Page 14 - March 2019 IWMA News Interactive

Laura Black-Wines Father Inspired Her Songwriting Career
Drag racing.
What is it about the sport that has caused millions to
fall in love, with millions more waiting in the wings to discov- er the sport of kings?
Is it the close, family-like atmosphere? That sense of speed and adrenaline? Or, perhaps, it is the cars.
For many, that first delve into the high-octane world of straight-line racing came because of a car. Mustangs, Cama- ros, Challengers, at some point every person involved in the sport watched their first muscle car power down the drag strip, or even took that first ride themselves.
Cars are the very lifeblood of the sport and what keeps new racers flooding into the sport. It is so iconic, that many songs have been written about the phenomenon. “Lit- tle Deuce Coupe,” “Hot Rod Lincoln,” “Mustang Sally,” even “Dragula,” are among some of the many hits you may have heard that celebrate car culture.
But there is one song that you may not have heard from an up-and-coming young singer that perhaps best touches on that special bond between man and machine.
Laura Black-Wines has never gone down a drag strip. She has never sat behind the wheel, tiptoed to the line and mashed the gas pedal at the flash of green. But her father did. And that is all she ever needed.
“He was such a good driver,” Black recalls with pride. “They said because he had a four-speed and he shifted so smooth that they thought he was driving an automatic. When that light turned green he was simply amazing.”
Black grew up in a family of six shaped by a true blue collar tale of a father and mother just trying to make ends meet. Her father, Bo Black, was a big-time drag racer at the local strips in Missouri, but was forced to give up the sport – and his iconic 1968 Plymouth Road Runner – when he got married. From then on, all that was left were the stories.
“I still live in the same area I grew up in Bonne Terre, Missouri. I grew up in a family with four kids and a dad who worked really hard as a factory worker,” Black said. “He was a big-time drag racer back in the day, in the late 60s and early 70s, and was just really well known and well respected in our area in drag racing. But he gave that all up whenever he and my mom got married. He sold his car to make a down pay- ment on a house.”
From that moment until the day Bo passed in 2014, all that was left of those early years behind the wheel were the stories and, of course, the Mopars he continued to collect throughout his lifetime. And, while Bo would never get back behind the wheel on the drag strip, racing was a unique bond that he shared with his children.
“Dad talked a lot about his days drag racing. And when you grow up in a blue collar family, you don’t have a lot
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of stuff. As kids, we would sit around his chair and he would get out his guitar and would either sing old music or tell us stories,” Black said. “We would say, ‘dad, tell us about your white Road Runner’ and he would tell us stories about those days. I remember he would say, ‘I’d just line them up and I’d send them on back home when I won.’”
As Black got older, she wanted to cement the legacy of her father and began writing lyrics to a song based on the stories he would tell and that special bond her father had with his car. Recently, she found those old lyrics scribbled in a notebook and decided to bring them to life in a song titled “Driver’s Seat.”
“When my dad passed of a heart attack, it was very sudden and devastating for all of us,” Black said. “I’m close to my mom, but I was a big-time daddy’s girl. I was the baby of the family. So I was just so brokenhearted and when he passed, I didn’t want to forget his stories and the stuff he would tell us.”