my four year old subconscious. I was usually ay my Granny's house which had no indoor plumbing, no central heat & air, and none of the usual appliances associated with modern living except for the television. Meals were cooked atop a wood stove and clothes were washed with a hand cranked machine. Water was gathered from an old fashioned well and if you needed to go the bathroom there was an outhouse that was frequently home to wasps during the summer. I'd spend carefree days there playing in the ash pile left from burning garbage. Morning seemed to stretch into infinity as I chucked rocks at the huge garden spider by the back door taking care to not actually hit such a beautiful creature. I'd ride my tricycle around and around on the front porch since it was the only smooth surface. It cost me a broken arm one afternoon when I got too close to the edge and fell off with the handlebar snapping a bone in my right arm. I watched as I perched atop my rabbit's cage one day as my Granny slipped on the stepping stone path from the well and fell breaking her hip. Soon she'd move into a different house and she'd catch up to the Seventies. But my most vivid memories are of her first house I ever knew. Pictures from then show a light skinned child on a Farm-All tractor toy, a Ford truck from the Fifties, and a smiling country lady whom I was always told was a quarter Cherokee.

One of the most compelling objects in the old home was an old acoustic guitar covered with dust propped in a corner. No one ever played it so I would sometimes sneak over and pluck the strings. I was more into watching the strings vibrate, the sound was secondary. But there was a dim awareness that if I could ever learn to play it, I might be able to appear on that funny show that seemed to always be airing at my Granny's house when I fell asleep. I might be able to accompany somebody as delightful as Loretta Lynn.