Musical Memory Lane, Part 1

It's been fun to review (or to use the cool-kids' word "curate") my musical life, from as far back as I can remember it, which would mean starting when I was quite young---about 4 or 5.  The songs and music I heard and learned at that time were straight out of Baptist Sunday School curriculum:  Jesus Loves Me, of course, and others with a Jesus-theme.

We kids attended Sunday School first and then sat with our mother during the regular, upstairs service, participating in all the small rituals of Baptist worship (very low-church and homely), including all the old hymns, many of them rather blood-drenched in their theology but others reverent or energetic and easy to sing.

So I grew up on "Washed in the Blood" for one (fun to sing with its repetitive chorus and "warshed in the blood" rhythmically bellowed out by those of us destined to grow up with dark senses of humor and to forsake blood sacrifice theology forever) and "Wonderful Grace of Jesus", also rhythmically fun to sing and belt out its forgiveness and sunny attitude toward sin.

But a few years into my life, suddenly there appeared in our living room a turntable and a set of children's records that had nothing to do with religion and everything to do with international music, including classical themes like "Peter and the Wolf".  I suspect that our mother was the instigator of that shift in our musical tastes, with her college education and teaching experience.  I still remember some of those tunes ("There's a boat from Bahia, Bahia" and "Grand Canyon Suite" morsels) which opened me up to a wider range of musical experience.

At age 9, I moved, with our family, out to northeastern Oregon, where we kids had our first experience with public school and a public school music program:  "Happy Wanderer", "Walloping Window Blind" and the like, sung gustily by 5th and 6th graders to the accompaniment of the old upright piano played by our music/PE teacher Mrs. Lewis.

Before too many more years, I was swept up in 50's teenage culture, with Pat Boone crooning "Friendly Persuasion" over the local airwaves and "Earth Angel" the favorite request song of my friends.

High school days brought a lot of pop music---Bill Haley and the Comets, Elvis the Pelvis, and others like them.  Rock and Roll hit the charts and worried the Baptists and others concerned about "modernism" in religion and in the cultural life of small town America.

In Athena, we were not "allowed" (by community norms) to attend movies, go to dances, or play cards.  We were the Preacher's Kids who had to set a different standard of teenage behavior, so my sister and I were careful about what music we told our folks we liked.

I kinda liked Johnny Cash and "I Walk the Line" which hinted at illicit behavior but didn't elaborate.  Of course, this was at the time of my life when I had just barely realized how babies were actually made.  I was smart, but not that smart.

Having started to learn piano at about age 8, I had the advantage early in life of reading music, which has served me well all my life.  It is a skill that goes beyond simple sight-reading of new music and led me into inventing my own sense of harmony and of music theory (some of which actually worked but was all seat-of-the-pants).

College years changed my tastes again.  More on that later.