The Family that Sings Together...

   My friends and I were laughing the other day, that the idyllic days of families 'singing around the piano', are gone…if they ever existed.  We decided that maybe those were only staged in Hollywood, years ago, as an indictment on the modern family of how far we have fallen from the ‘good ol days’.  And then I remembered…

(Insert Dream Sequence Music Here)

   My family REALLY stood around the piano and sang!  In fact, we didn’t even need a piano to stand around and sing.  We sang in the car, we sang in the livingroom, we sang in church, we sang in my grandparents’ kitchen…we sang a lot!

   My dad was definitely the leader of the group, very musically inclined; he still to this day can pick up any stringed instrument and within a few days can play it!  He also plays the piano, by ear, and so between him and my oldest brother on the bass guitar, we even had a band!  Our group was rounded out with my mother as lead singer.  Oh, and I failed to mention that my other brother and I were the breakout stars of the group.  We were just like Donnie and Marie ….except that they were Mormon and we were Baptist…and they probably sold a few more records than we did…I meant, they actually made records and sold them…………….We BOUGHT records and played them, but other than that, we were just like Donnie and Marie.

   Those are precious times to think back on.  We still sing together occasionally, not nearly enough.  There was a lot of laughter and silliness had around that old upright…and then Pap would quietly pull off his belt and lay it on top of the piano….that’s when we would know, “Things just got serious.”  You cannot imagine the sweet melodies that my brother and I could produce at that point…