Slumber on ...

One of the joys of my childhood was music, played by people who I knew, who were close to me. We'd go to my grandparent's house for dinner --- they lived just across town -- and as my beloved mom, and grandmother, and great aunt prepared dinner, my grandfather would turn on his Baldwin electric organ and play old songs. He had no music, just a list of several hundred songs that he knew by heart. He'd play the ones he liked best first, then turn the page and find one that maybe he hadn't played in awhile, and play that. No written music; just a list of songs. And the sounds in the background of my mom, grandmother, and great aunt talking as they cooked dinner. And the smell of dinner being cooked.

Sometimes, we'd invite them to our house for dinner, and the musical roles would be reversed. My grandpa would sit in the easy chair and smoke his pipe, and dear great aunt Hadda -- her name was Helen, but we knew her as Hadda, and who knows how that transition came about -- would play songs she remembered from her days in vaudeville. Like my grandpa, I don't remember her ever reading a note of music. She had just played so many years with Mr. Darnaby, playing shows across the Midwest, that she had to know these songs. And she remembered them to her dying day.

One of the songs she liked the best, written by Victor Herbert I think, was this sweet little tune, "Gypsy Sweetheart." "Slumber on, my little gypsy sweetheart." Here it's played, superlatively, by  Zoot Sims and Jimmy Rowles, but any time I hear it, in any incarnation, I am back in our old house, dinner is cooking, the windows are open, the smell of  pipe smoke is in the air, and music is being made. It is not a bad place to be.