Growing Up With Music

Music has always held a special place in my heart. When I was younger, it was my only connection with the spiritual aspect of myself. No matter how bad things were going, no matter how low I felt, music would always cheer me up. At times in my life, music was my life. It took me outside of myself, outside of time, worries and woes.

The earliest music I can remember had an air of mystery, mischievousness, and adventure about it. When I was three or four years old, we use to sneak down into the cellar and listen to records on my father's old wind up Victoria. Dad was very proud of his collection of records and didn't want me and Joey playing with them. But, once we discovered the Victoria was there, we couldn't stay away from it. When dad was at work, and mom was taking care of our baby sister, we would head straight for the cellar.

There was a handle on the side of the Victoria that you had to wind. This tightened up a spring, which allowed the records to play. One of the first tunes I can remember is a jazz tune. It went something like this, "You push the first bell down, the music goes round and round whoa oh oh oh, oh oh, and it come out here. You push the next bell down. The music goes round and round. Whoa oh oh oh, oh oh, listen to the jazz come out." Joey’s favorite was an old cowboy song called, Wilbur Force. "Oh I got beans and beans and beans enough to feed a navy. So Wilbur Force get off that horse and bring him in for lunch." "You get it, Jackie? You get it? He's gonna eat the horse for lunch," my brother would tell me laughing his head off every time.

Another record we'd play was Al Jolson's "Climb Upon My Knee Sonny Boy." My dad loved the song so much that he nick named my brother after it. I'd always laugh at my brother when we played the record. He was a little embarrassed. Somehow, I didn't feel jealous. I was my mom's Sonny boy. We stayed down in the cellar as long as we could turning the handle when the music slowed down. Sometimes we listen to the slowed down music on purpose to get a different feel for it. My mother didn't like to walk down the cellar steps. She never let us stay more than an hour or so with out calling from the top of the stairs for us to come up for cookies and milk, or lunch, or something. If we had our way, we would have skipped cookies, and even lunch to stay with the music.

Most of our music came off the radio. We didn't have compact discs or even tape recorders. In fact, when I was a kid, in my neighborhood all you had was a radio. Our wind up Victoria down in the cellar was a rarity. Instead of gathering around the fire place or the T. V., we gathered around the radio. There was adventure, starting with the radio soaps that the housewives tuned in...

Jazz was sort of a forerunner of gangster rap in some respects, especially if you consider the blues. I mean, there was a little anti-social comment to it... certain badness. Drinking whiskey all night long and singing the blues... One of the very first blues lyrics I can remember is really country blues; "T for Texas... T for Tennessee... T for Thelma, the girl that made a wreck out’ a me..." Jimmy Rogers sang. My mom's first name is Thelma. The song gave a sort of ring of mystery to her name. You never wanted the other kids to know you mom's first name, or else they'd start slipping you. This didn't really happen 'til junior high. Then, I was doubly protective. I didn't want them saying: " I seen Thelma last night."

"Yea, where you see, Thelma?"

"I seen her out on the street!"

Jazz and Blues was like in the background. I never really got into the music until much later when I was almost twenty, working graveyard at North Philadelphia Airport and listening to the all night F.M. jazz station. A lot of the movies had some bad piano blues in the background. And, the bad guys would hang out in a dive where a jazz group was jamming. "You must remember this. A kiss is just a kiss. A sigh is just a sigh... The fundamental things apply as time goes by..." Louie Armstrong would rap as Bogart lit up in a Paris nightclub.

I listened to more church music than I did blues when I lived in Philly. My mom was a Southern Baptist, and even if she didn't attend too often in person, she had her regular gospel programs on the radio. The Church of the Open Door was one of them. On Sundays, and Wednesday evenings, too we'd listen to the choir sing "The Old Rugged Cross," and "There is a Living Savior," and "Holy... Holy... Holy... Merciful and Mighty. God in Three Persons. Blessed Trinity..." The Organ would play musical tribute to our Savior... And, then the preacher would interject a brief sermon. More music...

Al Jolson was considered a jazzman, back then. I think one of his pictures was called "The Birth of Jazz.” I never thought anything of his blackened face or that real blues was born in the Negro spirituals. In fact, his music and movies sort of gave me a taste for the South; a happy place that everyone wants to return to. My bother and I use to sing his songs, everybody was singing them in the back of their heads. "Mammy, How I love ya... How I love ya... My dear old Mammy!" "Toot Toot Tootsie, Goodbye. Toot Toot Tootsies don’t cry," "Sewanee... How I love ya how I love ya. My dear old Sewanee," We sang our own version of Jolson. Then, the movies gave us Bear Rabbit and one of my favorite tunes to this day. “Zip-a-dee-doo-dah, zip-a-dee-day. My, oh my, what a wonderful day. Plenty of sunshine headin’ my way. Zip-a-dee-doo-dah,zip-a-dee-ay.”

Second World War music was all around us by the time I entered school in 1943. There was the Andrew Sister's, "Don't sit under the apple tree with any one else but me. Anyone else, but me. Anyone else but me... No, no, no, don't sit under the apple tree with anyone else but me, 'til I come marching home." They sang the "Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy of Company Three,” Glenn Miller, Tommy Dorsey, and the other big bands praised our boys "Over There." As we got into playing war, we sang "You're in the Army Now," Or, "We're in the Navy, happy go lucky sons of the sea..." Or, our favorite, " Off we go into the wild blue yonder, flying high into the sun. Off we go hitting the dawn like thunder, come on boys, give her the gun..."

Boogie Woogie and blues began to mix in my mind. “Caledonia what makes your big head so hard?” "You do the boogie the boogie woogie... " And, some of the mean white kids started calling the back kids’ boogies. Somehow boogie-woogie and boogies got mixed in my mind too. Once when I sang for my mom, "I Beeped when I should'a Bopped," She slapped my face. She thought it was too racy. I had to explain that the Beep and the Bop were dance steps.

"Don't Know Why Ain't No Sun Up in the Sky. Stormy Weather," came out just about the time my Mom and Dad split up. That and, "I get the Blues When it Rains. I remember my dad's favorite Blues at that time was country. I think it may have been early Eddy Arnold. He'd sing along, "You can't be true dear... There's nothing more to say. I trusted you dear hoping we'd find a way. Your kisses tell me that you and I are through. But, I'll keep loving you although you can't be true..."

Somehow, the year before we left the city, I knew all the popular songs in our neighborhood; "I'm,” Looking Over a Four Leaf Clover,” I Got a Lovely Bunch of Coconuts,” “Buttons and Bows,” “Ballerina,” “Twelfth Street Rag,” “You Call Everybody Darling,” and “Cool Waters,” were some that I remember.

When I started high school, I really got into music. All I wanted to do is listen to the radio. I would sit in the back of the classroom singing the top ten to myself while the teachers droned on with their lessons.