Musical Memories

When I was a kid growing up, I never really thought about what my parents were like when they were younger, what they were interested in, and especially what they listened to when they were growing up. My dad when he was working around the house, would have the radio on WWDB, which in the ’80s consisted of talk radio and Sinatra. His brother (my uncle) would occasionally sit in the back yard and play harmonica.

My mom would listen to whatever the kids were listening to, although she had her own favorites, one of whom was Engelbert Humperdinck. She did have an appreciation for Robert Plant, in particular the EP he did of ’50s classics, The Honeydrippers: Volume One.

When I was in college, I was on a Big Band jazz kick, and I’d trade tapes with a kid down the hall. I’d give him punk tapes—Patti Smith, Dead Kennedys, and the compilation “Let Them Eat Jellybeans”, and he gave me Harry James, Tommy Dorsey, and others. I was home one weekend listening to one of the tapes, and my mom heard it and said, “Oh, I saw him…” – growing up in New Jersey, she had seen a lot of the Big Bands that came through , and I had never known.

My dad had a brother who died when I was around 2 years old, so I never knew him. I had always heard that he played the violin, and had a small group that played out, but that was long before my time. One day going through a pile of papers from my parents’ house, I came across some old sheet music. Included in the music were a couple of manuscript books with songs handwritten in the books. One of them had my uncle’s name written on the front (another uncle). Exactly the same type of manuscript books that I’ve used in bands. The books contain a lot of polkas and czardas, which would have been popular in Western Pennsylvania among the mostly eastern European immigrants and their descendants. But the books also contain popular songs such as My Blue Heaven, Stairway to the Stars, A Gal in Calico, The Hut Sut Song, and Sugar Blues.

Were these the songs my uncle played on gigs? When did he play them? After he came back from WWII? The 1950s? 1960s? I don’t know, but I can imagine a small combo: violin, saxophone, probably accordion, maybe trombone, maybe drums, playing at a VFW Hall in Johnstown, or Altoona, maybe even Pittsburgh, mixing the polkas and czardas with the current pop hits.

I wish I had heard them.