Merry Christmas from the Iris Garden
When God made music: Genesis
chapter 1
20 And God said, Let the waters bring
forth abundantly the moving creature that hath life, and fowl that may fly
above the earth in the open firmament of heaven.
21 And God created great whales, and
every living creature that moveth, which the waters brought forth abundantly,
after their kind, and every winged fowl after his kind: and God saw that it was
good.
22 And God blessed them, saying, Be
fruitful, and multiply, and fill the waters in the seas, and let fowl multiply
in the earth.
23 And the evening and the morning were
the fifth day.
Then on the fifth day,
there were whale songs and bird songs and lots of other bleeps and chirps and
clicking, melodies and rhythm, all glorious sounds on the planet earth.
I don’t know. He
doesn’t look like much of a musician to me.
Hey, but there’s proof:
Whale sheet music
@ hmmc.org
What’s your favorite bird song? I think mine is the sparrow.
In December of 1952, Mom married Lloyd Bandy. We moved from Gramma’s house in Fudgetown to
Bandyville. I was six and a half year
old and changed schools from Ferges to Bandyville at Christmas time in the
first grade. They wouldn’t let me start
school the year before because I wouldn’t be six until May, time for school to
be out. The neatest thing about Pop’s
house was an old upright piano. I loved
to plink on the keys and make sounds come out.
It was the neatest thing, black and white keys that produced pretty musical
sounds. (Nothing like that at Gramma’s,
although I was slightly aware of the piano at Ferges Free Methodist Church.)
I never got a picture of that old upright, but this
pretty much looks like it. Tall, very
tall.
Fairly soon, after we moved in, the piano got moved
out. At six years old, I didn’t
understand.
There was another old upright piano in the big room at
Bandyville School. Bandyville School had
two rooms: the little room, grades 1-4
and the big room, grades 5-8. There were
three huge sliding doors that separated the big room from the little room. Bandyville School had two teachers, Mrs. Alma
Sanders in the little room and Mrs. Estelle Travelstead in the big room. If either one was sick or out for the day,
the big sliding doors were opened and the one on duty did all eight grades’ lessons
for the day.
The best time of the week was on Friday afternoon. The big sliding doors were pushed back and we
were all one room. We had “club meeting”
on Friday afternoons. Mrs. Travelstead
played the piano. She’d always start
with “Hail, hail the gang’s all here. . .”
And we all knew all the
words.
Then she had a little brown song book:
It was an ‘educational edition’ per the front cover. This ALL-AMERICAN SONG BOOK was published as “A
Community song book, especially for schools, homes, clubs and community singing.”
We sort of had art and music combined while we were having ‘club meeting.’ We also made things and we played games. Games that had questions and answers and
such.
Row, Row, Row Your Boat was always sung in rounds. Mrs. Travelstead would divide us into two or
three groups. One group would start the
song. Then the second group would come
in with the first words, Row, Row, Row when the first group got to the Gently.
. . The third group would start Row, Row,
Row when the second group got to Gently . . .
The first group would be on Merrily, Merrily, Merrily. . . We had three groups singing the same song
but, well, it was interesting. You might
wonder what we learned from that, but I’m sure we learned something. (Discipline, timing, working together,
getting it done. . . . )
I guess I had a pretty obvious interest in the music part
of club meeting. Mrs. Travelstead
understood when I said I’d like to learn to play that piano. I think it was seventh grade. She talked to my mother and volunteered to
give me piano lessons at school once a week for thirty minutes. But, I would have to practice. And I had no piano to practice at home. The closest piano was that old upright across
the field and across the road in the big room at Bandyville School. Uncle Paul Youngblood, Pop’s brother-in-law,
was the janitor at Bandyville School.
Uncle Paul volunteered that he could do his work in the basement every
day when school was over. That way I’d
be able to stay after school and practice upstairs. Then Uncle Paul would clean upstairs after I was done. So Mom said, “Okay” and that if I would learn
to play the piano that she’d find a way to buy me one. Mom worked at Smoler’s Dress Factory in the
repair department.
So Mrs. Travelstead did what she said and I did study the
music and learn to read some and play on the keys. And Uncle Paul did what he
said he would do, too. And by the end of
eighth grade I was playing some simple songs.
After graduation, Mom took me into town to Mrs. Yuill’s
Baldwin Piano and Organ Studio. She
asked about getting me signed up for piano lessons. Mrs. Yuill opened the store on 111 West
Cherry St in Herrin in 1937. She had pianos
and organs and lots of music books and sheet music on the racks. She had studied at SIU and was a music
teacher, a business owner/manager and she also composed music.
I thought Mrs. Yuill’s was the neatest place I’d ever
been. You can see the two doors with
windows on the back wall in a 1956 photo below.
The door on the left was my class room.
And that piano just behind the second grand is called an Acrosonic
spinet piano. (Just FYI and important to
know.) Oh, see the guitar, she sold
guitars too.
http://www.baldwinofherrin.com/about-us/
So, at the time, all her piano teachers were booked
up. Mom agreed to let me learn from Mr.
Fred Sears who came over from Carterville to teach guitar at Mrs. Yuill’s. She said Mr. Sears could teach me how to read
music and play the piano even though he was a guitar man, so to speak. So he did.
I had a regular Grade 1 Piano learner’s book. (I can’t show you a
picture of it because I gave it to a kid I knew who wanted to take piano
lessons.) Mr. Sears taught me how to
read the upper and lower music notes and play them as written. AND then I had a Mr. Sears wire bound
book. He’d write out the songs and as I
learned them, he would write in some more.
This is what it looked like.
Hard to see but it says Doris Grant, RR1 Box 543, Herrin,
Illinois. It’s come apart at the wire as
I have kept it and used it all my life.
Here’s what one of my first songs looked like. Yeah! A
Guitar Boogie.
Learned that. Reading
melody on the treble and filling in with left hand chords. Guitar chords on the piano sounded pretty
decent. Notice across the bottom,
another version of the Guitar Boogie.
After I learned the first version, I had to learn to play it all the way
through according to the version at the bottom.
What I learned there was rhythm, the importance of keeping the
beat. Hardest lesson is when you make a mistake;
you better just keep on going. If you
think you can go back and fix it, you are already out of rhythm. (That might be a lesson for life too. Huh?)
Then
we get on to the next one. Huh, real
Boogie Woogie. This one’s Number One. Boogie Woogie #1.
Then there’s #2
Now that is some serious Boogie. . .
By Christmas of my Freshman year in high school, Mom had
saved up the money to buy the piano. It
was a Baldwin Acrosonic Spinet piano in fruitwood. I don’t know how she did it. But she did what she said, too.
And Christmas found me looking like this.
The writing on this photo is two of the songs I’d
learned.
The first was a popular Johnny
Cash version. See the words below:
The other is an old bluegrass
gospel favorite done by the Louvin Brothers and later by Connie Smith:
So I learned to play the piano. I also learned to play the organ and
eventually had my own Baldwin organ.
I also had a keyboard.
That fantastic old upright against the wall belonged to
Maud Hawn in Fudgetown. Burl (Mr. Hawn)
told me they had it shipped from Chicago on the train and got it off the train
by Mr. Harris’s which was where the railroad crosses what is now Stotlar Road
on the east side of Bandyville. How I
got Maud’s piano is another story, but it had the most fabulous sound board and
I loved it almost as much as my spinet.
Mrs. Flossine Carlisle was my friend Clara’s mother. She was another very influential person in my
life. I called her, Mommie
Carlisle. She had a beautiful picture of
a young woman playing a piano always hanging in her living room above her piano. I loved that picture. So when Gary and I decided to remodel and
move to his Christopher house, I went ebay shopping and came up with a print I
liked. I got it matted and framed and
hung in the newly redone living room at Christopher in 2005.
I’ve never felt that I'm a ‘born’ piano player. I was actually ‘born’ to be a nurse and God
helped me be/do that first of all. But I
love music and I learned to play. I also
tried the accordion, the harmonica and a guitar, but I’d better stick to pianos
and organs. However, I am still thinking
about a set of drums. The most exciting
concert I ever attended was at the Atlanta Georgia Symphony and it was all
based on percussion. I’ve been blessed
to play at weddings, funerals, nursing homes and in almost every church I’ve
ever been. At our Christopher church I had a young girls choir group. What fun, what blessings ! I love playing piano with
others on guitars and drums.
My greatest blessing is to be able to provide music in His worship service for congregational singing or a special song or during prayer
time or just whatever.
I know I’m not
the best. I’ve heard lots of musicians
who are way better than me. I also know
that all He expects of me is that I do my best, and He will always bless
it.
I guess you could say, “I saw a man
and He set me free.”
I’m so glad God gave us music.
I’m so glad He did what He did on the fifth
day.
I’m looking forward to the
future.
♫ ♫ ♫ ♫ ♫ ♫ ♫ ♫ ♫
I think there might be a harp
for me to play over there.
Copyright - 2014 - Doris Grant Frey
