Music in my soul
Music is good for the soul. My daddy was born in Sevier County, Tennessee at the foothills of the Great Smokey Mountains.
My mom was born in New York City to parents who were performers. Grandpa was in Vaudeville and Grandma was a dancer with the Ziegfeld Follies. I was born at an Air Force Base Hospital near Panama City, Florida, but grew up in many different places.
But this is not about my family history. I’ve written about that before. This is about music and how it has influenced my life from a very early age. I have a picture of my dad sitting outside at the old Emert homeplace. He’s about fifteen and holding a guitar. His face has a look of pure unadulterated happiness. He told me years ago that he learned to play that guitar by teaching himself. He played by ear, no lessons like so many youngsters in the mountains. In truth, he had such an ear for music and sounds that he could play any musical instrument, string, wood, horns, pianos. It was amazing.
Dad had seven brothers with five of them being able to play musical instruments, mainly stringed like guitars, mandolins, and fiddles. They’d get together when Dad came home on leave with their various musical instruments in hand to play some mountain music. Listening to that music as I sat on the floor near Grandma Emert’s old Warm Morning wood stove on a inter evening is one of my favorite memories.
The music was good old foot stomping music like “Wildwood Flower” or just these brothers jamming to whatever creation of their own music. When I think back on it, they were just so good, so talented. There were also four girls in the family. One played the guitar, but everyone in that family could sing and harmonize. It was when I was around seven or eightyears-old when My Great Uncle Butler taught me how to “Buck” dance. Buck dancing is a lot like tap dancing except different. I think it is a little bit of doing the Highland Fling and Irish dancing like Riverdance. Scottish and Irish settled that area, so it makes sense.
After Daddy had passed and Mom moved in with us, she told me she loved Buck dancing. At reunions, we’d dance together sometimes. She was good. One of my proudest moments — even though I was an adult with adult children — she told me I should have tried out for Riverdance in my younger days. She was my mother and thought all her children were super talented. No, I wasn’t that good, but it still made my day when she said it. Mom’s favorite music was orchestral. She loved Strauss Waltzes and would twirl around the room when she played her records.
If we were visiting my grandparents in New = York City and later Florida, my grandma and grandpa would dance together to the waltzes. I just thought it was so beautiful. I’d pretend I had a partner. Daddy always said he wasn’t a dancer, but on the night my parents met he saw the young female Marines were unescorted and he offered to escort them to the USO Dance.
He stood on the sidelines at that dance alone until the emcee finally announced that anyone who got the young lieutenant to dance would win five dollars. My future father watched my mom as she came up to him. Guess who won the five dollars? My future= parents were married three weeks after mom won that five dollar bill. They were together for 67 years.
Love at first sight is real. And Daddy could dance. When I became a teen, my taste in music changed. Oh, I still loved old-fashioned country music, but it took a back seat to The Four Tops, The Beach Boys, and Ray Charles among others of that era. I later loved Pink Floyd and Freddy Mercury.
The Beatles changed the world of music. They looked different and had a unique sound. Their music told stories like old mountain music, but it was a far cry from mountain or country music. They came to the US from England and performed on Ed Sullivan. That opened doors for them and so many others. By the time I was in college, their music was part of my soul.
The paved the way for the Doors, Pink Floyd, Freddie Mercury and so many others.
“Imagine,” by John Lennon is my favorite song of all time. In the song, he wrote, “You might say I’m a dreamer, but I’m not the only one. I hope some day you’ll join us and the world will live as one.
He had hope for the world with his words.