I am out of touch. A few days ago, CMT (Country Music Television) posted an article: “Country Stars Reveal Their Top New Year’s Resolutions for Songwriting.” Thirteen stars in all, and I hadn’t heard of one of them. (Dan + Shay? LANCO? Hardy? What even are those?) Perhaps I am missing out.    

But Johnny Cash — a country star if ever there was one — wrote a “To Do” list once that offers its own kind of resolutions, and this is a list I can get behind. It tends to get passed around, this time of year, as people scramble to make their own ambitious lists. Cash’s day is straightforward:

I like the honesty of these to-do’s:

8. Worry.

A few years ago, Cash’s to-do list went up for auction and sold for $6,400.

A bit better known is Woody Guthrie’s “New Year’s Rulins” from 1943. This one makes the internet rounds a lot — I posted it on this blog a couple years ago, myself — but it’s worth frequent re-readings, so here it is once again:

Happy New Year, everybody. Here’s a real early record from Sun Ra. Hope to see you in the new year, soon.

P. S. Speaking of Sun Ra, starting tomorrow I’m posting to Instagram, every day for a month, a different photo from the history of Birmingham jazz. If you’re an Instagrammer, follow along @lostchildradio, and be on the lookout for some pretty fascinating lost history, re-found.