Ahh! Music – the ‘Elixir of Life’

Rick Wimer

This morning, I happened to tune in a song from my past on the internet.  It was Neil Diamond “Song, Sung, Blue. While listening, my mind exploded with all of the music and memories that I virtually grew up with starting in my youth from about seven years of age. Musical memories from then to today that may have had an effect on how I lived my life or what I was doing at one particular time or another.

In the beginning

My musical adventure actually starts when I was learning how to play an old decrepit family trumpet that I found rummaging around in our home in Ute. The first and only song I ever tried to learn to play, or at least practice a lot was “Old Susanna.” In the end, I hated it and the constant tedious hours of practice dimmed all desire to learn another musical instrument, ever.

However, I was fascinated with many songs then. I had a hero back then, Roy Rogers. When I played cowboys and robbers, and sometime Indians, I was most often Roy, with an occasional nod to Gene Autry, both who claimed to be “King of the Cowboys.” I’m sure I didn’t get into their music until we moved to Storm Lake in 1954.  We didn’t have a television.  We had a big old Philco radio that sat in the living room in our home on West Third. (Now a parking lot at BVU.)

In the evenings, I would lay down on the floor, next to my mom or dad in a rocking chair and listen to a variety of radio programs: Tommy Dorsey, Fibber McGee and Molly, Roy Rogers, Gene Autry, Gunsmoke, Dragnet, Stella Dallas and many more. I’m sure it was there that I heard the first Gene Autry song “I’m Back in the Saddle Again” and Roy’s “Happy Trails to You.”

I can still hear Bing Crosby singing “White Christmas.” Seems I would lay there for hours. And then there was “a one and a two and a three” as Lawrence Welk opened his show along with the melodic tones of Myron Floren’s accordion.

Our first TV set

Fast forward to our second home on Hudson Street and our first TV set. Not only was it the news entrée to Chet Huntley and David Brinkley, Walter Cronkite and even Howdy Doody, until it went off the air in 1971. I don’t remember in the late 50s a Sunday night that I missed watching the Ed Sullivan Show. It was the introduction not only to the puppet Topo Gigio, but to some of the greatest music artistry of all times: Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, The Kingston Trio, The Association, Nat King Cole, Elvis Presley, Harry Belafonte, Tony Bennett, (I remember that they would only show Elvis from the waste up, because of the undulating of his hips) “Love Me Tender,” The Beatles, Connie Francis, Bobby Darin, James Brown, Janis Joplin, The Supremes, Tom Jones, Chubby Checker, Nancy Sinatra, The Mamas and Papas, Johnny Mathis, the Everly Brothers, Andy Williams and “Moon River,”  Herb Alpert and oh so many, many more.

As I listed each of them, a song of theirs popped into my ears. What a trip that was. “You Ain’t Nothin’ but a Hound Dog!” At St. Mary’s I always aspired, with my super soprano voice (it was much better than the girls of my class), to become a tenor like Fr. McFadden who would visit our classroom occasionally and sing an old Irish lullaby like “Danny Boy” each time. He was amazing and when my voice finally changed, it definitely was not tenor, more like a baritone. Bummer. I recall a period of time as a soprano, taking a shower at our Hudson Street home, with the window facing the sidewalk wide open and resonating loudly “Chances Are” by Johnny Mathis; thinking that anyone passing by would be impressed by my high voice. I also recall a gathering at the Boy Scout cabin at Prairie Gold Scout Camp at Lake Okoboji when we were all gathered around the fire place singing “Home on the Range” and my soprano voice made the harmony of it a beautiful rendition. 

High school days

My high school days were rife with musicality. From singing Adeste Fidelis behind the curtain at St. Mary’s in the choir on Christmas Eve; or going door to door Christmas caroling on the streets of Storm Lake; or belting out “Roadways” on our boy’s double quartet; a love song “The stars shine above you, so linger awhile. They whisper I love you, so linger awhile” sung to Mary Ellen George in a Sr. Dominica production. I was to sing it to her again at our 55th high school reunion; dancing with Sarah Main at the Chautauqua Park Shelter House to “April Love” by Pat Boone.

And of course, the Cobb Sunday night sock hops and reliving it all again in an article I wrote after returning there after a 60-year absence and the great live music and awesome memories from back in the early 60s when as teenagers we usually spent Sunday night at the Cobblestone Ballroom dancing our hearts away, recently, stepping on and feeling that familiar surface of the dance floor for the first time in at least 60 years.

Hearing live 60s music by the Expressions, emanating from the same stage where The Rumbles and Beach Boys played. Feeling the beat of the music in every fiber of your body, whether sitting, standing or dancing. Calling a dear old dancing partner classmate in Des Moines with music blaring in the background and asking her to dance and hearing her response. Joining other couples on the floor trying to recall how we danced the Jitterbug back then. Finally, attempting it and getting from the waist up, head, arms and shoulders in rhythm but significantly lacking or unable to perform and missing out on the footwork. Having an uncontrollable smile on your face the whole night long that still remained there at home later. Waking up at 3 a.m. hearing the Kingston Trio singing “Hang down your head Tom Dooley.” Finally, reliving each of these feelings' actions, and sounds as I write this; and as I read it now.

Oh say can you see

Ahh! Music — the “Elixir of Life.” As a kid, both in Ute and Storm Lake, I was always and quite frankly still am a great fan of the Star-Spangled Banner, our National Anthem. My first exposure was most assuredly in the Ute Theater at the beginning of every movie. I recall getting goosebumps almost every time I heard it. I felt the same way when it used to be played at the closing of television at the end of the broadcast day. I goose bumped while in the Air Force at a game between the Washington Senators and the New York Yankees in the Mantle/ Maris era and years later at my first of many Indy Colts games. I may be a bit hokey, but I have always found military music to be inspiring. 

Marching at events in the Air Force to not only the music, the sound of a single footstep by 50 Airmen as we passed the reviewing stand always gave me chills. The distant sound of Taps ending a fallen soldier’s service. “Day is done, gone the sun. From the lake, from the hills, from the sky. All is well, safely rest God is nigh”! Wow!

Kenny, John, Neil

Singing after that was singing to radio tunes, either in the car or at home with my three daughters, Anne, Heather and Jessica. In 1981 we moved into our home in Indianapolis.  Those days my favorites popular singers were Kenny Rogers, John Denver and Neil Diamond. I would be in the family room on my Lifecyle riding away with a portable radio and head phones, singing aloud to my heart’s content. When we took family trips anywhere, I would have, Kenny, John or Neil; even Johnny Mathis or the Kingston Trio tapes blaring and singing with them over and over and over again. 

In retrospect, I must  and was told by them much later in life, that I was driving my daughters crazy with all the repetitious playing and my singing. Amazingly and ironically, a decade or so later, visiting my daughter Heather and her family in Texas, as she was fixing breakfast one morning, she was lightly singing “Country Roads” by John Denver. I had a moment of inward chuckling.

The following list, from the late 50s through the 70s, in no particular order, are performers and their songs that have always taken me on a trip down memory lane. What do they do for you? Frank Sinatra “My Way,” Pat Boone “April Love,” The Guess Who “American Woman,” The Mamas and the Papas “Monday, Monday,” John Denver “Country Roads/Rocky Mountain High/ Annie’s Song,” Roger Miller “King of the Road,” The Kingston Trio “Tom Dooley,” Petula Clark “I Know a Place,” Tony Bennet “I Left My Heart in San Francisco,” Peter Paul and Mary “500 Miles/Tell it on a Mountain/If I had a Hammer,” Chubby Checker “The Twist/Let’s Twist Again,” Vickie Lawrence “The Night the Lights went out in Georgia,” Beach Boys “Sloop John B/ California Girls,” Righteous Brothers “You’ve Lost the Lovin Feeling/Unchained Melody,” Johnny Mathis “Chances Are,” Kenny Rogers “Lady/Through the Years/She Believes in Me,” The Village People “YMCA,” Sonny and Cher “I got you Babe,” Otis Redding “Sittin’ on the Dock of the Bay, Big Bopper “Chantilly Lace,” Buddy Holly “Every Day,” Dionne Warwick “Do You Know the Way to San Jose,” The Supremes “You Can’t Hurry Love,” The Righteous Brothers “(You’re My) Soul and Inspiration,” The Guess Who “These Eyes,” Jim Croce “Time in a Bottle,” Jose Feliciano “Light My Fire,” The Vogues “Turn Around, Look at Me,” Barry Manilow “Mandy,” Cher “Bang Bang,” Isaac Hayes “Theme from Shaft,” Helen Reddy “I am Woman” and of course, Elvis Presley “Memories.”

I’m sure at age 81, my musical memories are quite different from yours. But what a story they tell for all of us. Sweet dreams!