Singing Paul
Chapter 1: When You Wish Upon an Organ
Five months ago, I sang at an open mic in the Napoleon Room at Club Café in Boston for the first time, and since then, I have been singing at open mics there on a semi-regular basis. In a blog post earlier this year, I mentioned that I had created a MS PowerPoint about a year before I retired in November 2024 called “Retiring Paul,” but what I did not mention at the time is that one of the many bullets on the page in “Retiring Paul” titled “Some things I’d like to do in Years 1–5…” is the word “Sing.” While my goal of singing in my retirement years was multi-faceted, I was quite certain that singing solo in a cabaret-like setting was going to be high on my list of priorities.
In the weeks leading up to and after my first open mic performance, I had a lot of time to reflect on my relationship with singing and music over the years, so it seemed fitting that singing, and in a greater sense my musical journey that led to singing at an open mic for the first time at 65 years old, should become another topic about which I should write. When I started to recount my many memories about my musical journey, I was flooded with a plethora of emotions that took me somewhat by surprise, hence the long delay in publishing a blog post in the last few months. Recently I got some clarity on the emotions I was experiencing, and it provided me with a better understanding of how to proceed with the first blog post about my relationship with singing and music in my earlier years, and some additional thoughts about writing subsequent posts about my relationship with singing and music throughout my adult years.
My first memories of singing come from Mrs. Crowley’s, which was a private pre-school and kindergarten in the town where I grew up. In the 1960s, kindergarten was not part of the public school system, so I attended Mrs. Crowley’s for both pre-school and kindergarten before entering first grade in 1966 in the public school system. Mrs. Crowley was a kind and patient woman, and I’m guessing she was in her early-to-mid 50s in the 1960s. The lone classroom was in the back of her house and there was a stairway down to her backyard where the kids played in good weather.
The program was only a half-day, and I have memories of various activities including learning how to count, listening to Mrs. Crowley read books, and singing songs in a group while Mrs. Crowley accompanied us on the piano. Whatever songs I learned at Mrs. Crowley’s I then sang in the kitchen of Mrs. Patenaude, who was my grandparents’ neighbor in the tenement building where they lived. Mrs. Patenaude and my grandmother always clapped, and Mrs. Patenaude gave me a nickel for every song I sang, which was the only time I’ve ever been paid for singing! I have a vague memory that “The Itsy Bitsy Spider” was part of my repertoire, but I continue to draw a blank on what other songs I sang in Mrs. Patenaude’s kitchen.
When I was in elementary school, my Aunt Betty bought a Hammond console organ and I was fascinated with the sound it made. Whenever I went to her house, she would let me sit at the organ and play the keys and try different organ stops. When I was in the second grade, my Aunt invited my parents and me to an organ concert that she was attending, and I was completely mesmerized by not only the sound the organ made but also watching the organist play with both hands on two keyboards as well as using two feet on the pedals. I’m fairly certain I must have pestered my parents about taking formal organ lessons, because soon after the concert, my parents asked my Aunt Betty (who was my father’s sister) for advice on how to proceed, and she in turn spoke with a man in the next town to us who had been teaching my cousin David how to play the accordion. The man recommended that I take accordion lessons for a year to learn the notes, keys, chords, tempos, etc., and based on my progress, my parents could decide whether to buy an organ for me.
In truth, I didn’t really have a specific interest in learning how to play the accordion, but if it meant I would eventually get to play the organ, then I figured it was worth it to just go along with the plan. Luckily, the accordion teacher had a kid-sized accordion I could borrow, and I learned the keys and chords quickly. Some of the pieces I learned were familiar tunes, but many were written for the specific purpose of learning keys and chords, so I became quickly bored. I also didn’t want anyone at school to know that I was taking accordion lessons for fear of being ridiculed since it was not exactly a cool choice for a kid and most people’s reference for accordion players was Myron Floren who played with the Lawrence Welk Orchestra, which my parents and grandparents watched faithfully every Saturday night.
After a year of accordion lessons, I began nagging my parents again about buying an organ, so my parents spoke to the organist at our church who recommended that I take piano lessons for 2–3 years to become more familiar with a keyboard that would more closely resemble that of an organ. The organist’s niece Mrs. Cochran was a graduate of the Boston Conservatory of Music and in addition to playing the piano, Mrs. Cochran played the organ at church for her uncle when he was on vacation. After speaking with her, my parents bought me a used piano from a family friend and I started taking piano lessons with Mrs. Cochran, who also lived in the same town as us. Sometimes when my mother dropped me off for my lesson, I could hear her Mrs. Cochran practicing from her driveway, and I was in complete awe of her concert pianist level of playing. In my mind, I was still very focused on learning to play the organ someday, but my time with Mrs. Cochran gave me a very deep appreciation for the abilities of pianists and a profound love of piano music of all genres.
While I understood that drills and scales were an essential component of keyboard training, I was mostly bored with the selection of music that Mrs. Cochran provided as part of my lessons. I longed to play something more recognizable with vocals I could sing along to, so I started poring through the old sheet music that my grandmother gave me since she no longer had a piano. My piano was in the basement of our house, and there was a vintage record cabinet next to it that played 78 RPM records that were made before vinyl was available. I loved listening and singing to the old songs, and eventually I started putting on variety shows in our basement with my sister and my cousins, and my relatives were forced to attend the performances when they came to our house on holidays.
When I was in the Third Grade, the elementary school music teacher Mr. McGuire announced that there would be a choral concert for all Third Graders in the High School Auditorium before Christmas, and because Mr. McGuire knew that I had been taking piano lessons for a few months, he asked me if I would like to play a piano solo at the concert. It was decided that I would play Deck the Halls, and Mr. McGuire came to my house to teach me how to play it at the concert. Mr. McGuire was kind and patient, and I don’t remember being nervous or scared to play in front of an audience of 350 people. My father was a man of few words, but I sensed he was proud of me and my mother told me that I had a gift similar to her Uncle who could play both the piano and the organ. She also told me that she had taken piano lessons when she was younger but she didn’t have the gift and it was a great source of sadness for her. No one ever commented about my singing good or bad, but I must admit I liked the attention I got from my music teacher as well as my family and friends because I played the piano.
In addition to the 78 RPM records in our basement, my father had what I considered to be a massive collection of LP/33 1/3 RPM albums in a cabinet in our living room. As the collection grew bigger, he decided to build a wall unit in the living room to house the TV, stereo, and all of his albums, and he put vertical dividers that allowed him to categorize the records into sections such as Christmas Music, Orchestral Music (including Navy Band music since he was in the Navy), Movie/Broadway musicals, Polka Music (my parents went ballroom dancing on Saturday nights), Easy Listening from the 1960s (like Ray Conniff Singers), and several Edith Piaf albums.
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My father worked Monday through Friday and until Noon on Saturdays, so one would have assumed that he would want to sleep in on Sundays, but instead he got up around 7 am, went into the Living Room and put on an album of his choice while he puttered around and made breakfast for everyone. Because most of his puttering was not confined to the living room, my father blasted the volume so he could hear the music all over the house, which made it very hard for anyone else to sleep past 7 am. My siblings and I teased him and complained, but over time I came to understand that listening to his music was deeply meaningful to him, and I in turn learned a lot about music from him.
With the money I earned from helping my brother mow lawns in the neighborhood, I started to buy 45 RPM singles and LP/33 1/3 RPM albums which I played in our basement. My first 45s were Three Dog Night/Joy to the World, Anne Murray/Snowbird, Elton John/Daniel and Lynne Anderson/I Never Promised You a Rose Garden. My first LP was actually a comedy album by Lily Tomlin called “This is a Recording” with Lily as Ernestine, the sassy telephone operator, after which I am reluctant to admit that I bought a few Partridge Family and Osmond Brothers albums. When I wasn’t listening to my records, I was listening to the local AM station that played a variety of pop and rock and roll. Unlike my father who simply listened to his music while he was doing something else, I sang along to the music I listened to even when I didn’t know all the lyrics. In addition to watching the singers and musicians on the Lawrence Welk show with my parents and grandparents, I enjoyed watching any show that featured singers, especially the Ed Sullivan show.
When I was in the Fourth Grade, the new music teacher Miss O’Leary started providing instrumental lessons to students who were interested. I really wanted to play the clarinet but my mother wouldn’t buy or rent a clarinet, so I had to choose from the limited inventory of school instruments that were left in the band room. Miss O’Leary suggested I choose the French horn, and although I had no idea what a French horn sounded like, I acquiesced. It was a very old instrument, had several dents in the brass and was heavy to carry for a skinny 4th grader, but I persevered. When I got to Middle School, Miss O’Leary was able to acquire an alto clarinet for me to play, which made me happy since it was one step closer to playing a regular clarinet, and it made my mother happy because it was free.
I finally bought a used clarinet with my own money when I was in junior high school, so in addition to playing in the band I also sang in the school choir which was comprised of both junior and senior high school students. Because my voice hadn’t changed yet, I sang the soprano line in every piece we performed. During one of the practice sessions, the music teacher/conductor Mr. Weiner ridiculed me in front of the entire choir saying “Oh for Christ’s sake Paul, just sing the tenor line and stop singing like a girl.” I was astonished when the girl standing next to me who was a high school senior and who also sang soprano clapped back at Mr. Weiner and told him that I was singing perfectly fine and that he should leave me alone. I was grateful for the unsolicited support, and while Mr. Weiner relented until my voice changed, I couldn’t help thinking that it was bad enough to be called any number of homophobic slurs by other kids at school, let alone be made fun of by a teacher.
Around the same time, I sang occasionally in the teen folk group at church on Saturday evenings because I still loved singing and it killed two birds with one stone since it meant I didn’t have to to church on Sunday morning. I had no desire to stand out as a singer for fear of being made fun of or criticized, so I learned to blend in. Whenever I listened to a soloist, I told myself that I would never be good enough to sing a solo, and the only time I ever sang by myself was when I was home alone listening to my father’s albums in the living room, or in the basement listening to albums of my own that I had accumulated.
Throughout middle and junior high school, I had continued to take piano lessons with Mrs. Cochran and I also played the organ at my Aunt Betty’s house in the next town when I visited her, but I began to grow restless and disappointed that my parents had not honored their commitment to buying an organ after I had taken piano lessons for two to three years. My mother kept saying that it wouldn’t be fair to my brother and sister to spend so much money on me, but neither one of them had any musical interests, so to me it seemed like a feeble excuse. Even though my father had always been the chief breadwinner in our house, my mother managed the household finances and she always spoke for both of them, so it was impossible for me to know whether she was calling the shots with or without his approval.
When my Aunt Betty moved to the same town where we lived, my mother suggested that I could ride my bike to my Aunt’s house any time I wanted to play the organ, and Betty encouraged me to come over whenever she wasn’t working. Around the same time, Betty learned about a weekly open house at an organ studio in a nearby town that was hosted by Mrs. Buteau who lived on one side of a side-by-side duplex house and her organ studio was on the other side of the house and in the basement. I began going to Mrs. Buteau’s with Betty and one or two of her friends every Tuesday night and was thrilled not only by the chance to play several different models of organs, but also to be around so many other people who enjoyed pop organ music. Mrs. Buteau would hand out free sheet music every week, and then she would invite people to get up and play a solo on one of the many organs she had set up in the basement of her studio. Before the night was over, 7–10 people would be invited up to play a group number while the people who were still seated sang along.
Although the true purpose of the weekly open house was for Mrs. Buteau to sell organs (which she did on a very frequent basis), the gatherings became a great place of solace and joy for me. My mother and I had developed a very challenging and adversarial relationship at home, and she was hypercritical of almost everything I did, especially playing the piano. Whenever I practiced the piano in our basement, she would frequently open the basement door and shout various commands and commentary down the stairs like “play that over, you made too many mistakes” or “you’re not practicing enough, you have a gift and you’re not taking it seriously.” Whenever I played at Mrs. Buteau’s open house, people clapped and were very complimentary and I didn’t care about being perfect or better than anyone else. I truly played for the love of singing and music, not to perform.
It began to occur to me that my mother was trying to project her unfulfilled desire of playing the piano on me, and that playing simply for the joy of it was never going to be enough for her. She resented the fact that I went to Mrs. Buteau’s with my Aunt Betty every Tuesday night and she became even more resentful when I started to be invited to play the organ at the houses of some of the other people who attended the open house on a regular basis. Most of them were female and were around my Aunt Betty’s age, and I enjoyed spending time with them because they were supportive, we all liked the same music, which mostly included show tunes and songs from the American Songbook, and we could spend hours singing along to whoever was playing.
When I was in the 9th grade, I made my case to my parents once again about buying me an organ, and they finally agreed to go to Mrs. Buteau’s with me so I could show them the organs I liked the most. My Aunt Betty had recently traded in her Hammond Console organ at Mrs. Buteau’s for a Conn organ with a full pedal keyboard. I loved the sound and feel of the Conn, but I knew the cost was higher than what my parents wanted to spend. There were some nice Conn consoles, and I also loved the sound of the Gulbransen organ, but ultimately my mother determined that Mrs. Buteau’s prices, even when discounted, were too high. I felt bad for Mrs. Buteau, because at that point I had been going to her open house for over two years, but I take some comfort knowing that my presence at the open house for several years may have influenced more than one prospective buyer to buy an organ from her during that time.
After a few more months of searching, my parents and I ultimately chose a Wurlitzer console organ because the price was within my parent’s budget, it had a 3rd keyboard which had a synthesizer sound, and the store offered 10 free lessons with every organ purchase. I had waited 7 long years for my dream of having my own console organ to play and practice on my own, and I was especially thrilled that the organ would be located in our living room and not in the basement like my piano had been because it was too big for the living room. A major new chapter of my musical journey was about to begin and I was excited to discover what adventures awaited me.
