9/6/23

While visiting friends in Illinois back in the 90s, they showed me a video of a Peoria voice teacher who broadcast her recitals on the local public access TV station. I didn’t realize at the time I was witnessing the birth of a cultural semi-phenomenon. 

40 years later, clips from her recitals are still making rounds on YouTube . . . you can look them up, but I warn you, they are addictive. The teacher, Reva Cooper Unsicker, would have her students sing a medley of two or three songs that no one else on the planet would dream of putting together. One of her singers, John Daker,  became a YouTube sensation with his medley of (I’m not making this up) “Christ the Lord is Risen Today” and “That’s Amore”!  In another performance unfortunately not on YouTube, he followed “Christ the Lord is Risen Today” (as Reva explains in the intro, “a song that is very popular nowadays”) with “The Woody Wood-Pecker Song” (again, I am not making this up).  He often couldn’t remember the lyrics, but that never stopped him. 

One commenter called it “unintentional art.” 

There is a real sweetness in the madness and although Reva’s recitals are spread across the internet,  I don’t think they are treated (by most people, anyway) with mockery or contempt. Amazement, maybe. Stupefaction, perhaps. Certainly bewilderment at the complete inappropriateness of some of her mash-ups. One of my favorite was a young fellow singing Cole Porter’s “It’s Delovely”  followed by “The Lord’s Prayer,” with a peculiar spin on “lead us not into temptation” that made you think he was up to something. That one also, unfortunately, is not on YouTube.

Not knowing the lyrics was a common issue with Reva’s students. One unforgettable little red-haired girl, whose scowl at the song’s end made it clear that this was NOT her idea,  had no clue what the words were to “Tomorrow” from the musical, Annie.  She sang, “The sun’ll come out tomorrow, give the kid a dollar that tomorrow, there’ll be sun . . .” I’m sure she learned it from a recording. At the climax of the song, the real words are “the sun will come out tomorrow, so you got a hang on till tomorrow, come what may,” but for this little girl “come what may” apparently sounded like “come when-ay!”  I have no idea what she thought that meant (or if she even worried about it) but she belted it out like a pint-sized Ethel Merman.

Of course, when I was a kid I mis-heard stuff all the time. Some of you might be as guilty as I was of thinking Johnny Rivers was singing about a “Secret Asian Man,” and CCR was warning us “there’s a bathroom on the right.” I have a vivid memory of standing on the pew at church when I was very small, singing “Little is Much When God is In It,” thinking the words were “Little Miss Muffet God is In It.”  I stood there and worked out an entire theology in my head: the spider was a test for Little Miss Muffet’s faith, but she’s assured that “God is in it,” so she needn’t be afraid. 

I was a strange little kid.

Music is a powerful medium. From first dances to funerals, like my memory of standing on the pew singing “Little is Much,” music can make an event indelible in our memories. While at the University of Alabama, I would go to the Ferguson Student Center every day after lunch to get my mail. Someone apparently requested 94.1 to play Bette Midler’s “The Rose” at the same time every day, because it was playing every time I checked my PO box. For weeks. I’ve never liked the song, but  I cannot hear it now without being instantly transported back to “the Ferg.”  Bad song. Good memory.

One of my music teachers, Videt Polk (how’s that for a good Southern name!) defined music as “the combination of melody, harmony, rhythm, and the expression of the soul.” I’ve always loved that definition – especially “the expression of the soul.” 

But what’s his definition missing? Like a good John Daker performance, it’s missing the words! (unless Videt included it in “the expression of the soul,” but I think he was talking about the way the music is performed. Like a gospel singer I heard say, “Y’all don’t listen to the words, just listen to the way I sing them.” I think she meant it the other way around. I hope she did, anyway).

The words to a song definitely are an expression of the soul. I’m not a prude, but I’m not going to listen to anything that is foul and degrades women. Nor am I going to listen to anything that’s depressing. Life is hard enough as it is without singing about it! My mother (bless her heart) used to listen to some of the most awful country music . . . ugh! Don’t get me started!

When it comes to music, I think the words of Paul in Philippians 4 are fitting: “Whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is pleasing, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence and if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things.” Paul could have easily added, “and sing about these things.”

I think one thing that makes her recitals endearing is that Reva always made it clear that she and several of her students (including John Daker) all attended First United Methodist Church in Peoria. There was joy in their performances, mad as they were, that came from their hearts. Their music was definitely an expression of their souls! 

Our music should be an expression of who we are, a people loved and redeemed by God. That’s not saying that everything has to be religious. But the story of our life, every aspect of our life, is shaped by the grace of God, and that has to reflect the songs we sing and listen to all of our days. 

This is my story, this is my song. Come when-ay.