Voice

What is voice? As a novelist, it is the combination of tone, word choice, and point of view, or persona, of the narrator. You can probably find a better definition, but let’s go with mine. Another kind of voice is related to music. Today, I am using my voice as a narrator to write about my singing voice.

But first let’s go back to 1967, or maybe ’68, when I received a special invitation in the mail to join an exclusive club. I knew it was special because ‘A Special Invitation’ was printed in a large font on the envelope addressed to me, Debbie Turner, a junior in high school. This was a major coup. I had been ‘selected’ without instigation on my part, just selected out of the vast number of teenagers out there to join the Columbia House Record Club. A record club! Imagine that.

Now, you need to know that at the tender age of sixteen and weighing no more than 75 pounds, I was working at the local A&W Root Beer drive-in establishment as a carhop, yes. a carhop. I see you are imagining me in a poodle skirt and on roller skates, but no, this was 1967, not 1957. Plus, if I’d had to carry those trays with heavy glass mugs full of root beer on skates, well, let’s just say I wouldn’t have lasted through one shift.

As a result of my employment at such a discerning place, I earned enough money to put a doozy of a record player on layaway. It was portable, had a fold-down turntable and detachable speakers. As you can imagine, the wages at the A&W would have to be significant for me to afford a Magnavox record player. Didn’t I say it was a doozy?

Yes, I was rocking that midway. That’s what our boss called the sidewalk under the aluminum awning where I walked with the trays and placed them on partially lowered car windows. Although at forty cents an hour plus tips (I imagine the customers felt sorry for the skinny four-foot-nine teenager because the tips almost made up for the dismal hourly wage), it took me more than one summer to earn the moolah for the Magnavox.

Eventually, I rescued my record player from the layaway. It took longer than I had hoped because my mother would not advance me the cash. She thought I would learn more about money if I earned every penny before receiving the reward–as if schlepping root beers during the summer and winter hadn’t impressed upon me enough the value of a dollar–but in all sincerity, I thank her. My mom’s lesson is still helping me today.

It was after the record player took up residence in my bedroom that I received that all-important invitation to join the Columbia House Record Club. Now, the reference to voice can take shape.

I was probably one of the few people in my exclusive club to actually return the subscription card before an album I didn’t want was shipped. That was because I spent enjoyable hours, if not days, studying the catalog for records that caught my attention and let’s just say my taste was, uh, eclectic.

Andy Williams, the Ray Coniff Singers, and soundtracks from Broadway musicals were some of the choices I defended when my friends scoffed at my collection. I was what could be described as musically nerdy because by 1968 my classmates were listening to Steppenwolf, Jimi Hendrix, and Janis Joplin while Julie Andrews and I were singing about “A Spoonful of Sugar”.

One month, I saw an album put out by Sergio Mendes and Brasil 66. No, Spellcheck, that not a typographical error. It is the spelling used by my friend Sergio’s home country of Portugal. (I hope we Americans spell that correctly!) I loved Sergio’s rendition of the Beatles hit, Fool on the Hill, and later Simon and Garfunkel’s Scarborough Fair. Of course, his cover of Burt Bacharach’s The Look of Love has stood the test of time, but it was One Note Samba that was stuck in my head.

Then, in 1969, my trusty Magnavox record player and I went to college. I brazenly played the records in my dorm room. In-A-Gada-Da-Vida may have been blasting throughout the floor, but the Samba versions of Night and Day, Day Tripper, and Goin’ Out of My Head were floating in the stratosphere of Deb’s room. Although I was a fan of Simon and Garfunkel, the Beatles and even the Monkees, I developed a soft spot for Sergei’s sound.

I have been involved in music since I started taking piano lessons in the second grade. I sang in a children’s choir at church and later, in high school choirs. I was a voice major in college with the goal of being a music teacher. Before I went to work for the Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education coordinating fine arts in schools, I taught music in a public school for twenty-five years.

I couldn’t imagine my students–first highschoolers, then children ages six to twelve–being interested in my musical preferences for Bossa Nova and Samba, so I put my first loves away and enjoyed more mainstream music choices. Those were wonderful, memorable years and I enjoyed them immensely.

Now, as a retiree, I perform in a singing duo as Deb and Dave. As singing partners go, I’ve got the best. While I was in Missouri singing in my high school choir, Dave was playing saxophone and singing in a soul band at teen and adult clubs in Virginia. The Uprisers Band and Show successfully opened for Patti LaBelle and the Manhattans and they sat in with well-known soul musicians like King Curtis. Wow!

So, Dave knew a lot about soul, rock and roll, Motown, and, of course, country music. (His dad played in a band called the Tumbleweeds.) That doesn’t go too well with Samba, Bossa Nova, and a little Joni Mitchell Both Sides Now, does it? But since I’d put all that behind me decades earlier, I learned to love what our duo did and some of what the band we established played.

I play keyboard in the band. Dave is the saxophonist our good friend and extremely talented guitarist, Jimmy rounds out the trio. We all sing. My difficulties arose when I needed to play music that was unfamiliar. I could play the traditional chord progressions of pop and rock music, but once, well more than once, I was asked to play “Honky Tonk” piano. Dave would mime pounding on the keys in a helter-skelter manner. I would try but it wasn’t natural to me. As a piano minor in college, my preferences were more along the lines of Bach and Mozart, not Little Richard. (I’d never used a foot on the keyboard in my life!)

When I tried to be more modern, I realized it was not natural for me and I had a feeling the audiences knew it, too. But what was natural was singing the songs from my Sergio Mendes albums.

That brings me to a few months ago. While Dave and I were dining out, I heard a recording of a Beatles song but with a Bossa Nova beat. I was intrigued. At home, I immediately researched Bossa Nova Beatles music online and it didn’t take long to discover several singers with similar styles to what I’d heard that night.

A short time later, at a Deb and Dave gig, I introduced one of my new Bossa Nova songs and found the audience appeared to like what they heard. Now, in addition to our Motown, pop, country, and rock and roll repertoire, Dave happily plays his saxophone on our new tracks, and I found my new voice.

But between you and me, that voice was really created more than fifty years ago.