“Scientists estimate that on average the brain can distinguish among four hundred thousand sounds on file in the wet gray database between the ears.” —Michael Sims, “Lend Me Your Ears,” Adam’s Navel: A Natural and Cultural History of the Human Form (Viking, 2003), p. 93.
My title is a pun on the musical equivalent of spa reps, vocalises having a definition of “singing with one vowel,” voice exercises moving up and down the scale, mi-mi-mi-mi-mi, mah-mah-mah-mah-mah. My topic is, however, more like my piano practice: I seldom practiced my actual lesson, but I played all kinds of music a great deal to the extent that Mom read my moods by what and how I played and my piano teacher grumbled but admitted that I continued to learn fingering, dynamics, note reading. I was to end up with a vocal music major for my bachelor’s, and I have to think about how or why I took that road.
I have a collection of songbooks used by Women’s Club, Project Club, schools, other community organizations, with Grandma’s or Mom’s name on the covers. Under a wreathed Vox populi vox dei [“The voice of the people is the voice of God”], a title covers an integral part of my childhood: Favorite Songs of the People: School, Home and Community Songs and Choruses, Old and New, For All Occasions (1927). The back cover has a short “Patriotic Reading from ‘Washington’s Farewell Address’ ” for Leader and All, an excerpt from Kipling’s “Recessional,” “God of our fathers,” for All, and “Psalm CL.—Laudate Dominum” for Leader and All. The first song is “America the Beautiful,” the last “Old Zip Coon,” to the tune of “Turkey in the Straw,” an “Old American Jig.” In between are Christmas carols (“Silent Night,” “O Come, All Ye Faithful”), hymns (“Ein’ Feste Burg/A Mighty Fortress,” “Holy, Holy, Holy”), patriotic songs (“Marseillaise Hymn,” “The Maple Leaf Forever,” “When Johnny Comes Marching Home,” “Dixie”), folk songs (“Oh, My Darling Clementine,” “Santa Lucia,” “Drink to Me Only with Thine Eyes”), spirituals (“Deep River,” “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot,” “Nobody Knows the Trouble I’ve Seen”), Scotch Irish songs (“Wearing of the Green,” “Annie Laurie”), some opera ( “Anvil Chorus from ‘Trovatore’ “ “Bridal Chorus from Lohengrin”—none of the words “Here comes the bride,” but that’s the tune—”Pilgrim’s Chorus” from Tannhauser), several rounds like “Are You Sleeping?” and “Three Blind Mice,” “Reuben and Rachel” for alternating sexes, “Good Night, Ladies” specified for Men’s Voices, Sir Arthur Sullivan’s (yes, of Gilbert & Sullivan) “The Lost Chord,” and Anton Dvorak’s “Songs My Mother Taught Me,” the rollicking “Funiculi-Funicula.”
The Golden Book of Favorite Songs also has a page of “Responsive Readings,” starting with a short Psalms excerpt, in Unison Thomas Jefferson’s “We hold these truths to be self-evident . . . from the consent of the governed,” Leader and Assembly for the complete “Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address,” a short patriotic Leader and Assembly section by Mary McDowell, in Unison a long Woodrow Wilson quote on the flag and the language, and finally “Pledge to the Flag,” which, of course, does not include “under God,” that phrase not added until my graduation year, 1954. Its CLASSIFIED INDEX lists Children’s Songs, Christmas Songs, Civil War Songs, College Songs, Folk Songs, National and Patriotic Songs, Negro Spirituals, Old Folks’ Songs, Peace Songs, Religious Songs, State Songs, and Stunt Songs. The first section is patriotic songs, with explanations of their origins. The overall variety is similar to that in the last paragraph, the last two songs being the French Canadian folk song, “Alouette,” the Czech “Stodola Pumpa.” Included are “Solomon Levi,” a Jewish storekeeper’s narrative; “Central Will Shine [Tonight],” which most pep clubs should know; “March of the Men of Harlech,” the Welsh air sung superbly in Zulu [excellent 1964 film]; “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star”; “Hail to the Chief” of Presidential pomp; “Jolly Old Saint Nicholas” and “Up on the House-Top, [Click, Click, Click].”
The 1935 America Sings: Community Song Book For Schools, Clubs, Assemblies, Camps and Recreational Groups has no responsive readings but under the letter O: “The Old Oaken Bucket,” “Old Black Joe,” “The Old Gray Mare,” “Old MacDonald Had A Farm,” “Old Folks At Home,” “O, Little Town of Bethlehem,” “Oh Marie,” “Oh, My Darling Clementine,” Oh! Susanna,” “Oh! Dem Golden Slippers,” Onward, Christian Soldiers,” Our Boys Will Shine Tonight,” “Out The Window He Must Go,” “Over The Summer Sea.” I knew all but the last two and remember several others fondly, “Billy Boy,” “K-K-K-Katy,” “I Don’t Want To Play In Your Yard, [I Don’t Like You Any More],” “She’ll Be Comin’ ‘Round The Mountain,” “Where Is My Little Dog Gone,” to say nothing of popular songs such as “I’m Always Chasing Rainbows”—which few know is an pop adaptation of the slow section of a very difficult Chopin Fantasie Impromptu in C Sharp Minor—Kate Smith’s theme song, “When The Moon Comes Over The Mountain,” “Singin’ In The Rain” from Hollywood Review of 1929, made immortal by Hollywood’s most popular musical of the same name in 1952, and “Pagan Love Song,“ also 1929, one of Mom’s favorites.
The All-American Song Book: A Community Song Book For Schools, Homes, Clubs And Community Singing of 1942 starts with the National Anthem and then drops into several popular songs like “Good Night, Sweetheart,” the one that always ended our public dances; “Linger Awhile”; the pop version of Debussy’s “Reverie,” “My Reverie”; “My Blue Heaven”; two songs I heard at every dance, “The Darktown Strutters’ Ball” and “Whispering”; Judy Garland’s theme song, “Over The Rainbow,” from The Wizard of Oz; a curiously popular World War II Andrews Sisters song, “Don’t Sit Under The Apple Tree (With Anyone Else But Me)” just before “Anchors Aweigh”; two Grandma loved, 1914’s “When You Wore A Tulip (And I Wore A Big Red Rose)” and 1921’s “Peggy O’Neil”; then into the variety suggested above, ending in “While Strolling Thru’ The Park One Day (In The Merry Month of May)” [1936], “The Man On The Flying Trapeze” [1933, when Mom graduated], “Daisy Bell (Bicycle Built For Two)” [1892], “There Is A Tavern In The Town” [1934], and “The Band Played On” [1895]. I wonder how many viewers of the 1993 AIDS movie of that name know the song?
The 1941 Songs We Sing, A book suited to every singing occasion in the school, the home, the club, and in all recreational gatherings is a similar mix. And I later had also the National 4–H Club Song Book and, from our church youth group, the small Songs of Many Nations that we sang from at Pilgrim Fellowship conferences and church camp, the last most interesting because it was just what the title says, starting with the Slovakian Folk Song, “Morning Comes Early,” and the Swiss “Vreneli,” ending in many spiritual songs, including “Hanukkah Hymn.”
We sang on most occasions, certainly at school, wherein some of my teachers would hand out hectographed copies of such as the 1944 “Dance with a Dolly with a Hole in Her Stockin’,” which I learned later was the revamped 1844 “Buffalo Gals” sung in It’s a Wonderful Life, our most popular Christmas movie. This practice of handing out popular lyrics predated the magazine Songs That Will Live Forever, of which I have eight 1952 issues, with some “Stories and Pictures” but largely just song lyrics to 130, 140 songs, ranging from “Skylark” to “In a Shanty in Old Shanty Town.” I want to detour a minute, because I loved helping teacher Mom hectograph papers and patterns. One wrote/drew with a special iridescent metallic ink on a master sheet, the sheet then being pressed inked side downward on a wet thin sturdy jelly in a box the same size as paper, 8 1/2 x 11, to transfer it to the jelly. Carefully pressing blank sheets on the jelly made copies until the ink wore off. You can make the jelly of gelatin and glycerol; the ink can also be homemade, as I discovered on the Internet. This reproduction process was the crude predecessor of mimeos and Xeroxes.
Anyway, teachers and song leaders had us singing much more than the National Anthem on most public occasions, and Mom was both and relished the role at alumni banquets or regional Royal Neighbor conventions or Women’s Club. She and Grandma sang a great deal of the time, around the home and especially in the car, our entertainment along with Grandma’s imaginative penchant for “knowing” everyone we met. That is, she made up stories causing us to marvel how she knew that that man we just passed was Mr. Howard Dempsey, who often lied about his very homely wife, who had a wooden leg and gambled a lot. His wife happened to be a very good yodeler and played the banjo. Naturally, this straight-faced fibbing had to be about strangers, for we knew all the neighbors and town folk. When Grandma wasn’t regaling us with her funny fictions, we sang songs like “When You Wore a Tulip,” “Baby Face,” “I’m Looking Over a Four-Leaf Clover,” “Tip Toe Through the Tulips” (which 1929 song Tiny Tim made his theme song in 1968), “Ain’t We Got Fun,” “Bye Bye Blackbird” (which 1926 song was hauntingly sung by Peggy Lee in 1955’s Pete Kelly’s Blues), all of which Grandma could pound out on the piano.
Of course, in the Thirties, Forties, and Fifties musicals were common movie fare, instead of as rare as Chicago’s winning six Oscars today. We had not only Astaire and Rogers singing and dancing to splendid Kern and Gershwin scores but Busby Berkeley extravaganzas from the Thirties into the Fifties, including Esther Williams’ swimming numbers. The big MGM musicals started in 1929 and continued into 1960, the Forties and Fifties having such hits as Meet Me in Saint Louis (Judy Garland introducing “The Trolley Song” and “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas”), Anchors Aweigh (see Gene Kelly dance with the mouse Jerry), Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, Easter Parade, Singin’ in the Rain, Show Boat, The Band Wagon, Gigi. Debbie Reynolds made a hit in the biographic Three Little Words about songwriters Kalmar and Ruby and so at 18 was put into 1950’s Two Weeks with Love, her duet with Carleton Carpenter, “Aba Daba Honeymoon,” a huge hit record (I have the sheet music). Several biographic movies were about composers (Strauss in The Great Waltz, 1938) or songwriters (Rodgers and Hart, my rhyming favorites, in Words and Music, 1948), vaudeville families like the Cohans and Five Pennies, the Dolly Sisters, Marilyn Miller, Al Jolson. Some of the biggest stars were out of the Nelson Eddy and Jeanette MacDonald mold, operatic sopranos like Deanna Durbin, Kathryn Grayson, Nancy Powell, the Philadelphian tenor, Mario Lanza, a superstar who earned the first Victor Red Seal gold disc and has sold over 50 million records. Frequently in such films were the classical pianist/conductor, suave Jose Iturbi, and the theatrical organist, Ethel Smith. The best Bugs Bunny cartoon, “What’s Opera, Doc?” [1957], is a condensed satire of Wagnerian operas, and one of the best Marx Brothers comedies is A Night at the Opera [1935]. Song of the South [1946] was a musical about Uncle Remus stories with Brer Rabbit, Brer Fox, and Brer Bear in cartoon versions. I have mentioned earlier that radio and later television had dozens of musical shows, whether Bert Parks emceeing Stop the Music phoning the public, with its puzzling Mystery Tune national buzz, or Talullah Bankhead emceeing The Big Show or Arthur Godfrey with his uke and all his singers or Kate Smith with her “God Bless America” that baseball has recently adopted, Perry Como or Dinah Shore or The Hit Parade. Wurlitzer color-explosion Jukeboxes sang for us in every cafe and in many bars. (That’s how I became a Patsy Cline fan many years later, from a restaurant jukebox in Minot, North Dakota.)
In the meantime, many homes had pianos, as did our Mary’s Cafe, so that we gathered around that wonderful instrument to sing away. In our family first Grandma and then I played for Mom and my aunts (Aunt Betty also a lovely alto, which meant our family reversed the usual soprano dominance). After choir practice, especially in the summer, we gathered at Mary’s with Elaine LaFrenz’s playing by ear or from Mary’s extensive sheet music collection, Mama comically bellowing “Chloe” (“Through the darkest night”) to the rocking twin owls on top of the piano. (Mary unplugged the jukebox on such occasions.) Such a time of vocal ease.
“Remember the Christmas morning long ago,/The frosted glass, the dancing snow,/The happy time?/ Remember the painted horse, the carousel,/The choc’late kiss, the caramel,/The happy time?/ Remember the pale pink sky,/Your first Easter hat?/And if you should ask me why,/The reason I ask you this is that/I want to remember you/Remembering the happy time./ Remember the day you found the dollar bill,/Or roller-skating down the hill,/The happy time?/Remember the compliment you once received,/The lie you told they all believed,/The happy time?/Remember your first school play,/The sound of applause?/Why do I go on this way?/. . . . . . . /The reason I ask you that is this:/I’m longing to see you smile/And hear you laugh/So I can have the photograph/And remember you./Remembering the happy time.” —John Kander and Fred Ebb, title song from The Happy Time [1968].
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