Music
and Me
Top Row: My Grandfather, Aunt Lynne, and my Dad
For
those of you who have been following this blog, I'm still on my way
to California. It's not a short drive and I am taking my time. So,
in the meantime I have decided to post a few music based stories.
When I first thought about doing a blog about me it was with my
nephews in mind, since they mostly knew me through my brother's or
sister's eyes but it was just something I thought about from time to
time. A number of my friends told me one evening that they just did
not get the Beatles so I wrote a piece on why they shouldn't dismiss
the Beatles and sent it to them. They knew of course that I really
liked music and after they read my piece they suggested I do a
podcast on music. I've never thought I spoke very well and if I was
going to be talking about music I would want to play it as well. I
wasn't sure what the legal rules were for playing someone's songs on
my podcast, anyway, I think I write better than I talk. At that
point I decided to start a blog but so far I have not been writing
about music. It's been based on my original idea of telling my story
keeping my nephews in mind. But here we are. I'm on my way to San
Francisco from Eugene Oregon, so while we are all waiting for me to
get there I am going to post a few music related stories. I have
always loved music and this is an “intro” piece for a series of
memories tied to albums that have been significant to me over the
years.
Music
has always been important to me. Some of my earliest memories are of
listening to music. I was lucky to have been exposed to music when I
was young. Both my parents as well as my only Aunt liked and played
music for me. My Dad played trombone in a jazz band when he was
young. He was an "all-state" musician when he was in high
school and he originally when to college to study music. Pearl
Harbor happened causing him to cut his college career short and
enlist in the Army. My mom, like myself, is someone who always has a
song going through their head any time she is not engaged in
something like conversation, a movie, or reading. At home I heard my
Dad's Big Band Jazz records, Broadway show soundtracks and classical
music. My Mom told me later that she played classical music for me
because she saw it as part of my education.
My
Aunt Lynne loved music and was particularly into jazz as well as
classical music. My Aunt played both jazz and classical music for me
whenever I visited her. My earliest memory of visiting with Lynne
was when I was pretty young, preschool age. She played for my sister
and me a recording of “Peter and the Wolf” A symphony written
by Sergei Prokofiev with narration. Lynne explained how each
character was represented by a musical instrument which was again
explained in the recording. I have a pretty good imagination so I
loved it, I suppose my sister who was not only younger but also not
so easily entertained was probably bored to tears and probably
doesn't remember it. But to me, it was magical and is among my
earliest memories.
A
few years ago I told Lynne that one of my other earliest and most
vivid memories is when she took me over to one of her friends house
and he played some jazz music for me. We were riding in his car and
she had her friend to ask me what my favorite music was. My answer
was dixieland jazz. I really had no idea what that was at the time,
and in fact could not have identified one kind of jazz from another.
What I did know was that one of my favorite albums of my Dad's was a
Louis Armstrong album and my dad had told me it was dixieland jazz.
That being the only term I knew for a type of jazz, dixieland jazz
was always my reply when someone asked me about jazz. The thing was
that I liked lots of my Dad's jazz records that were not considered
dixieland as well but had no idea what kind of jazz they were and
why they were not dixieland. My Dad had a good collection of Big
Band jazz records. Many of my Dad's albums were 78's. 78 albums
came with something like 4 or 6 records. Each record had one song on
each side, like the 45 singles I would buy a few years later except
the 78's were larger and thicker in size. Anyway, my answer of
dixieland jazz seemed to impress my aunt's friend. I don't know if it
was because it was surprising that I would even know there was such a
thing as dixieland jazz, or just that he thought it was cute coming
from the mouth of a preschool aged kid. He took us to his house.
When we got there he pulled out an album and put it on his turntable.
Now this was in early/mid 50's and up until this time the only kind
of "high quality" sound system I had ever seen was one of
those High Fidelity units, you know, the kind that is like a big
piece of furniture. My Aunt's friend had a component stereo system
with multiple big speakers. My memory is the turntable and amplifier
were set up in the corner on a big table or maybe large shelves, or
both. It was all spread out and the whole set up looked like a
shrine. I'm sure my memory of it is way bigger and more impressive
than it actually was but it looked impressive. After telling my aunt
about this memory she said she remembered that too. She said it was
a seminal moment for me that when the music came on I looked up like
I'd seen God. I was transfixed. It was the most magnificent thing I
had ever seen and heard. From that point on I always asked my aunt
if we were going to visit her friend whenever I visited her.
A High Fidelity System
As
I mentioned above, my Dad played trombone. He also played french
horn. He picked that up when he was asked to join the school's
marching band. They initially wanted him to play the tuba, but the
band also needed someone a french horn player. My father was no
dummy, he wisely told them he'd play the french horn. After all, you
gotta really love the tube if your going to be lugging the big thing
around while marching. Not only that, at the time my father, while
he would eventually grow to be six feet tall, was one of the shortest
kids in the school.
The
trombone was my Dad's main instrument and as such his jazz record
collection leaned heavily on the trombone side. Tommy Dorsey was his
absolute favorite. He loved how Tommy played and the sound of his
horn when he played. So we had a number of Tommy Dorsey records and
Tommy's band had a very young Frank Sinatra singing on them with the
Pied Pipers. Back then the band was bigger than the singers. Songs
would start with the band playing first and then the singers would
come in the second time through. Those records were my introduction
to Frank Sinatra. Tommy Dorsey's “Stardust” with Frank and the
Pied Pipers was my parents' song. My favorite song from all my Dad's
albums was Frank singing “Blue Skies” with Tommy Dorsey of
course.
Soon
enough I discovered Rock n Roll and dedicated my listening time
largely to that but I would eventually expand my listening habits. I
don't really listen to much Tommy Dorsey although I do play some of
his songs now and then. However, I listen to a lot of Frank Sinatra.
Frank is a kind of a “go to” for Saturday night. And according
to iTunes (it counts how many times each song is played) Frank songs
dominate my most played list. The number one song? “The Best is
Yet to Come”...
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