Listener mail on "The Music That Changed Your World"
More mail now from listeners about the music that changed their lives, following my conversation with Robert Harris two weeks ago.
From Jennifer Verrall in Victoria, B.C.
"In 1973, my husband Ron and I saw "The Sting", a great movie.
What changed our lives, was when we bought Ron, who played the piano, the first of several books of Joplin's music.
A few weeks later, he said "I've been looking for this all my life."
Although he played them all, his eventual favourite was the Maple Leaf Rag.
Ron died two years ago, and Louise Rose, a local jazz pianist, played the Maple Leaf Rag at the celebration of his life."
From Erwin Dreessen, Ottawa:
"During a summer holiday when I was 12, I spent some time at a country home where on many evenings, we would listen to a piece of classical music. That was an eye opener to me. To this day, one piece in particular, J.S. Bach's Violin Concerto in E Major, remains a favourite.
Though religion has not been part of my life since about age 20 (I'm 73 now), the second movement still moves me to a state of prayer.
On my 65th birthday, I acquired the complete set of Bach Cantatas as well as Alfred Dürr's nearly 1,000-page "The Cantatas of J.S. Bach." I spent the better part of two years listening to every one of them, reading the texts and Dürr's commentary. An amazingly uniform expression of piety, subservience to the Almighty, and rock-steady faith."
From Sandi Bezanson-Chan in Richmond, B.C.:
"It was a performance by the 5th Dimension on the Ed Sullivan Show that turned my father on to the songs "Aquarius" and "Let the Sunshine In".
For my brush-cut wearing, ex-military, hippie-hating, pipe-band-drummer father to bring home the soundtrack to "Hair", with its red and green psychedelic cover was something of an anomaly, to say the least. As a 9-year-old, I didn't question it.
Looking back as a 56-year-old, I can only surmise that somewhere deep inside his short-sleeved, white button-down exterior, there lived a groovy tie-dyed Dad.
My older brother Al and I sang along -- but we had no idea what we were singing about.
I can still hear us, two little suburban Canadian white kids, belting out "I'm blaaaaaaack, I'm blaaaaack", waxing lyrical about "sodomeeeee" and asking the musical question "Have you seen her? My sixteen-year-old tattooed virgin?".
My beloved brother Al is currently in hospital, with a long road ahead of him.
But I know the day will come when he and I will be able to go for a ride in my car, pop in the "Hair" CD and once again declare "Ain't got no wine, NO CIGARETTES, Ain't got no clothes, NO COUNTRY".... I got my liver, got my blood, Got life, I got my life."'
From Joe Gilling in Vancouver:
"I was born in England and raised in Ontario. In 1998, we moved to a small village on the River Tavy in Devon, England. The village has a fine pub where we had monthly acoustic folk music evenings. We formed a sea shanty group, the Tavy Tars. I had the opportunity to introduce some Canadian content into our repertoire. The choices were easy. We quickly added Barrett's Privateers, Mary Ellen Carter, and especially Northwest Passage.
In 2010, we said goodbye to England and flew over the North West Passage in our move to Vancouver. That summer, the programme at the Vancouver Folk Music Festival seemed as if it had been made especially for me.
Nathan Rogers, Stan's son, was featured on the bill. As a closing number, he sang Northwest Passage. There I was on a beautiful summer's day looking out over English Bay and up at snow covered mountains, hearing Nathan with a voice so much like his father's. The crowd was on its feet singing the chorus. I sang with tears of happiness coming to my eyes, as I thought how fortunate I was to be home again in Canada and living in such a beautiful place.
Thank you so much Stan for your unforgettable music. May we sing it forever."
From Boyd Richards in Fredericton:
"I was a country boy growing up in P.E.I. in the 1940's, raised on country music.That meant for me, the guitar. I learned to play enough chords to accompany most songs we knew.
One evening when I was about 14 years old, my father turned on the radio in anticipation of the CBC news, and I heard music like nothing I had heard before.
Could that really be a guitar? That creature with such emotions? With a Soul?
My first Andres Segovia record cemented my belief that the guitar is the greatest of musical instruments. Its range of pitch, including the use of harmonics, is great. The possibilities for shading of tone quality while playing is great. It adapts to any and all genres of music. It can play a melody and simultaneously a complex accompaniment. It is an orchestra all in itself.
I can't say I ever became a very good player, but at least I was able to play some simple transcriptions of classical pieces.
The guitar was my turn-to, in my moments of reflection and solitude for many years, until the day about three years ago when I realized that Multiple Sclerosis had so affected my left hand that I could no longer press the strings firmly to the fingerboard, or feel exactly where my hand was on the neck; my playing days were over.
That day, again, the guitar brought tears to my eyes, in a very different way."
Robert Harris will return with the second installment in our new series, "The Music that Changed Your World," on our program of February 5th.