Well, I better like tonight's topic for Saturday Night Genealogy Fun, since I'm the person who suggested it to Randy Seaver!
Your mission, should you decide to accept it (cue the Mission: Impossible! music), is:
1. According to Wikipedia, today is World Music Day! How should we celebrate?
2. How has music affected your life? What is your favorite music type? What are your favorite songs?
3. Share your World Music Day efforts in your own blog post or in a Facebook, SubStack, BlueSky, or other social media post. Leave a link to your post on this blog post to help us find your post.
[Thank you to Janice Sellers for suggesting this challenge to me.]
I grew up with music and it has always been part of my life. My father was a musician — he played piano and guitar and sang credibly well. He used to play guitar and sing for my siblings and me when we were little. We heard "Sixteen Tons", "Mairzy Doats", and "Aba Daba Honeymoon" often enough that we knew all the lyrics. Then as we got older he would sometimes try to cut out a verse, but we knew the songs too well and caught him.
I don't remember Daddy singing so much when he played piano, but I remember listening to a lot of boogie woogie and blues. One year when I posted on my blog for Father's Day, he commented and said that he started piano lessons when he was 8. And piano was what he played when he competed on Ted Mack's Amateur Hour with Court's Jesters, although that was swing music.
My mother loved music also, but for listening to. She unfortunately couldn't carry a tune in a bucket; when she was in a singing class, they decided her part was turning pages for the accompanist. But she adored Broadway and movie musicals and played cast recordings and soundtracks a lot. Those were more songs that I learned lyrics to.
At least by the time I was 8, possibly earlier, I was taking piano lessons. Even when I was that young, I had long fingers ("piano-playing fingers", I have often been told), and instead of holding my hands in the correct upright position and playing the keys with my fingertips, I could stretch my hands out and fudge a little.
I wanted to play guitar like my father. My hands were big enough when I was young that I could handle an adult guitar, rather than one scaled down in size for children. Daddy was ready to teach me, but then I discovered that you had to cut your fingernails to play (and I couldn't cheat as on the piano), so I gave up on that for a long time.
Once, for some reason I absolutely cannot recall, I had an accordion lesson. I took the one lesson and decided I never wanted to try to play accordion again. That I have stuck to.
When my family moved to Australia, I learned to play recorder (an instrument I still own and can play!). I also sang in some sort of school musical in the 4th grade.
After we moved back to the States, I had chorus for two years. The first year was great, but then my voice changed, and I couldn't sing alto anymore. The teacher, Miss Foster, eventually told me I could stand next to the boys and sing tenor, but I used to sing bass. After that I had a fairly regimented class schedule, and I didn't have room for any more music classes through the end of high school.
When I went to college at the University of Southern California, I had heavy class loads and still no time for music. But after I graduated, I started working at USC, and the next year, I joined the Trojan Marching Band (The Greatest Marching Band in the History of the Universe). I didn't play any band instruments, so I started as prop crew (kind of like roadies). During the spring semester, when we were at a women's basketball game supporting the team, none of the cymbal players had come, and Mark Laycock called out for someone to play the cymbals for "Fight On." And thus I started on percussion. I marched three years in percussion in the band, playing cymbals (and occasionally bass drum for some small gigs when a regular bass drummer couldn't make it).
Working at USC, I was able to use tuition remission for classes. One of things I did was take percussion lessons. I had a really great teacher. I think his given name was Dale, and I cannot remember his surname. He was a spokesman for Sabian cymbals. He was allowed to go through the warehouse and choose his own, matching them for tone. His cymbals sounded so beautiful! I learned I do not have a good enough ear to play timpani and that my broken right index finger severely hampered the way I hold a drumstick. Or, as I routinely tell people, I am not a drummer; I am a percussionist who can drum a little.
But in the band I had also become enamored of saxophones, because they just sound so cool. Jeff, one of the tenor sax players, recommended that I start with flute, then work on clarinet, and finally move to sax. So I started using my tuition remission for those lessons. I think I took two years of flute (with Gary Anderson) and then two or three of clarinet (with Yehuda Gilad). Sadly, I never did take up saxophone. But my fifth year in the band I played clarinet (and learned, after stabbing all the way through my left thumb with an Exacto knife, that there are exactly seven notes you can play on a clarinet without using your left thumb).
Something else I used my tuition remission for was voice lessons. I sang with groups, I sang solo, I did recitals, I sang anytime I could. I still love singing. I participated twice in Songfest, a big student group singing competition. Both times the group with which I sang placed. I think I still have the music from both.
A friend of the teacher in one of my group vocal arts classes came around to recruit people to help fill out a new choir she was hired to create in a local church. I think it was in Hollywood. As is common with this type of activity, the number of men volunteering were far outnumbered by the women. I ended up being a bass soloist for the Christmas concert. Unfortunately, one of my voice instructors tried to make me a mezzo soprano, and I lost two octaves at the bottom of my range, so I can't do that now.
I played in the USC Community Orchestra as a percussionist for several years. General percussion, no drums.
Oh, and one semester I took a guitar class. I actually cut my fingernails and made the effort. I discovered that chords did not make sense in my head. I was the only student in the class who preferred to pick out melodies. And then I decided I liked my fingernails more than the guitar.
Eventually I left Los Angeles and moved 400 miles north to Berkeley, where I had an entirely different musical routine. But I think I'll save that for next year's World Music Day.
I got a little carried away, didn't I? But music makes me happy. Let's see, what other questions did Randy ask? Well, favorite music type — hmm, I suppose "E, all of the above" is probably not a helpful answer. I really do like almost everything, but if I have to pick favorites, probably show tunes and country.
And the last question was favorite songs. Wow, that's even harder. Anything I know the lyrics to and can sing along with ranks high. "Danny Boy", because that was one of my mother's favorites. "Sixteen Tons" is probably my favorite of the songs my father used to sing. "Even Now" always makes me cry. "Light One Candle", even after all the revelations about Peter Yarrow. "Do You Hear What I Hear?", even though one of the most well known versions is by Robert Goulet.
