Sing That Song for Me

Rock-a-bye your baby...

When I was first in college (even WAY back before I met Don) I enrolled in a popular class on campus called Program Bureau. It was run by a campus icon at the time, a woman by the name of Roene DiFiore, whose very presence in the room meant a song was coming on. For everyone. The class was designed to be a sing-out group, meant to entertain at conventions, parties and other gatherings. It was a class for the misfits, the shy, the wannabes and the starlets. A perfect gathering point, a community in and of itself. (That it was also an easy "A" meant it was a class filled to the brim each semester).

With a Dixie melody...

Students would gather in the music room, giggling, gabbing and posturing for sitting position on the room's risers. A grand piano stood in the center of the floor awaiting the entrance of Madame DiFiore. Decades older than our nearly-twenty-something selves her triumphant daily entrance was never a disappointment. Her usual garb of free flowing frocks in magnificent color, her hair in an untidy up 'do on the top of her head, her eyeglasses held round her neck with a black cord, and her lips painted in shocking orange or red all made her a wonder to behold. She was an eccentric delight. An unforgettable oddity. A personality never to forget.
She would sit at the piano and lead us in song. Sometimes with her glasses perched at the end of her nose, most often with them swinging freely at her ample bosom, she swayed with her eyes closed as she carried herself away in the music. She wrote the lyrics we were to memorize on the chalkboard and systematically removed words and phrases until we had learned every word. On so many occasions she would stop herself mid-sentence and pat around her hips, her belly, and her breasts with her hands until, ultimately triumphant, she would reach under her shirt, into her bra and withdraw the article she was seeking: pencil, tissue, lipstick. You name it, she seemed to have it stored there.

And when you croon, croon a tune...

Under the tutelage of Mrs. D. we learned the oldies, we learned the goodies. We belted out Broadway tunes. We held hands over hearts and sang of our country. There were silly songs. There were hymns. There were lullabies. There were blues.
It was music. Pure and clear, loud as our voices could sing it.

From the heart of Dixie...

It was under Roene's care that my own voice blossomed. And to say that isn't to say that I didn't sing before, I spent my whole life singing, but what she gave me was this uninhibited PASSION to SING from my guts. From my soul. From the very heart of me.

Just hang that cradle mammy mine...

In private lessons in her office studio she mentored me on some of the greater tunes of HER time. Classic Broadway music (which she taught me to belt like nobodys business!), 40's torch songs, and campy radio tunes. My memories of standing at that upright piano while she plunked away at the keys and called for me to stand up straight and let it all pour out are very precious memories indeed.

Right on the Mason-Dixon line...

My first meet with Madame DiFiore was not in her class but on the audition stage for one of the first musical try-outs of my college career. I sang, she played. She then invited me to join her class. After that I was her dedicated, devoted student spending semester after semester in her music room, traveling the circuit of conventions as one of her ambassadors of music to entertain the college visitors.

And swing it from Virginia to Tennessee with all the love that's in ya...

She called me the "little dynamo" because counter to my size (diminutive at 19) my voice was big. Really big. The first tune she taught me by rote (I don't read music) was the showstopping song from 42nd Street. Lullaby of Broadway kind of became my calling card performance piece in those years of Program Bureau shows. She would call me forward from the group and set the stage with her introduction. "Folks, you may want to back up here... this one packs a punch." Then, opening chord and first notes, ending in a growl, a roll and the ultimate deep breath long note belted ending.

Weep no more my lady...

I can't be certain I was any good at all, but darn it, it was a fun, fascinating and ultimately soul fulfilling time for me.

Sing that song again for me...

Now, of course, my concert giving is limited in scope to the audience of my family. Generally accepted as one of the mama's strange, eccentric behaviors as she stirs the soup or folds the towels, it is mostly tolerated. Even though they've heard the repertoire (repeatedly) before.

So soft and low just as though you had me on your knee...

When Don took me to London for the weekend, a weekend or two ago, we sat on the 17th row to see the adorable, amazing Mandy Patinkin in concert. Starstruck, but behaving myself, I found myself wrapped up in his voice, his music, HIS repertoire. And when he broke into ROCK-A-BYE YOUR BABY I thought I might just be swept away in my own emotional memory.

A million baby kisses I'd deliver...

Roene DiFiore passed away nearly 20 years ago, not too many years past the time I stood at her side and learned the old songs she loved. The songs that I love too. The very songs I sang to my babies in their infant days. And yeah, the same tunes I sing in the shower.

If you would only sing that "Swanee River"...

That her influence on my life is deep seems obvious. It's in every song that I sing. It's in the way I appreciate the artists she loved. It is marked by the magic of hearing any of those tunes again.

Also, it might just be in the way I store my lip gloss in my bra.

Rock-a-bye your rock-a-bye baby with a Dixie melody!