The Songs Of Juana

Music was always really important to my Mother.  From my earliest days, I remember our house being filled with music.  It was from my parents that I learned to love music, it was from them that my earliest musical tastes were formed, and it was because of them that my musical tastes have remained so varied, throughout my life.  We had an enormous console stereo - it was a piece of furniture that was the size of a Dining Room sideboard, in three sections that included the center turntable (with a cupboard to hold the record albums) and two speakers on either end of the console.  I was always fascinated by the unit and always made happy by listening, for hours, to the records held within.  My father’s record collection included Frank Sinatra, Roy Clark, Nancy Wilson, Flatt and Scruggs, Peggy Lee, Jackie Gleason, Buck Owens, Barbra Streisand, and the soundtracks to High Society and Midnight Cowboy.  I loved and adored these albums and still listen to most of them today.

Mommy’s musical tastes were different from Daddy’s and the entire house was able to enjoy all of the music that was played, over the years - there was always something for everyone to get into, although, I have to admit, I was more prone toward Me Father’s crooners, while my siblings liked Mama’s pop music.  But the pop music was all happiness and playtime. I can still remember that sunny weekend day in the 1970s when Mama came home from JC Penny’s with some forty-five singles that she had bought which she, immediately, played, one right after the other, while we danced around the living room:

My Mam was really affected by the music she listened to or the music that anyone listened to, that she overheard.  During my high school years in Switzerland I vividly remember her coming into the Living Room, where I was playing the Barbra Streisand album Songbird, to start the record over and turn it up, and, together, we stood in that room on a spring day, all the windows open as the light and the air flooded in, blowing the sheer curtains into the room like a Cocteau movie, singing along with Barbra Streisand,: “The sun’ll come out tomorrow….”  Mama just loved that cut, it made her happy.  It was in that same room that Mommy and I would often roll back the shag area rug and dance, sometimes doing the Frug to ABBA singing “Does Your Mother Know (That You’re Out)” and the Bump to Neil Diamond singing “Sweet Caroline.”  Burned in my memory is the time I was in college and washing the car while listening to Madonna on the radio, when My Mam came out into the driveway, in front of the whole neighborhood, dancing with me to the song “True Blue.”

I cannot hear this music, any of this music, without thinking of My Mam, not one of these tracks.  A lifelong devotee of Barbra Streisand, I remember when Mama came into the sunshine overloaded Living Room of the Portugal house to ask, “What is this Barbra Streisand song?”  I told her it was the song “Great Day” from the movie Funny Lady.  “This is what she should always sing like.  This is the most beautiful sound in the world, and when she yells in those other songs, this beauty is lost.  I hope she thanks god every day for this voice.”  Then Mama told me that nobody could put emotion into a song the way Barbra Streisand could.  A kid, I didn’t understand that, and I said so; My Mam explained to me the difference between singing a song and singing a song with feeling.

Me Father always said that My Mam could have been a professional singer if she had wanted to.  The only thing is that she didn’t want to: she only wanted to do what she wanted to do.  Mommy always sang around the house, she always danced around the house, and she always sang to me, and I knew that what Daddy said was right.  Mama could have done it.  She could have gone all the way, as a singer.  She just didn’t want it.

Music lives in my home today because of Juana. Each and every one of these songs is one my Mother loved, listened to, danced to, and sang along with. These are The Songs Of Juana.