My father was a music lover. He was also a musician, having played violin since he was a young boy. I suppose that is where I received my love of music.
I remember when I bought an acoustic guitar back in the early 1970s. Those were tense times for my father and me, as I had just graduated from high school, was living at home while I went to college, and was (heaven forbid) letting my hair grow.
However, I remember him asking me on occasion if I had learned to play the guitar yet. He continued to ask me about the guitar for the next decade or so.
Unfortunately, at the time I was too wrapped up in the drama of my own life to realize that my Dad wanted us to make music together. I realize now just how special that would have been. And though years later - when I had my own son and my father was retired - we did make amends and become much closer, I realize that may have happened earlier had I learned to play the guitar.
I did a little bit of "reaching out" of my own.
My father despised the music I liked. This was very frustrating because I knew at the core of much of the music I enjoyed was a very important common denominator: melody. Unfortunately, my father could not get past either the electric guitars or the long hair of the musicians.
Interestingly enough, I liked many of the older songs that my father enjoyed. Many of those tunes were "pop standards" - songs that had become well-known and endured the test of time. The melodies were impeccable and the lyrics typically very efficient and tight. Many of the deceptively simple rhyming patterns were also very clever and witty. The songwriters who produced many of the pop standards (Irving Berlin, George Gershwin, Sammy Cahn, Cole Porter, et al.) completely embraced the beauty of "less is more." Those pop standards were the songs that got my father to put down his newspaper, jump out of his chair, and quickly walk to the corner of the living room and get his violin out.
In 1973 I was very happy when I heard that a favorite singer of mine, Harry Nilsson, was going to release an album of pop standards. I bought the record the week that it was released. I was pleased that Nilsson did not try to do "too much" with the songs, but instead treated them with respect. I knew fairly quickly that Harry Nilsson's album "A Little Touch Of Schmilsson In The Night" might be the album that would bridge the gap between my father and me.
I remember the first few times that I played the album on the family stereo, Dad didn't say anything. It was my mother - who had already secretly confided in me that she liked a few Beatles songs, including "Something" "Here Comes The Sun" and "Golden Slumbers" from Abbey Road - who said "Who is this, Kevin?" I of course responded loud enough for my father to hear: "This is one of my favorite singers, Harry Nilsson, singing some old songs."
A few days later I saw my Dad looking at the record jacket and, much to my delight, recognizing some of the old-timers who had worked on the album. Most notably, Gordon Jenkins, an arranger, composer and pianist who Dad had always admired. That was the clincher, Dad knew the songs, and he recognized Jenkins and some of the musicians.
I made Dad a tape of the album and the rest is father and son musical history.
Dad played the album all of the time, and years later when I would stop by and visit, he would either just play the album, or ask me if I wanted to hear a "little Schmillson" (that's what he called). I think that he came to see the album the same way that I did - as a bridge between our mutual, but somewhat disparate, love of music.
So today, January 31st, 2010, on the 19th anniversary of my father's death, I would like to play a song for him from that album.
There were three or four songs that he really enjoyed, and of those several tunes, this one was my favorite. It seems only fitting that I select the one song that truly bridged the gap. And as you will soon hear, that bridge was constructed from the common denominator that I mentioned above: melody.
An absolutely gorgeous melody as a matter of fact.
Please listen:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GQD4uRZ51ng
WHAT'LL I DO
(Irving Berlin)
Gone is the romance that was so divine.
'Tis broken and cannot be mended.
You must go your way,
And I must go mine.
But now that our love dreams have ended...
What'll I do
When you are far away
And I am blue
What'll I do?
What'll I do?
When I am wond'ring who
Is kissing you
What'll I do?
What'll I do with just a photograph
To tell my troubles to?
When I'm alone
With only dreams of you
That won't come true
What'll I do?
JANUARY 31, 1991
I speak directly into your ear
and your head twitches, then pivots,
your mouth gaping as if surprised.
But there are no surprises here.
You are childlike and helpless
so I kiss you. Your cheek is whiskered
and warm, your skin a thin casing
barely holding the heat and bones
that want so badly to leave.
As you focus above me, staring
at something I cannot yet see,
I tell you exactly what I am doing.
More for my benefit than yours.
To excuse this invasion of privacy.
Death seems like a formality now.
It is the dying that I'll remember.
Having never been this close
You move further away.
"my dad's dad was gone
.before i could play him my songs
.if he was here, he'd play 'em with me"
.(andy smith, "grand and broadway")
.
and your head twitches, then pivots,
your mouth gaping as if surprised.
But there are no surprises here.
You are childlike and helpless
so I kiss you. Your cheek is whiskered
and warm, your skin a thin casing
barely holding the heat and bones
that want so badly to leave.
As you focus above me, staring
at something I cannot yet see,
I tell you exactly what I am doing.
More for my benefit than yours.
To excuse this invasion of privacy.
Death seems like a formality now.
It is the dying that I'll remember.
Having never been this close
You move further away.
"my dad's dad was gone
.before i could play him my songs
.if he was here, he'd play 'em with me"
.(andy smith, "grand and broadway")
.
