My mother was not the only one who brought music into my life. My father also played a major role.
Daddy had a natural ear for music, and he loved to sing and play guitar. He plunked out some mean rhythm and blues on those resonant strings, and his woeful ballads would sometimes take us dancing and twirling on the dark side of the moon.
Daddy also loved to sing songs from the Jesus Christ Superstar album that he once bought Mama, probably as a token of apology for one of his many drunken spells. Daddy wasn’t Catholic like Mama, but he loved the rock and roll music on that album. It was a like a peace offering in a way, a place of common ground where he and Mama could meet or make up after a row.
I loved to hear Daddy sing. His deep voice was so different from Mama’s, yet he had quite a range. It always fascinated me when he used his higher falsetto voice, and like Mama, would make it lilt or cry. Even if he had our audience, there were times when Daddy would get lost in his own music and forget we were there. At these times we would sit mesmerized and invisible at his feet, dizzy from the pungent scent of the heavy Brute cologne that he wore to cover the sweet and sour smell of the Thunderbird Wine on his breath. We would swoon with the wordless scats, rumbling hums, and lilting cries that would ride his Adam’s Apple.
Daddy’s sense of rhythm was keen and hypnotic. I remember watching him tap out rhythms on the coffee table with his colored pencils. He used them to draw out the Indian patterns and designs for his bead work. Making Native American crafts was Daddy’s hobby. He made necklaces, breastplates, headdresses, tomahawks, peace pipes, leather fringe coats and moccasins, which could often be seen on his feet, tapping in rhythm to his own inner music.
Sometimes, he would entertain us with a pulsating round of ham-bone now and then that would send us reeling with laughter, and tender, pink skin as we tried to imitate his rapid thigh-to-chest hand movements.
I’m sure that Daddy got his musical talents from his mother, my Grammie Lee. Grammie was one of the most musical people I knew. She not only sang and danced all the time, but she played a lot of fun instruments too. Grammie played guitars, mandolins, organ keyboard pianos, harmonicas, mouth harps, and even spoons. She learned how to do ham-bone too, and got to be pretty good at it. She and Daddy used to really get going at times! Watching them suck, spit, and blow air through their pursed lips, and use their hands to strike out rhythms on their thighs and chests was like watching a spirited episode of Hee-Haw, or being transported through time to one of the Texas farms of Grammie’s childhood.
“You have a lyrical way of writing. Very inspirational and touching.
~ Cindy”
Left by Administrator on January 3rd, 2007