My parents loved music and felt it was very important to have good music in our home. That meant, for the most part, only classical music, country music and the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. Everytime the Choir came out with a new album, Papa had Mr. Priest, who own the record store, call him. Then Papa would go and purchase that album.
I remember the 'Hi-Fi Stereo' cabinet Papa purchased and placed in our living room. We were taught exactly how to handle an album to play it and not scratch it at all.
My father played in a band all of my growing up years. I remember practice sessions in the evening at our home and the joy it brought my parents to have the friends over to pick and grin and sing. Papa had a radio program at one point. He also managed the Jamboree in a little town near Shreveport. It was something like Renfro Valley here in Kentucky.
My parents purchased an old upright piano at some point very early on. I don't remember the purchasing of this piano. It seems to me it was always a part of our home but I'm sure it was purchased with the intent that each of their three daughters would learn to play that old upright piano.
My piano lessons began when I was in third grade. Mrs. Arlene Herring was my only piano teacher. She lived about 7 or 8 blocks away from our home and I would walk to her home often for my piano lesson. She would also teach Junie and Neffie when it came time for them to start lessons. She didn't like to start any child before they were eight years old as she felt they needed to know fractions to understand timing. We sat at her baby grand piano in her living room and she sat at a chair beside us. "Keep your fingers curled" was a phrase I heard often.
Mrs. Herring used the Thompson piano lesson books. You started out with 'Teaching Little Fingers to Play' and moved up through the grades of those books. She also picked two pieces of music for you to learn that were special. You would play these at the piano recital held at the end of each school year at the church she attended, Cumberland Baptist Church. There pieces were to be learned and memorized through the year. I was NEVER good a memorizing. Basically I just had to play and play and play until my fingers knew where to go. Recitals were a time for a new dress. My first was very formal and my mother made it for me. Mrs. Herring also tried many times to toss in a technique book. I'm not sure how many of those were 'lost' as I walked past a big park on the way to her home. I really just wanted to play. I couldn't see any possible need for all that technical stuff. Such is the folly of youth
We had a big need for pianists at Church and it wasn't long before I was asked to play for Sunday School. They would carefully pick three hymns for me to play each Sunday; an opening, sacrament and closing hymn. I would learn these and eventually I learned all the hymns in the hymnbook. Mrs. Herring loved our hymns because she said, "They are beautiful pieces of music."
Eventually my friend, Sue Sprayberry, and I were the music people for Primary. I usually played because my skills at playing were a little better than Sue's. But we would change places and sometimes I would lead and Sue would play. This was great fun because we both loved music and were such good friends anyway.
Eventually I learned how to do the spider crawl on the organ with my fingers so that I didn't lose the sound. Then I started learning three hymns a week on the organ and playing for Sacrament meeting. I never really had organ lessons except Bibbit Pearce teaching me to move my fingers from one note to the next so the sound stayed continuous and connected. When you release an organ key the sound stops and you have no damper pedal like you do on a piano to keep it connected. I love to play the organ to this day.
All my life I have had lots of opportunity to play the piano and organ at Church. Playing the piano was my release for tension as a teenager and as a young mother. I remember putting my little ones to bed and sitting down to my piano and plowing through 'Battle Hymn of the Republic'. This was the accompaniment to the version the Mormon Tabernacle Choir sings.
Now I am 62 years old with many years of piano playing under my belt. I now have the joy of singing with my father every Wednesday at the nursing home where my mother was until her death. We have been doing this since 2005. Usually Papa sings 8-9 solo numbers, then we sing 8 duet numbers, then Papa plays his harmonica and then his mandolin. This fills an hour of time. He played the harmonica because Jim Ford loved to hear it. Jim's wife was in the nursing home with Parkinson's. She passed away the end of 2012. Jim does not come to the nursing home anymore. It's hard for Papa to play the harmonica because it takes so much breathe and he just doesn't have that anymore. He will be 85 on May 3rd.
Last week Papa asked if I would play a piano number instead of him playing the harmonica anymore. I told him I would be happy to do that for him. Yesterday morning I found a version of the hymn "I Need Thee Every Hour" that I really like. I practiced it in the morning and again in the afternoon. Then I took it to the nursing home to play as the piano number.
I suddenly realized this was life circling around. I know my parents did not have the money for all three of us to take piano lessons. I'm sure they did without many things so that we could have that learning opportunity in our lives. I suddenly saw all those times I have played the piano or the organ to meet a need at Church, to entertain a group of people, to teach my own three kids how to play, to play for a wedding or a funeral and the list goes on. What it comes back to is helping the person who made it possible for me to sit and play the piano, my father. He does love music to this day.
I felt very grateful for him and this 'ah ha' moment in my life. As he gives up another thing because his body is wearing out (playing the harmonica), maybe I can fill that void a little by playing something on the piano once a week as I spend precious moments with him entertaining those who can't leave the confines of the nursing home. That my friends, is a lot to be grateful for.
No comments:
Post a Comment