"Music makes the world go 'round. . ."
"FASCINATIN' RHYTHM...da, da, da..." The music is emanating from my computer even as I write this. . .(la, la, te, la, la). Some folks would clap their hands over their ears and scream for mercy.Others might wonder where I'm going to go beyond this paragraph.
The housekeeper, who visits every couple of weeks, is banging with her duster outside my office door.I keep waiting to hear if her duster picks up the beat. Maybe if I open the door I'll catch her swingin' away in the hallway, swirling her skirt and snapping her fingers.
I've always been a good union man, but I have a confession to make: When I heard that Napster was going out of business, I downloaded ceaselessly, day and night, bringing the music home to me: Over 2,000 numbers. It's probably not infringing on many copyrights anyway, because my music ranges from, "The Old Folks at Home," to "Gotterdamerung; from, "The Dipsy Doodle," to, "Rhapsody in Blue."
It started more than 80 years ago when I would lie on the back of the piano bench while Mamma chorded away and Dad played the fiddle or even the saw.Kenneth, Keith and Lois, all not much higher than the piano keyboard, would sing away. That was in Mott, N.D., where you've probably heard too much about before in these blogs.
And whiskered Grandpa, in his 80s, would chime in with songs a hundred years older -- and he just missed the Civl War draft, having been born in 1846. We learned to sing the scales with him, which is simply, "do-mi-so-mi, do-mi-so-mi, do-mi-so, DO - DO." There. You got it!
Music (or noise, as you might characterize it) soaked up the walls of the parlor through the 1920s. All of us took piano lessons from Aunt Winona Batty (cheaper wholesale and when the instructor is in the family).Then the instrument section branched out: Keith on the piano or trumpet or whatever he could pick up; Kenneth, first on the tuba and then on the sousaphone; Lois, on the French horn, aka mellophone, and I on the snare drum.
Anecdotally:
While the folks were away, I was practicing my drumming on Grandma Batty's screened front porch. Thrrrrrummm echoed across the prairies, I suppose. Mrs. Bjorum's son, Eric, came running up the street, puffing, to the porch door:
"Hey," (puff, puff) "Mamma wants you to stop!" Pause. "SHE'S HAVIN' A BABY!"
Thereafter, I practiced on a rubber pad, always available at the music catalogue house for such situations. Drumming wasn't the same after that.
The Mott High School Band got such a wide reputation that we were chosen to march and perform at the five-state Lions Club convention in Bismarck. I had only the orchestra version of a drum -- metal with deerskin heads, and totally imposssible as a marching drum. But I harnessed it up, and it bumped into my gut murderously for blocks up the Main Street in Bismarck. I could dream that Sousa or Fiedler was on the sidelines.
Gov. William Langer's little daughter sat nearby later at a concert. There was I in cardinal-and white uniform, with a red-billed cap and a swirling red and black cape -- our school colors. I was 11 or 12 and fell madly in love. At least, for a few minutes.
D. G. Stubbins was not only a fine band leader, but was also our high school principal. There was the day that Mr. Stubbins handed a brand new load of music sheets to Roy Groez, the bass drummer. Music came with two pieces to a sheet, which had to be split before it was handed out.
"Tear 'em up, Roy, please" Stubbins said.
Roy did -- into tiny pieces.
One night, Hettinger and Mott baskeball teams were battling it out in our new high school gymnasium. Probably most of the town (pop. 1,032 in the 1930 census) was seated on the cement bleachers on one side of the court. Across from them, the proscenium arched across the stage draped in cardinal velvet.
At the halftime, the battle slowed to a stop, and the riotous cheerers quieted down.
But in the silence, music was emanating from behind the velvet curtain. The piano notes rang out loud and clear.
The crowd sat mystified, curious. The music was easily recognizeable.You could have sung it: (OHHH, say can you see/By the dawn's early light..."
People didn't know what to do. Then some started putting their hands over their hearts.Some began singing. Some kids probably saluted.Principal Stubbins, if memory serves, rushed back behind the curtain and fished up Keith from the piano. I guess no one knew what was going on until after the story got out. Keith's patriotism didn't set well with Don Stubbins.
The Star-Spangled Banner was only given status as the National Anthem on May 3, 1931. The basketball season was long over by then.
They tell me Mom and Dad used to play for barn dances down at the Woodmen's Hall.
No baby-sitter for Mom. I understand she hung me up on a coat hook like a pappoose, and left me there for a few sets. (You suppose she nursed me in the clothes closet?)
Keith's high school dance band would rehearse in our parlor. I remember their theme song, "Song of the Islands." (I'm listening to it now on my computer. Mmmm. Hear it?) In college in New Mexico, it was the Varsity Club. They played for college dances and sometimes at Albuquerque's Casa de Man`ana.(I still can't get that tilde over the "n.")
Keith went into school-teaching until WW2. A recruiter walked into his classroom and said they could place him immediately into the military as a warrant officer at the nearby Sandia Army Air Base. They did. During the war, he was sent back to a training school where he finished at the top of the classe and could choose his own field.
He wanted to go back to Albuquerque, where he had a wife and child. Couldn't make it, so he got second choice: the band at Palm Spring, California. Musicians from Hollywood were helping him fight the enemy there. After the war and he was now head of the music department on the little campus of Cal Poly, San Dimas, the military got in touch with him and wanted him to apply for director of the band at West Point.
Keith -- like the rest of the family -- had a better ear for music than he had for ANYTHING the military had for him. He stayed with school teaching, directing Cal Poly's music department, now moved to Pomona.He still took gigs with big bands -- some at Las Vegas, one at Disneland, I recall
He's in a retirement home near us in Oceanside now -- still playing, although his hearing is so bad, he can only feel vibrations and an occasional note. His eyes, too, are fading -- but who needs sheet music when he can play without a blink anything from "Little Orphan Annie" to "Aloha -oi," (now on the computer, folks).
Kenneth is long gone from us, but Lois still plays an organ at home or when she visits us. We have to blow the dust off the strings before it will work.
Me? I drum with my fingers when I'm taking a quick break from the keyboard, click my heels and imitate a drum roll om my desk when they're playing, "March on the
River Kwai," or "Under the Double Eagle."
Semper Fidelis!
The housekeeper, who visits every couple of weeks, is banging with her duster outside my office door.I keep waiting to hear if her duster picks up the beat. Maybe if I open the door I'll catch her swingin' away in the hallway, swirling her skirt and snapping her fingers.
I've always been a good union man, but I have a confession to make: When I heard that Napster was going out of business, I downloaded ceaselessly, day and night, bringing the music home to me: Over 2,000 numbers. It's probably not infringing on many copyrights anyway, because my music ranges from, "The Old Folks at Home," to "Gotterdamerung; from, "The Dipsy Doodle," to, "Rhapsody in Blue."
It started more than 80 years ago when I would lie on the back of the piano bench while Mamma chorded away and Dad played the fiddle or even the saw.Kenneth, Keith and Lois, all not much higher than the piano keyboard, would sing away. That was in Mott, N.D., where you've probably heard too much about before in these blogs.
And whiskered Grandpa, in his 80s, would chime in with songs a hundred years older -- and he just missed the Civl War draft, having been born in 1846. We learned to sing the scales with him, which is simply, "do-mi-so-mi, do-mi-so-mi, do-mi-so, DO - DO." There. You got it!
Music (or noise, as you might characterize it) soaked up the walls of the parlor through the 1920s. All of us took piano lessons from Aunt Winona Batty (cheaper wholesale and when the instructor is in the family).Then the instrument section branched out: Keith on the piano or trumpet or whatever he could pick up; Kenneth, first on the tuba and then on the sousaphone; Lois, on the French horn, aka mellophone, and I on the snare drum.
Anecdotally:
While the folks were away, I was practicing my drumming on Grandma Batty's screened front porch. Thrrrrrummm echoed across the prairies, I suppose. Mrs. Bjorum's son, Eric, came running up the street, puffing, to the porch door:
"Hey," (puff, puff) "Mamma wants you to stop!" Pause. "SHE'S HAVIN' A BABY!"
Thereafter, I practiced on a rubber pad, always available at the music catalogue house for such situations. Drumming wasn't the same after that.
The Mott High School Band got such a wide reputation that we were chosen to march and perform at the five-state Lions Club convention in Bismarck. I had only the orchestra version of a drum -- metal with deerskin heads, and totally imposssible as a marching drum. But I harnessed it up, and it bumped into my gut murderously for blocks up the Main Street in Bismarck. I could dream that Sousa or Fiedler was on the sidelines.
Gov. William Langer's little daughter sat nearby later at a concert. There was I in cardinal-and white uniform, with a red-billed cap and a swirling red and black cape -- our school colors. I was 11 or 12 and fell madly in love. At least, for a few minutes.
D. G. Stubbins was not only a fine band leader, but was also our high school principal. There was the day that Mr. Stubbins handed a brand new load of music sheets to Roy Groez, the bass drummer. Music came with two pieces to a sheet, which had to be split before it was handed out.
"Tear 'em up, Roy, please" Stubbins said.
Roy did -- into tiny pieces.
One night, Hettinger and Mott baskeball teams were battling it out in our new high school gymnasium. Probably most of the town (pop. 1,032 in the 1930 census) was seated on the cement bleachers on one side of the court. Across from them, the proscenium arched across the stage draped in cardinal velvet.
At the halftime, the battle slowed to a stop, and the riotous cheerers quieted down.
But in the silence, music was emanating from behind the velvet curtain. The piano notes rang out loud and clear.
The crowd sat mystified, curious. The music was easily recognizeable.You could have sung it: (OHHH, say can you see/By the dawn's early light..."
People didn't know what to do. Then some started putting their hands over their hearts.Some began singing. Some kids probably saluted.Principal Stubbins, if memory serves, rushed back behind the curtain and fished up Keith from the piano. I guess no one knew what was going on until after the story got out. Keith's patriotism didn't set well with Don Stubbins.
The Star-Spangled Banner was only given status as the National Anthem on May 3, 1931. The basketball season was long over by then.
They tell me Mom and Dad used to play for barn dances down at the Woodmen's Hall.
No baby-sitter for Mom. I understand she hung me up on a coat hook like a pappoose, and left me there for a few sets. (You suppose she nursed me in the clothes closet?)
Keith's high school dance band would rehearse in our parlor. I remember their theme song, "Song of the Islands." (I'm listening to it now on my computer. Mmmm. Hear it?) In college in New Mexico, it was the Varsity Club. They played for college dances and sometimes at Albuquerque's Casa de Man`ana.(I still can't get that tilde over the "n.")
Keith went into school-teaching until WW2. A recruiter walked into his classroom and said they could place him immediately into the military as a warrant officer at the nearby Sandia Army Air Base. They did. During the war, he was sent back to a training school where he finished at the top of the classe and could choose his own field.
He wanted to go back to Albuquerque, where he had a wife and child. Couldn't make it, so he got second choice: the band at Palm Spring, California. Musicians from Hollywood were helping him fight the enemy there. After the war and he was now head of the music department on the little campus of Cal Poly, San Dimas, the military got in touch with him and wanted him to apply for director of the band at West Point.
Keith -- like the rest of the family -- had a better ear for music than he had for ANYTHING the military had for him. He stayed with school teaching, directing Cal Poly's music department, now moved to Pomona.He still took gigs with big bands -- some at Las Vegas, one at Disneland, I recall
He's in a retirement home near us in Oceanside now -- still playing, although his hearing is so bad, he can only feel vibrations and an occasional note. His eyes, too, are fading -- but who needs sheet music when he can play without a blink anything from "Little Orphan Annie" to "Aloha -oi," (now on the computer, folks).
Kenneth is long gone from us, but Lois still plays an organ at home or when she visits us. We have to blow the dust off the strings before it will work.
Me? I drum with my fingers when I'm taking a quick break from the keyboard, click my heels and imitate a drum roll om my desk when they're playing, "March on the
River Kwai," or "Under the Double Eagle."
Semper Fidelis!
posted by Paul Weeks at 11:48 PM
1 Comments:
Dear Sis -
Yes. your write the scale right, but listen -- Grandpa sang:
c-e-g-e -c-e -g -e -c -e -g (high)c
- c. Try it, and I think you'll remember it. And my sources, dear Sis. say the river is KWAI.
But I like to hear from you!
--Your younger brud.
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