I love to play music. I’ve been a musician in one form or another my entire life. I’ve performed before hundreds of millions of people in a couple dozen different countries but yet very few of you know me as a musician. That MUST change!
Most of my performances happened in the three year period I was serving in the US Army as a Military Musician in the 3rd Armored Division Band in Frankfurt, Germany. But a fair number of my gigs took place in my youth with the San Jose and Santa Cruz Symphonies and AA (after army) with the Barbershop Harmony Society.
Ok, that is the background. Why then don’t I play professionally today? This is a long tail and I must start at the beginning.
I was five years old. My dad worked for the US Postal Service as a letter carrier. My dad LOVED his job and made many friends in his 36 year career. One of those friends was the reason I become a musician and travel around the world playing music for people. One of his friends shaped my entire life in just one evening. This friend of my dad’s, lighted a fire inside me that rages still to this day; and I don’t even know the name of this man.
One evening shortly after my fifth birthday my parents loaded me in the back of their yellow Granada sedan and pointed the car south towards the cherry orchards of San Jose California. Must of the trip was a blur because we had taken this route so many times in the past, but before long we were in a different place. A place I had never seen before. The streets were wide like our street on McKee Rd, but there was a big path down the middle of the road with brown grass and very tall Walnut trees. I think the neighborhood is now part of Highway 85, but that is a different story.
We pulled up to a yellow and white house and I saw what looked like an antique car parked on the street. I think it was an edstel, but I didn’t know that then. Mom and dad got me out of the car, took my hand and lead me to this strange house that at night time I was sure was haunted. The big trees leaning over the roadway with little tree things all over the ground looked spooky.
My parents knocked on the door and my mom took another puff off her cigarette. I can not image anyone walking up to a house now a days smoking. An old man answered the door and said, “Is this Eddie Paul?”; he knew we were coming.
My dad proudly answered the man, “Yes this is my son Eddie Paul. Say hello.” Don’t we love it when our parents put us into embarrassing situations? What did I do? Heck, I was three feet tall, I did what every young boy would do in this scary situation, I grabbed on to my dads leg and hid.
The old man laughed and invited us inside. My mom never asked if it was ok if she smoked. Then again she also smoked in the grocery stores and shopping mall.
The old mans house seemed small, even to a little guy like me and the hallway leading into the living space seem extra long and dark and narrow. There was an opening to the right and an opening to the left and the hallway continued further into the house. I never saw what was right or straight ahead because when I looked left, the direction the old man went, I saw something that fascinated me.
I had seen a piano by this age, I had even sat at the music store once and played with the keys a little. But this monstrous looking piano wasn’t a piano, it had three keyboards lots of pedals and lots and lots of buttons. No way this way a piano, but the largeness of the thing stopped me in my tracks an no more was I shy. All three adults stood around me but I had no idea what they were doing, I was mesmerized by the sight. The old man spoke.
“Would you like to hear me play some music?”
Writing these words brings the same tears I had then when the music started. My dad later told me that I stood in one spot for almost a half an hour without moving which his friend played the Organ. At that moment, my destiny was written. I was going to be a musician.
My parents obvious felt I might have this type of reaction, that is why they brought me to this mans house. But now I need to jump around in time a little because my parents did so to live up to a promise they made.
I was adopted and it was shortly after this musical experience that my parents shared this knowledge with me. It didn’t really phase me that my mom and dad were not my biological mom and dad, they were my parents and were as real as they needed to be. Fast forward 30 years, when going through the paperwork my parents kept after my dad had passed away I found my adoption records. In them was one simple request from my biological mother, “if he shows a musical interest please give him the opportunity to become a musician.”
When I was fourteen years old I had an opportunity to participate in a music clinic for elementary school students. The Youth Symphony I was in was putting on a special program and they needed someone to use as a role model to inspire the students. In addition to one of the violin and clarinet players, the conductor choose me because they felt my instrument would be the “hit of the show.”
At 14 I played the marimba and that day I was to play the second moment of the concerto for marimba; one of the most difficult mallet instrument arrangements ever written. I played that same solo at the center for performing arts in San Jose California just the month before, so the conductor wanted to show me off as his prize pupil. Needless to say, I love being the ham in front of a crowd.
The performance went great but I noticed that much of the talking was to the adults in the room and not the hundred plus children. Little boys and girls who had probably never seen a marimba were sitting on the floor with their legs crossed listening to some old guy pontificate about some musical accomplishments of me. Yes I did them, but I remember thinking these ackolaids had no place in this setting. The kids, like me, want to be inspired through music, not through talk.
After the performance, a little girl dressed in pink and blue came up to me, crossed her legs and did the shy dance. It was like nobody was watching her and all the adults were congratulating one another. Teachers were shaking the hand of the conductor, children were starting to stand and get in line to leave and the room was filled with noise. The Symphony was even ignoring the moment and they too were chatting, laughing and packing up; but this little girl had a question but was too shy to ask. So I spoke.
“Would you like to hear me play another song?”
She shook her head yes and drew in closer. I pulled out a second pair of mallets and started playing Feeling. The room fell instantly silent, almost like the sound was sucked out of the room. Every body turned but the only face I saw was this little girls. I made a few mistakes because this was the first time I tried playing it on the marimba, it was a song I played on my Organ at home, but this was the song this little girl needed to hear. I only played the chorus and then I stopped, but the entire time I was playing the room (and the world it seemed) stood still. In that moment I made a promise.
Keep music a live and special for everyone. As a professional musician the music stopped being special for me and to get gigs I was forced more and more to speak like the adults in the assembly hall that day, not about the music but about the people I’d played for, the special accomplishments I’d made. After 35 years and five months later, I am still seeking the chance to ask a child, “would you like to hear me play some music?”
Keep music alive, take your children to experience all types of music an pay attention to them when they experience it. You never know, but you might have the next Mozart living in your house.
