Put another nickel in, in the Nickelodeon, all I want is having you and music, music, music by Teresa Brewer was a favourite song of my mother’s. She loved to sing.
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| Teresa Brewer |
This song she would sing in her happier
days. The songs she sang reflected her
moods.
Romantic:
Some enchanted evening; When I
fall in love; We seem like passing strangers now: Smoke gets in your eyes. In jolly mode: Jeepers, creepers, where did you get those
peepers? Daisy, Daisy; and Way down
upon the Sewanee River.
Every Sunday, one of my many aunts would
take a turn at making a meal and we’d all get together and have an extended
family bonding session. When it was my
mother’s turn to cook, out it would come as she busied herself in the kitchen, If I knew you were coming I’d ’ve baked a
cake.
When my father ran off with a tailoress who
worked in his bespoke outfitters on Clarkston Road Glasgow, she sang, I’m gonna wash that man right outa my hair. Although, she never did. She went on loving him for a long time after,
even to the extent of remembering her golden wedding anniversary long after he
had passed away.
My interest in music really began standing
in front of a table with a chest-high windy-uppy gramophone in by grandmother’s
house. On the middle of the discs were
labels picturing a sitting dog with its ear to the horn of a gramophone – His master’s voice printed below. One record was the well-known The Laughing Policeman by Charles Jolly;
and the other was Farmer Gyles, a jolly
old country gentleman. The melodies
are still in my mind even though I was only 5 or 6 years old at the time.
Another song was I can’t do my bally bottom button up by Ian Wallace, although I
mistook the mild expletive bally for belly with the result that for about
60-years I've been singing, I can’t do my
belly bottom button up. Aye, the
internet’s a wonderful thing.
Another mistake I made was with the words
to a song we sang for our pre-lunch prayer at primary school: Jesus
loves me yes I know, for the bigle tells me so.
At school, we had a daily – or was it weekly
– singing class. One of my favourites
was one about a lady who had one eye on
the pot and another up the chimney…A Miss Mathieson taught us this
song. She had a glass eye and when she
looked at you she had one eye on the pupil and another out the window. We had a good laugh about that.
Snatches of songs I enjoyed still come to
me: Green grow the rushes o; Who’ll buy my caller herring, they’re bonny fish and halesome fairin’ , Who’ll buy my caller herring new drawn frae the Forth; Nancy tickled my
fancy oh my darling Billy boy. That
last one conjured up all sorts of imaginings in our young minds.
One day, what I presume to have been a
student singing teacher came to our class.
I sat at the front along with the rest of the class singing doh, rae, me. At some point she gave me a penny for singing
in tune. It looked enormous in my
hand. She leaned over me and what I
recall vividly is her deep cleavage and pendulous breasts enclosed in a tight
sweater: teachers in those days didn't have cleavages.
At Passover, to end the twenty-four hour
fast, the family would gather at our home and my mother would cook Polish/Lithuanian
dishes like cholant, kugel, kneidlich and latkes. Bloated with food and drink
at the end of the meal, there would be a singing session while the nutcrackers
would go nuts on the almonds, walnuts, Brazils, hazels and cashews. My cousin Michael and I would invariably have
a of bottle of Palwin dessert wine in front of us from which we would fill our
glasses and drink till we were quite dizzy – with the approval of my wicked
uncles who encouraged us.
One song in particular sticks in my mind, Chad Gaya about a goat being sold in the
market. Recently, I heard a famous
chazzan singing the song on you tube.
His name is Moshe Oysher. Listen
to his beautiful voice if you ever get the chance.
Lastly, the real crooner to me wasn't Frank Sinatra or Dean Martin or Sammy Davis with their
flat, unmodulated, soporific voices, but Nat King Cole with his distinctive and
unmistakable vocals.
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| Moshe Oysher |
