It's a cloudy, cool Fall morning in Tennessee and I love this time of
year. Brings memories abounding, swirling around inside my head and
heart, to finally come out, one by one, as a remembrance. Ya'know,
there is no sound that spurs the old music memory more than an upright
piano. In my memory they were always a little out of tune, and some of
the keys might stick, the covering on the white keys might have a chip
or two and occasionally a mouse might build a nest on the inner workings
causing one of the pedals to stick a little, the patina of the finish
had aged to the point where the old wood was darkened far beyond the
original intent of the builders...but, it was the sound of our youth and
you gotta love it. The old upright at our church, The New Hope Baptist
Church, on Highway CC in Polk County, Missouri, really took a beating
because, of course, in the summer time there was no air conditioning
except window fans, and in the winter there was only heat on the
Wednesday night prayer meeting and Sunday morning Sunday School and
Preaching. Other times the old building would get about as cold as the
outside air, what with absolutely no insulation and only the wood stove
sitting in the middle of the room, burning up to the people close to it
and still freezing those in back. Everyone knows what changes in
temperatures does to any musical instrument, but our old church piano
would only get tuned about once a year, sometime around the Christmas
Pageant. Our piano player probably didn't know the difference in tonal
quality, she being a lady about 80 years old who would pound on the keys
and pedals with such force and enthusiasm that the old floor under the
piano would shake and quiver, she going past the key that was stuck and
the pedal that wouldn’t work right as if she were playing a Grand Piano
in concert. The original church building was a wooden structure of
unknown origin, but probably went back to the mid 1800’s from the looks
of the old wood. This is the building that sticks in my memory, not the
newer building that our family helped to build when I was about 16, and
this is the building that had the old wooden country church sound that I
love. The old wood church, and the old piano that probably went back
to the 1800’s also, was lodged in my memory bank and would have been the
first time I sang in public, with my mother playing the upright behind
me, although the few families that we called our congregation was hardly
enough to be called “public”. Our old church had no PA Set, but there
was a wonderful neighbor woman who did not need amplification and would
sing specials where she would rare back and let loose with a piercing
voice that would bring the hair up on the back of your head, the piano
player pounding away in like fashion…and I suppose that could have
something to do with my loss of hearing in my present stage of
life….instead of the anti-aircraft guns we fired on board my Navy ship,
for this duo was so much louder!
The other upright piano, and
the subject of my painting, was Grandma Johnson’s old piano which sat in
the living room of the ancient farm house they lived in just across the
road from our house on the farm. It was at least as old as the one at
our country church, and I don’t remember it ever getting tuned, but it
was the one that I would have learned my first song on, at about six or
seven years old as Mom would play and have me follow along with the
sheet music she would stick up on the music shelf on the piano.
Thankfully, dad finally bought Mom a new piano (not an upright) to place
in the living room of our house across the road, or I would probably
have grown up trying to sing with a tone so flat or sharp as to be
unlistenable, as I tried to match the out of tune old upright. By the
time 12 years old rolled around I had moved on to my own accompaniment,
playing my new flat top Gretsch with the same kind of enthusiasm that
the nice old lady had played at the church upright piano of my earlier
experience. It was a good lesson…. Enthusiasm trumps really knowing how
to play in a learned style every time, and I have made a lifetime
career out of that one practice….play like you really mean it, don’t
worry about hitting every chord or note just right every time…remember,
you are an entertainer not a symphony player, dang it. Course, I
probably could have been a symphony player, if I had just had one of
them fancy suits and the little dressy formal ties, and if I could have
made any sense out of that chicken scratching on the lead sheets, and,
of course don’t forget this….”talent”. Yessir, but my options were
limited to a couple of old out of tune uprights, a flat top I could
play “Wildwood Flower” on and a voice that was suitable to calling hogs
or waking up old Mr. Brown sound asleep on the back pew of the church
house…yessir enthusiasm! You take the cards you are dealt in life, and
turn them into a full house, or at least a straight…ok, sometimes a
pair of 2’s, so learn to bluff! -Stan
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