All The Right Notes

There was always music whirling around in my brain. It started with children's records- little red and yellow 45s that I played over and over; some of the songs still fresh in my memory. Mom bought the Pirates of Penzance on 45s, with a sleeve and booklet covered with illustrations. I would listen to Gilbert and Sullivan's operetta, staring at the drawings, transported to a world full of pirates and damsels in distress.
I liked music at school, but I longed for something more substantial than "Row, Row,Row Your Boat" and "Oh, Susanna".
You see, our house was filled with music. My parents, without knowing it, gave me an appreciation for all kinds of music, a passion I have to this day. They listened to a wide and eclectic variety of musicians and singers, and we would have impromptu music appreciation nights whenever the mood would strike them.
It would just happen. Dad would somehow get home early on a Friday or Saturday night. He might bring home some pizza from Bruni's in Woodbury, or hamburgers and fries from the Steer Inn. The TV would be turned off, and the playing of records would begin.
The big old box TV was gone now and in its place was one of those console sets with the TV on one side and a record player/radio combination on the other. "Blond" furniture it was called, a yellowy off white kind of color that was extremely popular at the time.
We would play all kinds of stuff, a lot of country, but also Dixieland jazz, popular singers, rock and roll,classical,Broadway show tunes and the latest craze in the early sixties; folk music. We would progress from there into Hawaiian and later on the Spanish stylings of bands like Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass.
Dad leaned more into the country side of things, so the sound of Hank Williams was as familiar to me as Old Macdonald. He was a big fan of Patsy Cline as well, and in 1961 her rendition of "Crazy" could be heard all the time, a title that suited the year so well. Then Dad would go completely in another direction and we'd spend hours listening to Harry Belafonte: "Hey Mr. tally man, tally me banana." After that would come The Brothers Four and The Kingston Trio. I so much wanted to sing "Tom Dooley" in school.
Mom liked Fats Domino and Eddy Arnold and Elvis and all the Broadway show tunes sung by people like Barbara Streisand. She also liked country music, "Western" music she would call it, or "Hillbilly" music, as Bluegrass was known by at the time.
They played ragtime and Dixieland jazz, a lot by a band called The Firehouse Five, rousing and wild stuff that I loved to listen to. The cool strains of Pete Fountain, and a collection of symphonies put out by RCA called The Listener's Digest, classical music on 45s; a dose of Beethoven and other grand composers to give us an evening of refinement.
They would listen over and over to Gale Garnett-"We'll Sing In The Sunshine"- I knew that song by heart having heard it so much.
Then all of a sudden Dad surprised us all and started on a Hawaiian kick, listening to island instrumentals. I guess it transported him on a vacation he couldn't afford at the time. It took hold of me as well, and I listen to Hawaiian slack-key guitar artists to this day.
There would be big band sounds and novelty songs like "Does Your Chewing Gum Lose Its Flavor On The Bedpost Overnight?" and Alan Sherman singing "Hello Muddah, Hello Faddah".
We were our own Mitch Miller show, singing along and having a grand old time. LPs, 45s and old 78s stacked high above the turntable, and you never knew what was coming next.
So I would walk to school with Fats Domino urging me on with "I'm Walkin'" or Hank Williams crooning out "Jambalaya".
Maybe that's why I seemed preoccupied during music time at school. We were supposed to be singing "Home On The Range", but I was somewhere else.
I was on that banana boat in the harbor at Kingston Town.
"Daylight come an me wan' go home."