Thanks for the Memories

Music is a funny thing.  Memories decades old can be resurrected on the notes of a forgotten tune.  One might be transported to any number of music-related memories.  I can think of a pleasant memory, like how the song ‘Bennie and the Jets’ takes me back to a summer day, splashing around at the public pool where the lifeguard chose to tune the radio to an AM music station.  I have a silly (and favorite) memory of my dad who, not realizing I was watching, did an improptu jitterbug (solo) on the driveway while he was working on his truck when Glenn Miller’s ‘In the Mood’ came on the radio. And there’s the vivid, tragic memory of Beethoven’s ‘Moonlight Sonata’ (Piano Sonata No. 14) linked forever to the day I learned Opa, my dad’s father, had died.  I was sitting at the piano playing the first movement, practicing for a recital when the call came and I heard the gasp after my father answered the phone and spoke to his sister and the sob that followed when he handed the phone to my mother. I ran upstairs to my room and cried for an hour. It was the first time I knew someone who had died.  I was 14.  When I hear the song, I feel it like it was yesterday and all the emotion it carries.  Oddly enough, hearing the 3rd movement of ‘Moonlight Sonata’ evokes a happy memory of my piano teacher who was an accomplished musician and could play the challenging 3rd movement with panache.

 

Today, music did a number on me again.  I read in the news this morning that Bent Fabricius-Bjerre had died at the age of 95.  He was known to the world as “Bent Fabric” and he composed an instrumental song called ‘Alley Cat’ that in 1962 actually made it to the top ten list of pop songs in the US.  When I saw the news, I thought to myself, “Who’s he?” and I read the article mentioning the song’s popularity, but it wasn’t until I clicked on a link to a recording of the song that I became an emotional wreck.  I listened and forgotten childhood memories came flooding back.  I owned that record, even though it was a hit years before I was born.  My parents (probably my mom) bought me a Kenner Close ‘n Play phonograph when I was 5 or 6 and I played ‘Alley Cat’ nonstop, much to the annoyance of my siblings.  In the wake of these resurrected memories, I recalled that there was a piano in the house, that neither of my parents had ever played but I did, after all, use to practice my music lessons.  Holiday gatherings always had music playing on the Hi-Fi and my own tradition of playing music while decorating the tree was born there.  My love of music has deeper roots than I ever realized.  I took piano lessons. I sang in the school choir. I learned history and math and English to music (and I am forever grateful, Schoolhouse Rock). I can quote a song lyric in just about any conversation and it all started with a record player. It hit me like a ton of bricks that my parents, for all their faults, gave me this gift because they loved music too. 

 

This revelation is late in coming, probably too late, to offer any kind of gratitude.  My father has been gone for 15 years and my mother, who recently turned 87, is lost to senile dementia.  But I can rejoice in sharing the love of music with my own children.  Each of them was forced to take music lessons for a minimum of two years.  Three out of four continued longer than that.  And while only one continues to play her instrument regularly, the others have an abiding appreciation for music and a rich library of songs (from Elvis Presley to the soundtrack of Hamilton) that they listen to regularly.  To hear one of my boys singing along to a song that was popular 20 years before he was even a sparkle in my eye makes me elated to no end. On a family trip to Ohio to go to a roller coaster park, *they* (my children) asked to take a detour to Cleveland to see the Rock ‘n Roll Hall of Fame.  I may have done my parents proud, if only they knew. 

 

RIP, Mr. Fabricius-Bjerre.  Thanks for the memories.