Fatherhood Quote by James W. Black

"My father, a mining engineer and colliery manager, gave his brood many advantages not least of which, for me, was his love of singing which gave music a central place in our lives"

James W. Black, Scientist

About this Quote

A mining engineer teaching his household to sing is a quiet rebuke to the cliché that hard industry breeds hard lives. James W. Black frames his father with two titles that carry soot and authority - “mining engineer” and “colliery manager” - then pivots to something almost disarmingly tender: a “love of singing” that made music “central.” The sentence works because it stages a collision between worlds we’re trained to keep separate: extractive labor and aesthetic nourishment, managerial command and communal voice. It’s not sentimental; it’s strategic. Black is building an origin story in which culture isn’t a luxury item but a form of inheritance as real as education or money.

The word “brood” is doing sharp work, too. It’s faintly animal, faintly comic, a reminder that childhood can feel like being one of many mouths at the table. Against that crowdedness, music becomes both a technology of togetherness and a way to be singled out: “for me,” he writes, narrowing the lens to explain how a shared family practice turned into a personal compass.

Context matters: Black belongs to a 20th-century cohort whose scientific achievements are often narrated as solitary brilliance. He slips in a different engine for a scientific life - not genius, but atmosphere. Singing trains attention, pattern, breath, timing, listening to others. The subtext is a corrective to the myth that science springs from pure rationality. His father’s mine may have paid the bills, but the songs stocked the house with a different kind of resource: a disciplined joy that could travel anywhere, even into a lab.

Quote Details

Topic	Father
Source	Help us find the source
Cite

More Quotes by James Add to List

About the Author

James W. Black (July 14, 1924 - March 22, 2010) was a Scientist from Scotland.

11 more quotes available

View Profile

Similar Quotes

"My father was a very disciplined singer who worked hard at his craft, and I was around that growing up"

Bobby McFerrin, Musician

"My dad's music was a great inspiration to me"

Julian Lennon, Musician

"Music was around in my family in two ways. My mother would occasionally sing to me, but I was mostly stimulated by the classical music my father had left behind. I had an ear for music, I suppose, so that's what began my interest in music"

Tom Glazer, Musician

Tom Glazer

"Our parents were musicians"

Caroline Corr, Musician

"My father started me singing in church"

DeForest Kelley, Actor

"I always sang when I was little and my father, who was a great influence on me, also had a wonderful voice. He and my mother really encouraged me to sing and play the piano. They were always very supportive"

Judy Collins, Musician

"My mother and father are very involved with music. It's completely part of their soul"

P. J. Harvey, Musician

"The study of music was a family interest"

Emanuel Celler, Politician

"My mom was a dancer, my dad's a singer and I've always had that kind of music in my life"

Elvis Stojko, Athlete

Elvis Stojko

"I grew up in a very musical family, my father was a musician and a big band leader and made records"

Billy Sherwood, Musician

"My dad was a musician, it was just what he did, like another guy's dad drives a meat truck. Our house was normal. We weren't taken with the fact our dad was a musician"

Branford Marsalis, Musician

"My mom sang in high school choir and so did my father"

Kevin Richardson, Musician

"My father was a classical pianist, and my mother was a singer of just about everything"

Carly Simon, Musician

"My father was always anxious to give pleasure to his children. Accordingly, he took me one day, as a special treat, to the top of the grand old tower, to see the chimes played"

James Nasmyth, Inventor

"One thing I am certain of is that, if I have done anything good in music, it was, first, because of my father, and second, because of my wife"

Charles Ives, Composer

"He learned through the way that my father and I felt about his songs, his country songs, that they were great songs. And then he went out and sang them for the audiences that we found, and he found a tremendous reaction to that"

Alan Lomax, Writer

"As a child I always wanted to be a singer. The music my mother played in the house moved me - Aretha Franklin, Chaka Khan, Mahalia Jackson. It was truly spiritual. It made you understand what God was. We are all spirits. We get depressed. But music makes you want to live. I know my music has saved my life"

Mary J. Blige, Musician

"My mother was an artist and highly strung, whereas my father was much calmer"

Liza Minelli, Entertainer

"My parents discussed singing every night over the dinner table; I had a tremendous music education"

Renee Fleming, Musician

"Both of my parents were musicians"

Bryan White, Musician