Blanche Little had a metronome, and she was not afraid to use it. Between the ages of 6 & 13, I visited her home every Tuesday and Thursday afternoon at precisely 4:30 pm. Her midcentmod Seagoville house at the end of Cundiff Street was unlike any home I’d been in before or since. We were always early, my mother satisfying the role of chauffeur for her hopeful musical prodigy, so waiting in the seating area just inside Mrs. Little’s back door became a hobby of mine. Tammy, a school friend, would be there already, going to town on either the keys or the strings. We both took violin and piano from Mrs. Little. Tammy was way better at piano. Violin was my strong suit. If I try hard enough, I can see the Saltillo colored brick floors, feel the warm sun that lit up the kitchen, smell the fragrance of lemon polish and rosin – a smell that spray fragrances only wish they could capture. She had a poodle named Fritz, with heartworms, who was groomed in a continental clip as if he might run into a show ring at any moment. She bore a striking resemblance to Queen Elizabeth if Liz were into floral blouses and polyester slacks. Her home was full of fineries like formal China and Victorian furniture. Though I have walked down a path into a slightly out of focus water colored memory I don’t want to leave yet, this isn’t about the lure of old homes, old poodles, or music teachers whose recollection leads to sweet tears, but about how music changes everything.
I cut my teeth on Texas swing. Bob Wills was my father’s favorite. Just the other day, I was moving some furniture around and going through Daddy’s album collection, finding so much of Bob Wills and the Texas Playboys. Ted played just about all the instruments, but his middle finger “chop off” accident, I forget the particulars, ended his fiddling career. His father was a honkytonk fiddle player, you see. Why, would the family tradition die along with the tip of my father’s left 2nd finger? Soon we were dueting Faded Love together, Daddy on the organ and little Didi on the violin. Sure, Ray Price, The Sons of the Pioneers, and Jim Reeves were close seconds, but Bob’s hollerin always reigned supreme. I read the lyrics to Cherokee Maiden at his funeral.
My first record was a gifted 45 my Aunt Karen didn’t want anymore. Twelve years my senior, she was more into the Allman Brothers than the Archies at that point. Sugar, Sugar was right up my alley. While the act of finding the little yellow plastic thing that popped into the center of the record always proved to be a challenge, many afternoons were whiled away standing in front of my parents’ walnut console stereo with the red velvet panels on the front as I, with painstaking caution, placed the needle ever so gently onto the vinyl. There was an understanding that any screech or scratching noise would end in a forever stereo ban. Momma never recovered from the time she asked me to reinsert her Buddy Holly 8-track in that same stereo so she could listen to Peggy Sue again. I promise that I had nothing to do with the absolute carnivorous destruction that happened to that magnetic tape. Consider it a cautionary tale.
During my formative years, and after my father
decided to close his laundromat in downtown Seagoville, came the Taj Mahal of entertainment known as Ted’s Recreation Center. Pool tables, check. Pinball machines, back when there were only a metric ton of ball bearings and no digital junk, check. Foosball machines? Why yes, Bobby Boucher, we had those. The prehistoric predecessor to the microwave that cooked weird tasting miniature hamburgers called chuckwagons? We had that. A pong machine? Had that, too. But the pinnacle purchase everyone wanted, begged for, and championed, was the jukebox. My father took forever to buy one, concerned he would not recover from the investment. Around a month later, he proclaimed one song to have completely paid off the jukebox. To this day, I will not listen to Legs, Sharp Dressed Man, or even Gimme All Your Lovin. There is only one ZZ Top song for me, the one that made us all the money, in quarters. Just Got Paid, in my opinion, is the ultimate hardcore, southern rock anthem.
While there is a difference between music that forever changed you and what you consider your favorite songs, there are some selections that mark both categories for me. The first album I ever purchased with my own money, from Gibson’s on Hall Street, was the KISS Alive II album that featured Beth. I’ve been obsessed with Bobbie Gentry’s Ode to Billy Joe for as long as I can remember, morphing into an obsession with Robby Benson after they made the movie of the same name. Tipping my hat again to Mrs. Little, I’m a Bach girl through and through. Minuets with harpsicords, The Well Tempered Clavier, and come on, Yo Yo Ma’s Cello Suites – that is the soundtrack to my soul. Honorable mentions go to anything Stevie Nicks penned during the Lindsay Buckingham years, Carole King’s So Far Away, and of course, Bob Wills, the man, the myth, the legend. To my father, who’s surely tickling the ivories from above, “I miss you darlin more and more every day/ like Heaven would miss the stars above/With every heartbeat I still think of you/And remember our faded love.”