'Where was the music?'

It may surprise you to read (or not, if you’re family) that I have squirrels in my closets. They nest in bins, and hide under papers, books, or textiles when I want to find one, or shout for attention when I don’t. But I like living indoors without wildlife, so these are not the red or gray, bushy-tailed squirrels, but the genealogical kind described by Meaghan E.H. Siekman in her essay “Chasing a Squirrel.” Where some researchers find squirrels in various other repositories, I usually need only to look in the next closet! These squirrels are the distractions which coax me off the straight and narrow to the lateral options of research. It’s not such a bad thing, really.

When it comes to the stories I always want to find, lateral thinking leads to more stories, and if I look more closely, I gain insight into the personalities, motivations, and perspectives of those whose lives give us ourselves.

My grandfather’s drumsticks are one such squirrel which then led to an entire collection of squirrels. They appeared in one box brought from the house where he had lived for his entire life. Rex O. Church (1883–1956) was my Gramp who lived next door, but I had never known that he played drums in a band until I started looking for family stories. My taciturn grandfather, a rock ‘n roll drummer? He often played in a band in Maine and in Chicago, but didn’t play my rock and roll. He played his “rock ‘n roll,” the popular dance music of the early 1900s: “Bye Bye Blackbird,”[1] “I’m Sitting On Top Of The World,”[2] “When The One You Love Loves You,”[3] along with a fox trot (a very popular dance of the day) with the regrettable title of “The Kinky Kids Parade.”[4] This was music before elevators had Muzak. (I’ve kept the sticks for my son who also plays drums, and yes, he still drums at the dinner table.)

I was in for more surprises with the discovery of a series of heavy yet brittle 78 rpm banjo instruction records circa 1926. I vaguely remember a banjo at my grandfather’s house, one that we children played with as a toy, and I never heard anyone play it appropriately. In fact, my brother and I don’t remember music of any kind, live or radio, at my grandparents’ house. Where was the music?

Enter the next squirrel.

I found some sheet music, apparently for piano, trombone, and drums held down by an old harmonica. Wait . . .  trombone? My mother played piano, my grandfather played drums, and my Dad played football. It was back to the bins where I found some handwritten music exams with detailed questions about the trombone, and signed by my uncle Cony Lee Church (1909–1927), Rex’s eldest son. Then Cony’s old trombone in its original case came to light from under the attic eaves, giving me fanciful mental images of 1920s “jam sessions” in my grandfather’s house. My father had apparently kept the instrument in memory of the older brother who had died too young.

Genealogists will always tell beginning researchers to talk to family members while they’re still here to tell their stories. I took that advice before Dad died, and asked him about various times in his life. The trombone revived my memory of his emotional, cryptic description of bleak family life when his brother died. And that, I believe, gave me the answer to all these vestiges of the music so long absent from that house. Cony was the beloved first son, and his death at barely 17 years old from complications of scarlet fever was a blow my grandparents couldn’t handle and from which they never recovered. The day of his death was the day the music died.

One squirrel led to another, and another, over several months, until I discovered an unknown aspect of my grandparents’ lives and characters, and something of my parents as well, aspects that give me a more complete picture of people I thought I knew well. Music was always floating through my parents’ house, and through these elements of vintage music no longer heard, my own musical memories are enhanced and make me glad of the schooling I received from my mother in all kinds of music and several instruments. “Even if it’s old junk, it’s still rock ‘n roll to me!”[5]

Notes

[1] Ray Henderson and Mort Dixon, 1926

[2] Ray Henderson, Sam M. Lewis, Joe Young, 1925

[3] Paul Whiteman, 1924

[4] Walter Donaldson and Gus Kahn, 1925

[5] It’s Still Rock ‘n Roll to Me, Billy Joel