DOE-RAY-ME

My mother played the piano and she was a mainstay in the church choir. Both of my brothers played in the school band, one was a professional musician all of his life. I started horn lessons the summer before seventh grade but a car accident changed that; hit my face on the dashboard, broke teeth and cut up my mouth. So much for horn lessons. After I healed, it was too late for that year and the next year I would be a year behind my classmates. So I’m not a musician, not even close. Music is very mathematical, disciplined and my aspirations ran in the opposite direction.

I started paying attention to popular music when Chuck Berry gave us, “Johnny B. Good” and  Buddy Holly, “That’ll Be The Day.” But that was teenage pushback, and adults just wanted it to go away. But it didn’t go away and we didn’t go back to Guy Lombardo or Benny Goodman and it’s been rockin’ ever since.

My listening habits have moved through stages. First it was rock & roll, then I discovered jazz. Country came and went. When the Nashville sound took over I was already moving on to the blues. I’m a StoryTeller. I used to be a teacher but to spend a career doing that, you need to be a story teller. Naturally, I like music, songs that tell a story. Who’d-a-thought, a decade ago, that I’d pick up a guitar and try to figure it out. Now days I make the disclaimer; still not a musician. I don’t play the guitar, I play with it. I don’t sing, I just tell my songs over simple chords to suggest a melody. My mother would think it a miracle. My big brother would have been proud. I search the internet for lyrics and chord progressions I can handle. There are hook lines and clever phrases out there we all recognize, even if we can’t name the song, like “. . . nothin’ ain’t worth nothin but it’s free.”  I plug them into the stories when there’s a fit and it works. 

Yesterday, I helped a friend move a bookcase. She bought it from another friend who is moving and we had to take it apart, bring it down on the elevator, cross the street and load it in the back of my pickup. Then it was a ride across town, do the elevator thing again up to her condo and put it back together. On the way, she took a CD from the sleeve on my sun visor and slipped it in the player. I have several CD’s that I’ve put together from my I-Tunes collection. After four or five songs, she said, “This is great stuff; where did you get it?” I told her and the song changed to Helen Reddy doing Don McLean’s, “And I Love You So.” She hummed along through the first verse and we were stopped at a red light when the chorus began to unfold. When it went to the last line, somehow I knew she was going to sing along so I accompanied her. “But I don’t let the evening get me down, now that you’re around . . . me.” The light changed and I started up the street. She poked me and called me an “Old Devil”. “I didn’t know you  can sing.” Helen was in the right key for me and I was able to carry it. I told her, “Don’t judge a book . . . right?” Now she’s going to want me to sing again but I’ll tell a story instead, maybe one with a melody.