{"id":601,"date":"2019-05-31T23:11:39","date_gmt":"2019-06-01T03:11:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.fayegibbons.com\/?p=601"},"modified":"2019-05-31T23:11:39","modified_gmt":"2019-06-01T03:11:39","slug":"if-youre-looking-at-me-youre-looking-at-musically-disabled-country","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.fayegibbons.com\/?p=601","title":{"rendered":"IF YOU\u2019RE LOOKING AT ME, YOU\u2019RE LOOKING AT MUSICALLY DISABLED COUNTRY"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Faye at the time of the great PTA musical 1967-68<\/strong><\/span><\/h2>\n

My latest book, HALLEY, awarded 2015 Jefferson Cup Honor for Historical Fiction, awarded the Moonbeam Silver Medal for Young Adult Fiction, and awarded the 2016 Frank Yerby Award for Fiction. Available at: NewSouth Books: www.newsouthbooks.com\/halley and Amazon.<\/span><\/strong><\/h2>\n

Loretta Lynn said in a recent interview that mountain people didn\u2019t need music lessons.\u00a0 Just hand them an instrument and they\u2019d fool with it a while and then start playing music.\u00a0 Apparently this applies to song writing too, in her opinion.<\/strong><\/h3>\n

Well, this mountain girl didn\u2019t get any of that talent.\u00a0 I took piano lessons for two years as an adult and then naively asked my teacher how long it would take for me to just sit down and play without having to plod along note by note by note.\u00a0 Honest man that he was, he didn\u2019t sugar coat his reply. \u201cYou\u2019ll never be able to do that,\u201d he answered.\u00a0 \u201cWhy not? \u201c I asked.\u00a0 \u201cBecause you don\u2019t have any talent,\u201d he said.<\/strong><\/h3>\n

That finished my music career! But I really should have figured it out for myself.\u00a0 One time, back in the Sixties when I was teaching 5th grade in Huntsville, Alabama, the Huntsville School System music coordinator came to our school\u00a0 to prepare our students for a PTA program in which each grade would perform one song.\u00a0 She asked all us fifth grade teachers to practice our assigned song with our students until her return.\u00a0 On the appointed day she had each grade level perform, making suggestions for improvements for each group.\u00a0 When the three fifth grades took their turn, she began to frown.\u00a0 \u201cYou,\u201d she said pointing to a student of mine in the first row, \u201cCome stand by me.\u201d\u00a0 The song continued and she pointed to another kid, and another, and another.\u00a0 Before the song was finished, she had practically every student in my class crowded around her.\u00a0 She chose several of my students after listening to them sing a few lines.<\/strong><\/h3>\n

\u201cMrs. Gibbons,\u201d she said, \u201cI don\u2019t want you singing with your class anymore.\u00a0 I\u2019m going to choose one of your students with a good ear to lead singing from now until the PTA program.\u201d\u00a0 She didn\u2019t say my musical skills sucked, but I got the message.<\/strong><\/h3>\n

I know who\u2019s to blame for my missing musical talent\u2014my mother.\u00a0 When in a very good mood, Mama would sing around the house.\u00a0 It was maddening to hear her slaughter a perfectly good song, sometimes getting almost on the right tune, but never quite making it.\u00a0 None of us kids had the nerve to tell her, but somebody else must have, because occasionally she would say after one of our father\u2019s musically talented relatives performed, \u201cI couldn\u2019t carry a tune in a bucket.\u201d\u00a0 And nobody argued with her.<\/strong><\/h3>\n

After I became a regular at the little Methodist church we moved close to when I was fifteen, one of the church leaders asked me to sing a solo some Sunday.\u00a0 He said he\u2019d noticed my singing talent and thought I should share it!\u00a0 I wanted to believe him, but in my heart I knew it was just his way of drawing me closer to the church.\u00a0 I\u2019d heard some of the other \u201ctalented\u201d girls he\u2019d found.\u00a0 Some were good, but some were embarrassingly awful.\u00a0 Thank goodness, in the end I let my common sense overrule my ego.<\/strong><\/h3>\n

The man would have been wiser to ask my brothers.\u00a0 John, Jerry, and Mike inherited Daddy\u2019s musical talent\u2014and his confidence.\u00a0 No doubt that self assurance is a part of it.\u00a0 I once heard an expert say that even when he\u2019d lost a lot of quality from his voice, Frank Sinatra was still worth listening to because he could \u201cdeliver a song better than anyone.\u201d\u00a0 The Junkins men had the voice and the delivery.<\/strong><\/h3>\n

Now I confine my singing mostly to church services.\u00a0 And then I take pains to sit near a very good singer, whom I can follow and sort of blend with. I learned never to sit near another person as bad or worse at carrying a tune than myself.\u00a0 One fellow church member years ago was so bad and so loud that I didn\u2019t sing at all until I changed to another pew well across the sanctuary.\u00a0 I learned from experience that if I were close, I\u2019d follow wherever she led.\u00a0 Cain\u2019s Chapel United Methodist ChurMW is two hundred years old, but that woman and I might have closed down the church long before now if we\u2019d tried to harmonize.<\/strong><\/h3>\n

So Loretta, I hate to tell you, but not all of us mountain people are as talented musically as you. \u00a0 However, you still ain\u2019t woman enough to take my man!<\/strong><\/h3>\n
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Faye at the time of the great PTA musical 1967-68 My latest book, HALLEY, awarded 2015 Jefferson Cup Honor for Historical Fiction, awarded the Moonbeam Silver Medal for Young Adult Fiction, and awarded the 2016 Frank Yerby Award for Fiction. … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.fayegibbons.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/601"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.fayegibbons.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.fayegibbons.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.fayegibbons.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.fayegibbons.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=601"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/blog.fayegibbons.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/601\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":606,"href":"https:\/\/blog.fayegibbons.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/601\/revisions\/606"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.fayegibbons.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=601"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.fayegibbons.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=601"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.fayegibbons.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=601"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}