My Mother's Music

 

 

I looked over at my mom in her lawn chair and her eyes were closed. I glanced at my dad in his chair. His eyes were closed, too, as he faced the sky, tears leaking from behind his eyelids. Music floated up the aisles across rows of seats from the stage below to where we were picnicking on manicured grass. The singer was Tony Bennett. He was performing at Ravinia, the outdoor music theatre in Highland Park, Illinois outside of Chicago. And I wondered how I’d come to this.

 

I was a rock ‘n’ roll snob in my early youth. To me, my mother’s music was just a vinyl heirloom that spun on our hi-fi platter. Having grown up in the thirties and forties, her musical tastes favored Big Band tunes from the Swing Era. Glenn Miller, Tommy Dorsey and Benny Goodman were frequent visitors to our turntable. But her playlist also included classical composers like Vivaldi, Shostakovich and Rachmaninov.

 

Though she enjoyed the chronological progression of music eras in her day and prior to it, she never really made the transition to Elvis, Chuck Berry and Little Richard. As my rock interests grew, I realized there was some music and performers that my mom would rather I avoid. As a result, our musical exchanges could get a little dicey.

 

The Beatles were tolerable, at least for a while. Magical Mystery Tour has some fanciful tunes that were safe to have in my room because no one living or dead has ever understood what the Mystery Tour was about. Mom even seemed to appreciate one of the songs, “Your Mother Should Know.”

 

But The White Album was a turning point. I bought it out of sequence with the other Beatle releases. To prove that the Beatles had some musical substance she’d enjoy, I played her their lullaby-esque “Good Night.” Then I asked her to guess the name of the band. Especially when she found that Ringo sang lead, it seemed acceptable. She regarded Ringo as the likeable Beatle. But later, she accidentally caught me listening to “Why Don’t We Do It in the Road.” I quickly realized I had to become more creative in sneaking some music past her.

 

I’d noticed one of her favorite albums was Rhapsody in Blue. So I also got a record with rhapsody in a song title. That same song included the word, “Bohemian.” I thought this might win my mom’s approval as having Old-World flavor, which she seemed to enjoy. The guise was short-lived. When she discovered the song was performed by a band called “Queen,” that album was back out the door. I took it to a friend’s house and listened to it there.

 

Both my parents had a thing for showtunes. Our record cabinet had stacks of Broadway soundtracks from Damn Yankees, South Pacific, The King and I, Brigadoon, Fiddler on the Roof and The Sound of Music. As a kid, I couldn’t fathom the logic of musicals in which people suddenly broke into song during the middle of a conversation. Not until The Rocky Horror Picture Show did I start catching on.

 

Gradually, I recognized country music as also worthy. But there were two country stars who my mom felt were of questionable character. Merle Haggard had done hard-time in San Quentin Prison. Johnny Cash had been a drug addict. But my dad liked country music and I credit him for helping me get these two no-goodniks into the house. Dad wasn’t much of a Merle fan until “Okie from Muskogee” hit the charts. But he convinced Mom that the song supported the abstinence of refer madness. As for my first Cash album, he got me Man in Black because Reverend Billy Graham read some Bible verses on one of the tracks.

 

The topic of church and the music therein was a whole different experience with my mom. I need to explain something up front: she had little or no musical ability. She didn’t read music, play an instrument and couldn’t carry a note. Her normal speaking voice was one of moderate, restrained tones. But not in church. Her volume while holding a hymnal soared to 11 like an off-key Ethel Merman. When I was with her, I’d scooch down the pew a bit, closer to a different family at the other end. If there was anything our denomination frowned upon within the sanctuary, it was belting out hymns like brassy showstoppers. In that sense, Mom was a rebel. She obviously didn’t think God gave a damn. These years later, I’m proud of her.

 

We developed a closeness over time that oddly came from her passion for marches by John Philip Sousa. Such was her fervor, that every Fourth of July, she’d perform an interpretation of a live-motion Statue of Liberty. She donned a cardboard tiara wrapped in red, white and blue foil, held a lighted sparkler in each hand and conducted Sousa marches blaring out the windows from the eight-track player inside our cabin.

 

One night as I was watching public television, a Sousa march came on while Mom was in another room. The sound of it attracted her like ducks to decoys and she came to see what it was. The song’s official name is “The Liberty Bell March.” But it’s more familiar to many people as the theme for Monty Python’s Flying Circus. She sat down to listen, then ended up staying for the rest of the show. This became habit for years thereafter, including Python movies. Together we cackled when King Arthur de-limbed the Dark Knight in the Holy Grail. We debated reactions from the religious right about the Life of Brian. Mom always looked on the bright side of life. Even with her rooted Christian beliefs, not for a minute did she think the Pythons had disparaged Jesus.

 

She was cooler than I’d suspected.

 

My mom wanted to expand my musical knowledge beyond her own. She insisted I learn to read music. So considering her sentiment for Glenn Miller and Tommy Dorsey, I picked up the trombone. Though I only played a few years, I at least know now there’s more to a song than the melody. I learned what to listen for, like the trombone countermelody in “Stars and Stripes Forever.”

 

Our musical relationship flourished in both directions. When my wife and I turned Mom on to the Grateful Dead, she couldn’t hear enough of “Ripple.” My parents reciprocated with tickets for all of us to see Harry Belafonte live. In turn, we introduced them to Bobby McFerrin as an orchestral conductor, not the pop singer with “Don’t Worry, Be Happy.” I’ve seen McFerrin conduct symphonies more times with my parents than I’ve attended Tom Petty, Willie Nelson or Rush concerts with my friends.

 

Of all she taught me, I hold most dear the importance of people who benefit others with their own skills in their own way. Mom led by example. Though she wasn’t a musical performer, she had a mind for numbers and meticulous detail. It landed her employment as the secretary for the Elgin Symphony Orchestra in the Chicago suburb where she and my dad lived. The job also came with perks that naturally she shared and kept our musical spiral moving forward. She met Yo-Yo Ma, got his autograph and inspired us to accumulate a drawerful of Yo-Yo CDs in our house.

 

Those Tony-Bennett tears at Ravinia stirred something deep in my mom and dad. Wherever they left their hearts that evening, wherever they were in their minds, music that I once rejected took them there. I didn’t pry for more. They gave me a memory of my own.