matthew

Of course I know In The Mood by the Glenn Miller Orchestra, but it was a hit many years before I was born. My personal description for such a song is, well, that I know it.

A song I know does not necessarily have to be from before I was born. It could also be something that I am old enough to possibly remember from when it was a hit, but don’t. One such song is Lies by the Knickerbockers. Even though it is from 1966, I don’t remember hearing the song until late 1968.

Another song I missed at the time but heard later on is Friday On My Mind by the Easybeats. For some reason, also in late 1968, KJR Seattle played it so often that I though it was new even though is was it was a hit on the US charts a year and a half before. This is another song I know.

Know is the most basic category of song to me. From there we move to songs I remember. A song I remember is one that I remember from the time it was a hit.

One song I remember was from 1964 after we moved to Germany. AFN Frankfurt had a country show from 4-5 PM (or should I say 1600-1700). From 5 to 6 (1700 to 1800) was a popular music program — the first half hour was top 40, the second half hour was what used to be called MOR (Middle of the Road). This particular song was on both the country and pop charts so it was played on both shows. That song was We’ll Sing In The Sunshine by Gale Garnett. I definitely remember this song. No wonder, considering I heard it twice in the two hours of limited music programming on the station.

In late Spring, 1969, there was a song KJR started playing. By the time we moved to the San Francisco Bay Area in late August, it was ready to drop off the KJR play list — a recurrent in radio parlance. When we got to San Francisco and found KFRC, that song was Hitbound. It is the only song that I heard run its course two consecutive times of heavy airplay. Yeah, I certainly remember Smile A Little Smile For Me, Rosemarie by the Flying Machine, and I sure got tired of it, too.

The thing with a song I remember is that, while I remember it when it was a hit, it does not bring back the vivid mood of a specific time I heard it. It was just part of the woodwork so to speak — even if I do remember a specific time I heard it.

That brings me to what I call Time Machine Songs. Not only do I remember such a song from when it was a hit, but hearing it again transports my mind back in time to a specific time I heard it.

After my grandmother died in January, 1963, we drove from Staten Island for the funeral. After the funeral my mother stayed in Washington DC to help my grandfather. My father was in the Army. He stood like a ramrod and was forever telling us to “stand up straight.” As he drove my two brothers and me back to New York, the latest song by the Four Seasons came on the radio. My father could not pass up the oppourtunity to tell us that that is what we had to do — Walk Like A Man.

I previously touched on one particular song from 1965. Whenever I hear I Can’t Help Myself by the Four Tops, I am sitting in our living room looking at the July 9 issue of Life Magazine. I can see many of the pictures. I am not quite nine years old. The song takes me back there.

When my brother was a junior in high school he was involved with an organization called Junior Achievement. One night a week my mother would drive him to the meetings. I would go along for the ride. I don’t remember any other song that I heard on those rides, but Georgie Girl by the Seekers has me in the back seat of the car driving on the hills of downtown Tacoma.

Music from any time can bring back memories, but a time machine song puts me in the moment.

Some thirty-odd years ago I went to a party at a friend’s house. As Robert answered the door there was someone a few feet behind him. Knowing that outside of himself I would be the only person at the party who would recognize the name, Robert whispered to me “That’s Sandy Nelson.”

While his heyday was a bit early for me, I certainly knew who Sandy Nelson was. He had a number of hits in the late 1950’s to early 1960’s, starting with Teen Beat in 1959.

I am not much of a social butterfly at parties. I am the kind of person who will find a like-minded individual and spend my time talking to him. Sandy Nelson was the same kind of person. We made some small talk and went into the kitchen and sat down.

Nelson asked me if I played any musical instruments. I told him that I made noise on the guitar. He had lost part of a leg in a motorcycle accident so he could not really drum anymore. He still wanted to make music so he was teaching himself the piano. One thing that confused him, though, was why the layout of the bass clef and the treble clef were different. I explained to him that they were originally laid out as one giant score with an added line in between for Middle C (which I since found out may not be exactly true). I pointed out that the top line of the bass clef was an A note. Above that was a space for a B note, then a ledger line for Middle C, a space for a D note, and the bottom line of the treble clef was an E note. One almost picked up where the other left off.

“A Guitarist who can read music. I’m impressed.”

“I’m not very good at either.”

“That’s OK. That’s still very good.”

We talked for a quite a while. He talked about the music industry in the late ’50’s. “If you had a kit (a drum set) and a car, you were a session musician.”

After we went out into the living room, Robert brought out a stack of Sandy’s albums. The liner notes on one of them said how he “drummed to his own beat.”

“That means I couldn’t drum my way out of a paper bag.”

I had a very enjoyable evening. Sandy was a nice guy. He did not talk down to me at all, nor did I act like a star-struck fan. We were just two people at a party with similar interests. I never talked to him again.

I just found out that Sandy Nelson passed away last Valentine’s Day. Rest in peace, Mr. Teen Beat.

Except when we were in Germany, I remember always having a piano in the house when I grew up. Recently I found the original receipt for the family Wurlitzer piano from 1957 — the year after I was born. I imagine that my mother always wanted a piano, and my father was able to fulfill that wish some eight years after they were married. I took piano lessons the summer I turned 13 but I cannot say I remember my mother ever playing the keyboard although we did have a collection of music books.

While my father used to sing, especially along with Richard Kiley on the Broadway Cast album of Man of La Mancha and later with albums of Irish music, he was, to the best of my knowledge, not a musician of any kind who played an instrument.

…except for one piece.

I have fond memories of my father standing at the piano and playing an upbeat tune. I remember this from time to time over many years. I had no idea of what it was he played. I asked one of my brothers about it. He suggested maybe it was Chopsticks. I know Chopsticks, and that was not it.

I thought I would never know what the tune was considering I remember it from sixty years ago.

Fabricio André Bernard Di Paolo is a Brazilian musician on YouTube known professionally as Lord Vinheteiro. His videos cover a wide variety of topics from songs you have heard but don’t know the name of, the difference between a cheap and expensive piano, and many more. His videos show a dry sense of humor.

Lord Vinheteiro’s appears to be a stern head master. He clearly is very good musician. One of the hallmarks of his videos is that he usually scowls directly at the camera which is usually to the side of him. There have been several comments that a piece is especially difficult if Vinheteiro has to look at the keyboard as he plays.

Several days ago, Lord Vinheteiro posted a video showing the progression of a piano player from one second to ten years. For him, maybe, but not anyone I know. The best I could do after two months of hard work was a rousing rendition of Tommy’s New Drum March.

At the 35 second mark, Vinheteiro said “One day playing piano.” What came next was a shortened version of the tune I remembered my father playing all those years ago. The tune is known around the world by a number of different names. According to Wikipedia, it is known in Japan as I Stepped on the Cat and in Spain as The Chocolatier. In other countries it is know as the Flea, Pig, Dog, Cat or Donkey March, the Cat’s or Fool’s Polka, or by several other names. In the United Kingdom it is know as Chopsticks — but not what we know by that name in the United States.

The song is said to be an easy tune to play although you could not prove it by me. My father played a boisterous, almost boogie woogie rendition. I would love to hear him play it again.

I was the youngest of three boys. My brothers and I were always pretty close. My oldest brother Larry and I seemed to have the most in common in terms of music. I remember many of the songs that he liked over the years,

I remember him liking a Brenda Lee song that was a hit unto itself and was also the flip side of I’m Sorry. It was a song that I found many years later, much to my surprise, was written by Jerry Reed: That’s All You Gotta Do. The reason I was surprised was because once I heard that factoid, it was so obvious that I felt I should have known it. Larry played that record so many times that I am surprised we did not hear I’m Sorry playing backwards along with that song.

Larry never wasted an opportunity to ride buses. He never realized it, but one of his dreams when he was young was to be a Greyhound bus driver. In early 1963 there was a song that I loved so much that my mother sent Larry out to buy the record for me — Puff, the Magic Dragon by Peter, Paul and Mary. Whether he had to or not, Larry spent just about the entire day taking buses all over Staten Island to find it.

Later that year Larry bought a record for himself. I was with him one day when he played it when my Mother walked in. I don’t know why but she got really mad at him for his purchase: The Kind of Boy You Can’t Forget by the Raindrops. To this day I still have no idea what got her so mad.

When we moved to Germany in 1964 we did not have television so music was one of our biggest forms of entertainment. We bought records like we never had before. One of the first Larry bought was Remember (Walking In The Sand) by the Shangri-las.

Maybe the reason my brothers and I were so close is because we moved around a lot and saw a number of different things, such as our trip to Berlin in 1965.

After we returned to the United States, we drove across country in June 1966. My father always had the radio on in the car and one of the songs we heard was Little Girl by the Syndicate of Sound. Larry liked it but was not sure of the name. He bought the record before we had any way to play it, not sure if it was the right one. He saw in the TV listings that the group was going to be on American Bandstand. Larry never really watched the show, but he made sure he did that week.

Another song Larry liked in 1966 was Hey Joe. He did not know who it was by, but he saw it on an album so he bought it. When I saw the album cover, I was totally bewildered. I had never seen anything like it before. It was a bit much for my ten-year-old brain to comprehend.

That was not the version he wanted. He was looking at the version by the Leaves which he found on KJR 16 All American Hits.

Years went by. College, marriages, life goes on. The three of us would have a chance to get together from time to time.

On January 1, 2002, the three of us got together in Leavenworth, Washington. Besides being New Years Day, it was also Larry’s fifty-second birthday. Larry and Steve had their wives and the five of us had a great time.

My birthday was on a Saturday that year. To help me celebrate it, my son was going to spend the weekend with me. At about 2:30 in the morning, my son came in to tell me that my Father was on the phone.

“Your brother, Larry, is dead.” I know why he phrased it that way. My mother had been fighting cancer for over twenty years. As “mother” and “brother” sounded very similar, my father wanted to be sure I understood exactly what he was saying.

It has been twenty years since I last saw Larry. It took me years to come to grips with his passing, but I still am not used to it.