The music in my life
"Darktown Strutters' Ball" was the first song I learned. My grandmother said she taught it to me as soon as I could walk and talk, and took me down to the sweater mill where she used to work (until she quit work to take care of me), and had me sing it for her friends there. I don't remember learning it, of course. It's just something I have always known, along with "Daisy, Daisy" and "Du, Du, Liegst Mir IM Herzen", other songs my grandmother taught. I remember learning songs from my grandfather when I was 5 or so: The Star Spangled Banner, My Country Tis of Thee, Let Me Call You Sweetheart, and Pop Goes the Weasel. Pop had a collection of 78's that I was allowed to play, but the only one I remember is Alexander's Ragtime Band.
My grandmother had a lovely voice. Mass was still in Latin back then, and Catholics didn't sing at mass. But my grandparents took me to the Novena of the Miraculous Medal in Germantown, and the novenas at the Carmelite Monastery. My grandmother sang loud, full voice in church: Mother Dearest, Mother Fairest; O Mary Conceived Without Sin; Queen and Lady of Mount Carmel, and the traditional songs for benediction: Tantum Ergo and O Salutaris Hostia. When most Episcopalians talk about singing "old-time" hymns, they mean "Washed in the Blood of the Lamb" or "Amazing Grace". For me, old-time hymns come in Latin or are addressed to the Blessed Virgin.
Some of you remember television back then: three stations in Philadelphia, lots of musical variety shows, and families watched them together in the evening, or at least we did. My grandmother was a firm believer in not doing any work after dinner; work was for the day; she didn't even really think I should have to do homework after dinner, and would call me to come listen to a favorite song. There was Hee Haw and Glenn Campbell for country, and Perry Como, Andy Williams, and most importantly Lawrence Welk. From those shows I learned the great American Songbook: Gershwin, Cole Porter, the other tin pan alley writers, and I learned those old time hymns: How Great Thou Art; In the Garden, etc. I can still hear Norma Zimmer and Jimmy Roberts singing them!
When I was 9 or 10, my mother bought a record player, the 33 1/3 kind, and joined the Columbia record club. When you joined, you got 20 free records. Most were 1001 strings: I remember the Grand Canyon Suite and best of all, a medley of all the television cowboy themes: Bonanza, Have Gun Will Travel, Sugarfoot, Gunsmoke, Rawhide. I can still hear all those. The albums she bought were mostly Broadway musicals. She would play them at night in her room while we played cards or board games and I knew all the songs: South Pacific, Oklahoma, My Fair Lady, Camelot, Desert Song, West Side Story, Sound of Music, Music Man, and later on Mame, Hello Dolly, Fiddler on the Roof.
When I was 12, Sister St. Alice, the music teacher at St. Mary's, discovered I could sing. Through her, I discovered it too. That year, Barbara Ziernicki and I sang a duet at the Christmas show, two polish Christmas carols. She sang soprano, I sang alto, both of us dressed in Polish costumes with ribbons in our hair, standing by ourselves center stage. I am really glad there weren't video cameras yet. St. Alice talked my mother into piano lessons, and she actually went out at lunch one day and bought me a piano! I grew to hate St. Al: she would pull me out of class for high school glee club whenever she felt like, so I was permanently in trouble with my other teachers (went to grade school and high school at St. Mary's and she was there for all of it).
I was 12 or 13 when I finally discovered my music. Most summer evenings my mother would take me to Betsy Platt's apartment. Betsy was one of her best friends and was our assistant Girl Scout Troop leader. We would play scrabble and gin rummy and she would put a stack of Peter, Paul and Mary records on. This was it; this was MY music. It expanded over the years to include Pete Seeger, Judy Collins, Joan Baez, Bob Dylan, the Weavers, Simon and Garfunkel, 50's folk revival and 60's new folk, but this was the music that untied knots in my muscles, my chest, my soul.
When I was 16, two other of my mother's friends, Jackie and Mary Carter, talked her into giving me a guitar. She also gave me a teach-yourself book, so I did. Mostly I sang, so my playing only got good enough to accompany my singing. When the teach-yourself fingering got so complicated that I couldn't concentrate on singing, any improvement on guitar ended.
I was in high school when the mass went into English. I remember the first English mass we went to from school. The priest came to talk to us beforehand, and told us we were now also going to sing during mass, as well as say the responses in English. But, he assured us, we weren't going to sing those Protestant hymns. They were going to write songs just for us Catholics. So the first hymn I sang at a mass was "Praise to the Lord, the Almighty, the King of Creation"! I was out of college the first time I went to a Methodist church and discovered that was an old Protestant hymn, as were many of the songs we sang! I was actually shocked!
St. Al wanted to hear the guitar playing and singing so I took it to school one day and played and sang for her. She did give me a piece of good advice: if you're going to sing folk songs, learn all the verses because those songs have stories to tell and you should be telling them. So I did. She gave me one other piece of good advice when I got accepted to Chestnut Hill College: Don't major in music. That had never occurred to me! For one thing, I was going to be a doctor and I didn't know then that you could major in music and still get into medical school (you can). But for another, I really wasn't very good. My voice is nice, but not operatic, and I'm not enough of a perfectionist with instruments or patient enough as a teacher (I've tried teaching music and guitar to friend's children over the years) to make it as performer or music teacher. I knew I couldn't make it as a music major and I was rather shocked (and pleased ?) to think she thought I could. She just didn't think I could make a living at it, which is probably true!
I met my best friend from college, Diane Melograna, on the first day. She was a chemistry major, like me, so we had most of our classes together. She was just much better at it than I was. To my delight, she played guitar, (also better than me) though she didn't sing. The next year, Tom Duggan came on as chaplain and we had daily folk masses. I played for mass 5 or 6 days a week at Chestnut Hill, learning lots of new songs and old songs. When I moved to Baltimore, I played for mass at the Newman Center at Hopkins, where we sang more Dylan, Simon and Gar, Beatles, and things most people wouldn't consider worship songs, though they were for us.
Someone who loved me (he had to, to do this) one day said, let's see how long you can sing without repeating a song. With breaks for lunch and dinner, I went 9 hours. Of course, I was really scraping the bottom of the barrel: by the end I was singing Mary had a Little Lamb, and Ten Little Indians. It used to be, if I put it to music, I'd remember the words. That actually got me through history in elementary school when we had to memorize dates. I'd just stick them in a little tune. Those days are gone, of course; I've probably forgotten more songs than I could sing at present.
Before a concert at Good Shepherd, Lannette Dunnavant said "I knew there were people who didn't like to sing; I didn't realize there were people who didn't like to listen". Uh, that would be me. I like to make music; I can't stand to listen to most of it. Even in the car: I listen to books on CD there because music will put me to sleep. There was a study done on surgeons who play music in the operating room, switching kinds of music. Those who liked and usually played heavy metal got anxious when classical or country was played and vice versa. My listening range is very narrow: a little bluegrass, a lot of 50's folk revival and 60's and 70's folk and some of the great American Songbook and old Broadway. Once in a while a song played often enough will catch me: I Hope You Dance or Dido's White Flag, but usually I don't like to listen to music I don't know. Most of the music, even the folk songs, that I have learned over the years I learned from the printed page, not from hearing them. For better or worse, the music in my life is something I do, not something I listen to.
My grandmother had a lovely voice. Mass was still in Latin back then, and Catholics didn't sing at mass. But my grandparents took me to the Novena of the Miraculous Medal in Germantown, and the novenas at the Carmelite Monastery. My grandmother sang loud, full voice in church: Mother Dearest, Mother Fairest; O Mary Conceived Without Sin; Queen and Lady of Mount Carmel, and the traditional songs for benediction: Tantum Ergo and O Salutaris Hostia. When most Episcopalians talk about singing "old-time" hymns, they mean "Washed in the Blood of the Lamb" or "Amazing Grace". For me, old-time hymns come in Latin or are addressed to the Blessed Virgin.
Some of you remember television back then: three stations in Philadelphia, lots of musical variety shows, and families watched them together in the evening, or at least we did. My grandmother was a firm believer in not doing any work after dinner; work was for the day; she didn't even really think I should have to do homework after dinner, and would call me to come listen to a favorite song. There was Hee Haw and Glenn Campbell for country, and Perry Como, Andy Williams, and most importantly Lawrence Welk. From those shows I learned the great American Songbook: Gershwin, Cole Porter, the other tin pan alley writers, and I learned those old time hymns: How Great Thou Art; In the Garden, etc. I can still hear Norma Zimmer and Jimmy Roberts singing them!
When I was 9 or 10, my mother bought a record player, the 33 1/3 kind, and joined the Columbia record club. When you joined, you got 20 free records. Most were 1001 strings: I remember the Grand Canyon Suite and best of all, a medley of all the television cowboy themes: Bonanza, Have Gun Will Travel, Sugarfoot, Gunsmoke, Rawhide. I can still hear all those. The albums she bought were mostly Broadway musicals. She would play them at night in her room while we played cards or board games and I knew all the songs: South Pacific, Oklahoma, My Fair Lady, Camelot, Desert Song, West Side Story, Sound of Music, Music Man, and later on Mame, Hello Dolly, Fiddler on the Roof.
When I was 12, Sister St. Alice, the music teacher at St. Mary's, discovered I could sing. Through her, I discovered it too. That year, Barbara Ziernicki and I sang a duet at the Christmas show, two polish Christmas carols. She sang soprano, I sang alto, both of us dressed in Polish costumes with ribbons in our hair, standing by ourselves center stage. I am really glad there weren't video cameras yet. St. Alice talked my mother into piano lessons, and she actually went out at lunch one day and bought me a piano! I grew to hate St. Al: she would pull me out of class for high school glee club whenever she felt like, so I was permanently in trouble with my other teachers (went to grade school and high school at St. Mary's and she was there for all of it).
I was 12 or 13 when I finally discovered my music. Most summer evenings my mother would take me to Betsy Platt's apartment. Betsy was one of her best friends and was our assistant Girl Scout Troop leader. We would play scrabble and gin rummy and she would put a stack of Peter, Paul and Mary records on. This was it; this was MY music. It expanded over the years to include Pete Seeger, Judy Collins, Joan Baez, Bob Dylan, the Weavers, Simon and Garfunkel, 50's folk revival and 60's new folk, but this was the music that untied knots in my muscles, my chest, my soul.
When I was 16, two other of my mother's friends, Jackie and Mary Carter, talked her into giving me a guitar. She also gave me a teach-yourself book, so I did. Mostly I sang, so my playing only got good enough to accompany my singing. When the teach-yourself fingering got so complicated that I couldn't concentrate on singing, any improvement on guitar ended.
I was in high school when the mass went into English. I remember the first English mass we went to from school. The priest came to talk to us beforehand, and told us we were now also going to sing during mass, as well as say the responses in English. But, he assured us, we weren't going to sing those Protestant hymns. They were going to write songs just for us Catholics. So the first hymn I sang at a mass was "Praise to the Lord, the Almighty, the King of Creation"! I was out of college the first time I went to a Methodist church and discovered that was an old Protestant hymn, as were many of the songs we sang! I was actually shocked!
St. Al wanted to hear the guitar playing and singing so I took it to school one day and played and sang for her. She did give me a piece of good advice: if you're going to sing folk songs, learn all the verses because those songs have stories to tell and you should be telling them. So I did. She gave me one other piece of good advice when I got accepted to Chestnut Hill College: Don't major in music. That had never occurred to me! For one thing, I was going to be a doctor and I didn't know then that you could major in music and still get into medical school (you can). But for another, I really wasn't very good. My voice is nice, but not operatic, and I'm not enough of a perfectionist with instruments or patient enough as a teacher (I've tried teaching music and guitar to friend's children over the years) to make it as performer or music teacher. I knew I couldn't make it as a music major and I was rather shocked (and pleased ?) to think she thought I could. She just didn't think I could make a living at it, which is probably true!
I met my best friend from college, Diane Melograna, on the first day. She was a chemistry major, like me, so we had most of our classes together. She was just much better at it than I was. To my delight, she played guitar, (also better than me) though she didn't sing. The next year, Tom Duggan came on as chaplain and we had daily folk masses. I played for mass 5 or 6 days a week at Chestnut Hill, learning lots of new songs and old songs. When I moved to Baltimore, I played for mass at the Newman Center at Hopkins, where we sang more Dylan, Simon and Gar, Beatles, and things most people wouldn't consider worship songs, though they were for us.
Someone who loved me (he had to, to do this) one day said, let's see how long you can sing without repeating a song. With breaks for lunch and dinner, I went 9 hours. Of course, I was really scraping the bottom of the barrel: by the end I was singing Mary had a Little Lamb, and Ten Little Indians. It used to be, if I put it to music, I'd remember the words. That actually got me through history in elementary school when we had to memorize dates. I'd just stick them in a little tune. Those days are gone, of course; I've probably forgotten more songs than I could sing at present.
Before a concert at Good Shepherd, Lannette Dunnavant said "I knew there were people who didn't like to sing; I didn't realize there were people who didn't like to listen". Uh, that would be me. I like to make music; I can't stand to listen to most of it. Even in the car: I listen to books on CD there because music will put me to sleep. There was a study done on surgeons who play music in the operating room, switching kinds of music. Those who liked and usually played heavy metal got anxious when classical or country was played and vice versa. My listening range is very narrow: a little bluegrass, a lot of 50's folk revival and 60's and 70's folk and some of the great American Songbook and old Broadway. Once in a while a song played often enough will catch me: I Hope You Dance or Dido's White Flag, but usually I don't like to listen to music I don't know. Most of the music, even the folk songs, that I have learned over the years I learned from the printed page, not from hearing them. For better or worse, the music in my life is something I do, not something I listen to.
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