LITMIR.BIZ

      Happy New Year, 1953.

      My older sisters, Alice Anne and Janice, ten and twelve years older, respectively, were the typical 1950s teenagers, wearing all the latest styles: fleece poodle skirts, tight angora or cashmere sweaters, faded jeans rolled up to the knee, and capri slacks with the zipper in the back (still love those). Janice was a bleach blonde, Alice Anne a brunette. They alternated hairstyles between Audrey Hepburn short and Lauren Bacall long.

      Music was a huge part of my early years. My sisters, I realize now, had impeccable taste in music. They loved Johnny Cash. The country star with the oak barrel whiskey baritone became my first real influence after the girls had brought home these yellow label 45s, manufactured by the Memphis-based Sun Records. I loved “I Walk the Line,” “Train of Love,” and “I Still Miss Someone.” I didn’t know it then, but it was the stripped-down simplicity and raw honesty that spoke to my emerging sensibilities.¹

      These little records would churn at forty-five revolutions per minute around the big spindle of the then-revolutionary RCA Victor record changer, which sat proudly on top of the Peterik family’s blond-cabinet black-and-white Zenith television set. You would stack up to eight records on the chubby spindle and marvel as the records dropped one by one.

      My parents, of course, had their own records, but their tastes consisted of real cornball stuff that I dreaded. There were, however, one or two records of theirs that I could not get enough of. One was Dean Martin’s “Memories Are Made of This” and the other a divine instrumental called “Skokiaan” by Ralph Marterie. I found myself gravitating to that major key melodic stuff, though it would be years until I would see the impact in my own writing.

      It was the heartfelt and beautiful melodies that always got me. “Big Rock Candy Mountain” enchanted me. This blue vinyl 45 had all of these different cowboy hits on the sleeve, and because I knew that “Big Rock Candy Mountain” was the third cut, I would position myself in my favorite armchair so I could anticipate the cowboy three-part harmony and the lyric I learned by heart: “Oh the buzzing of the bees and the cigarette trees…” (seriously!) “The soda water fountain…” I would let these great melodies seduce and wash over me again and again. Today when I relive these moments there is a chemical reaction inside me that sets off the exact vibration complete with sounds, smells, and intense feeling. (I described that phenomenon many years later in a song I wrote for Lisa McClowry, “Time Signatures”—those sensory cues being the signature of time.)

      I liked the spooky tunes, too. There was something very seductive when Art and Dotty Todd cooed “Chanson D’Amour” especially when they went “ra da da, da da”—goose bumps. When I heard the intro to “Mr. Sandman” by the Chordettes I had a brand-new physical reaction. As the girls were singing, “Mr. Sandman, bring me a dream, make him the cutest that I’ve ever seen” in that sugar-sweet three-part harmony I felt something angular in my pants—something hard and boney. Something strange yet somehow wonderful. I listened to that song a lot just wondering what to do with that protuberance.

      Certain other songs through the years had what Neil Young calls “the spook” and had that same effect on me: “Runaway” by Del Shannon, “Sealed with a Kiss” by Brian Hyland, “(The Man Who Shot) Liberty Valance” by Gene Pitney (written by my future songwriting heroes Burt Bacharach and Hal David), “Scotch and Soda” by the Kingston Trio, “Beyond the Sea” by Bobby Darin, “Come Softly to Me” by the Fleetwoods, and yes, predictably, “Spooky” by the Classics IV.

      As much as I loved Johnny Cash, he had to play second fiddle when Janice brought home a black-labeled disc with a phonograph and a dog pictured on the label by an artist with a very odd name: Elvis Presley. He had a rawness that just got to the roots of my soul! This is what I had been waiting for. Then when my sisters and I huddled around the “shmee-vee” (my mother enjoyed degrading the TV with that flippant nickname) to watch Elvis on The Ed Sullivan Show one fateful Saturday night, I knew that’s who I wanted to be. After that day I hound-dogged my parents until they bought me every Presley single they could find: older releases on Sam Phillips’ Sun Records such as “Milk Cow Blues Boogie,” “Baby, Let’s Play House,” “I Don’t Care If the Sun Don’t Shine,” and “Good Rockin’ Tonight.”

      Then Alice Anne brought home this giant record with a little hole in it. I had never seen an LP before. “LP” stood for “long playing” and it had not one but up to six songs per side. This purchase coincided with my mom and dad purchasing a freshly minted RCA portable record player. It was maroon red and had speakers built in. It sat on a functionally beautiful gold metal stand. I stared at it in total awe as the arm went down on our very first LP: Elvis Presley’s first album.

      As I listened I devoured the cover with pink letters that screamed out Elvis Presley. There he was, live onstage, with his guitar slung around his neck, mouth open so wide you could practically see his tonsils. On the back he was wearing a black-and-white polka-dotted scarf. My sisters and I would gaze and listen almost obsessively ’til we knew every word of each song on that album: “I’m Counting on You,” “Blue Suede Shoes,” “Tutti Frutti” (I knew this version way before hearing Little Richard’s original), the wonderfully playful “One-Sided Love Affair,” and the super-tough “Trying to Get to You.”

      One day my sisters brought home “Love Me Tender.” I put that record on, and suddenly it seemed as if Elvis was singing right into my ear. I don’t know how to describe what I was feeling, but it was very, very intimate. I found out years later that besides the emotion that Elvis put into the delivery, he was recorded absolutely “dry”—that is, without any of the tape slap echo that producer Sam Phillips typically used on his voice. In this dry state it was as if Elvis was right in the room with you, singing into your ear.

      When I was three or four my family started going on summer vacations. We’d drive down to Ft. Myers, Florida, to visit my mother’s brother, Uncle Raymond and Auntie Florence, who ran one of those soft-serve ice cream stands called the Dairy Dream—kind of a Tastee-Freez wanna-be. We’d hit the interstate, head across the endless miles of cornfields of southern Illinois, and gradually ramble through the steaming heat of the southern states. As we’d wind through the Smoky Mountains, Alice Anne and Janice would take out their ukuleles from the trunk. One was a mahogany Gretsch, which I still have to this day, and the other was a blond Regal that, unfortunately, has long since disappeared.

      In the backseat my sisters and I would sing camp songs, such as “The Happy Wanderer” (better known by its chorus chant: “valderee, valderah”), “Smile Awhile,” and “Let the Rest of the World Go By.” Perhaps our favorite sing-along was “Bye Bye Love” and “All I Have to Do Is Dream” by our beloved Everly Brothers. As I’d sing I’d bite my inner cheeks to simulate their gaunt, sunken cheek look. Our repertoire consisted of the same six or seven songs that we would sing over and over again. I felt secure and loved in the arms of family. Those days are some of the best times of my life.

      I first found myself drawn to the ukulele when I was about four years old, but when I picked it up, my hands couldn’t even wrap around the neck of the instrument. Then, at about four and a half, when my hands grew bigger, I could finally grasp it and firmly place my fingers around the neck to form a chord. I was jubilant!

      Janice and Alice Anne taught me the basic chords: C, G, F, and E minor, which allowed me to strum and sing a tune called “Maybe,” made popular by the Chantels in ’56. I played that song over and over again and drove my parents to distraction as my sisters giggled.

      Then, I learned the other songs they were so fond of singing: “Jada” and “Has Anybody Seen My Gal?” (“Five foot two, eyes of blue. But, oh! what those five foot could do…”). To this day I can play all of those songs and wow my friends at parties or events. When my sister Janice died, Alice Anne and

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