Tom Rush's Rite Of Passage Song

This is the season of high school and college graduations, a time when many young people are planning to leave home. The bittersweet mood of that time is captured in "Child's Song," which Canadian singer-songwriter Murray McLauchlan wrote and folk and blues singer Tom Rush made famous.

It's a song he has performed for well over three decades, but as Rush told Here & Now's Robin Young, he had a lot of trouble singing it at first: "I couldn't get through it from top to bottom for about six months, I had to toughen up enough that I didn't burst into tears somewhere around the third verse."

We revisit our 2011 conversation with Rush and also give a shout out to graduates at WBUR, our home station.