Ever notice how, to change a phrase, music, not cotton, weaves the fabric of our lives? I grew up in a house with very little music. No one played an instrument or took lessons of any sort. My parents had a scant number of old 78 RPM recordings of Hawaiian music for which they had no explanation, and one 78 of Gene Autry that they played every Christmas Eve to let me know that “Here Comes Santy Claus.” They didn’t even listen to the radio, so except for Lawrence Welk and music inside the classroom, I grew up bereft of the wonderous sounds of music.
It all changed in 1961. I turned 11 and was given as a present, a small, red, plastic box with an earbud…the original AM transistor radio. To a young girl in her last year of elementary school, it was the sheerest form of Heaven. I immediately found 710 on the dial, home of WHB, the World’s Happiest Broadcasters, sat on the front porch and started catching up with what all my friends had always taken for granted - real, live, current, popular music. I don’t remember what I heard first, but every tinny sound that came out of that 4x6 red plastic box gave me complete joy, for the early sixties were golden years of music. Chubby Checker was twisting again, Del Shannon was chasing his little runaway, and telling tales on his girl Sue, who was a runaround. Pat Boone was up a moody river, Connie Francis was where the boys were, Dion was wandering, Gene Pitney was in a town without pity, Elvis was lecturing his girl's little sister, and The Tokens were letting us know that the lions were sleeping at night. In no time at all, I was hooked on music.
By the time I was in high school and earning babysitting money, I saved it and bought a record player. I spent all my spare change from then on, at the Katz drug store, buying records. By the time I was a senior and on into college, teen music had changed a lot. There were still feel-good songs like Itchycoo Park, Judy in Disguise, and On A Carousel, but social consciousness was quickly seeping into the airwaves. Crosby, Stills, and Nash sang about the four students shot at Kent State, the Beatles wanted a revolution, Joni Mitchell was pensive about the peaceful qualities of seagulls, and Zager and Evans told us how it would be in the year 2525. Through out it all, Archie Bell and the Drells couldn’t stop dancing.
My tastes have expanded and changed over the many years since, but like most people for whom music was pivotal in high school and college, those songs are still among my most played, even when they take me back to such heartache and angst I can hardly stand it. These days, I’m as likely to listen to country (both old school and new), jazz, fusion, classical, and even hip-hop, but just as it was back in 1961, music is everything to me. The radio or iPod is playing whether I’m cooking, cleaning, working, or writing blogs about music. During the last hour, thanks to the shuffle mode, I’ve heard The String Cheese Incident, George Jones, ZZ Top, Jason Mraz, Rod Stewart (old school and new), Bread, John Prine, Van Morrison with the Chieftains, and a few others whom are already locked away in the vast wasteland known as my subconscious.
Music is such a powerful force, when I hear certain songs, I’m instantly taken back to the past where I see, hear, smell and feel specific moments in my life. Zager and Evans instantly transports me back to Half Moon Bay on the California coastline, while Simon and Garunkle’s Cecelia puts me in a sorority house with a pledge who really thought they wrote the song for her. Mercedes Benz plants me right in front of Janis Joplin on stage, half a football field away from me, as I reveled in the raw power of her mere presence. Paul Revere and the Raider’s Hungry sits me right back in the up-front seat at the Music Hall as I (and several hundred other girls) cried every time Mark Lindsay opened his mouth to sing. (Hey - we were 16 - it was mandatory.) Eddy Arnold’s voice always reminds me of my maternal grandpa, his tiny living room, and the big, blue, horsehair, overstuffed chair that itched a little girl’s bare legs. Money by Pink Floyd gives visions of the in-laws living room and their massive, blonde, console stereo. I can’t hear Garth Brooks sing a particular song without seeing an adorable blond three or four years old in nothing but cowboy boots, and underoos (sports on my shorts) sing very loudly “I got friends in low places where the keys are round and the bears are chasing my boots away.”
This year it’ll be 49 years since I first discovered the magic that music produces. It can soothe a soul or rile it up. It can make a person giggly, sad, or introspective, and sometimes can even provoke feelings that can’t be described or understood. It can create lasting memories, or give us something to cling to when we desperately need something - anything, to give us hope. Music is more than the fabric of our lives - it’s life itself
