Music - Last day of the Family History Writing Challenge.

My father played in the Michigan Symphony Orchestra. As a student at Michigan State, he was studying music when World War II began. Like many of the "boys", he enlisted in the Army before he was drafted. When he came home from the service, he was engaged to be married and continued his education at USC, majoring in Accounting.

You have to wonder what he would have done had his education been uninterrupted. Music was a big part of his life and a part of ours. I found a picture of my dad, uncle, and grandmother taken in November 1944, with furlough written on the back. I don’t remember a piano in Granny’s house but there it is in the picture. There is sheet music in the background and the keys are exposed. I don’t know who played it besides my dad.

 In our house, we had several instruments. We had the piano, the flute, the clarinet, and Dad’s favorite, the piccolo. My brother made a half-hearted attempt at playing the violin and I think, the trumpet. We were glad when he moved on to other interests. My mom came from a musical family and was always singing or playing the piano. Like my dad, music defines who I am and I majored in music in college until life got in the way. I played in our high school band and sang in the choir.

Music was always in our house and the favorite music was the hymns. When we weren’t at church singing, we had people over or went to their houses to sing. I grew up in a small community, isolated from the larger cities around us. We knew everyone and all attended the same church.  

I wish that I had paid more attention to the music in my grandparent’s home. I don’t remember them being musical and even when I spent summers with my grandmother as a young adult, music seems absent to me. I know that there was no piano in my uncle’s house. He lived in Billings, Montana too but I do know that when we took my grandma to church, they sang with gusto. If music was important to my dad, it had to be fostered by his parents. What did music mean to them? For the Tennessee family, where did music fit into their lives?

Just before my mother passed away, I wrote a poem for her.

When I was just a little girl my momma sang to me.
She’d sit at the piano, I’d sit upon her knee.
She’d sing the old time music, she’d learned when she was young.
That’s how I learned the melodies she taught me how to hum.

And when the nights were stormy, with lightening all around,
my daddy’d take the chairs and things and place them on the ground.
He’d make us tents and shelters and put a record on,
that matched the stormy weather, till all the fear was gone.

Now I am grown and I have kids who sing along with me,
I taught them how to sing the songs my momma taught to me.
And when the nights are stormy, we often make tents too.
That is what’s important, what I want to share with you.

Fame is not important if forever is your aim.
Traditions live forever, handed down like family names.

So when my kids are grown up,
I really hope to see.
The children of my children
sing my momma’s songs to me.

I was blessed to be able to share this with my mother. I was also blessed that after adopting my grandson, one day he started singing one of my mother’s song. He was small and wanted to know why I was crying.

Music has to transcend generations. Knowing nothing about the music from the Rhea’s of Tennessee, I thought I would look at 1918, the year the letters were written. I was pleasantly surprised to find several of the top songs for the period were some that I knew, not just the names but the songs that we sung in our house when I was small. 

The short list includes:

“Rock-A-Bye Your Baby with a Dixie Melody” This was recorded by Al Jolson on March 13, 1918. It was from a musical called “Sinbad”.

“I’m always Chasing Rainbows” came from the musical “Oh, Look”. The show opened in March 1918. Using the music from Frederic Chopin, it was published in 1917.

“Oh! How I Hate to Get Up in the Morning” is an Irving Berlin song written in 1918. He wrote this while in the Army and everyone in the Armed Forces knew this. Irving Berlin is and has always been one of my favorite composers.

“Hail, Hail, the Gang’s All Here”, was published in 1917 and words written by D. A. Esrom to a turn from the 1879 opera “The Pirates of Penzance”. 

But my favorite of all is “The Battle Hymn of the Republic”. Although an older song, written in 1861, it used the melody from the song, “John Brown’s Body”. Julia Ward Howe wrote the words at the end of the Civil War. In 1918, it was rerecorded by the Columbia Stellar Quartet and spent 6 weeks on the US Billboard as #1.

Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord:

He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored;

He hath loosed the fateful lightning of His terrible swift sword:

His truth is marching on.

(Chorus)

Glory, glory, hallelujah!

Glory, glory, hallelujah!

Glory, glory, hallelujah!

His truth is marching on.

I have seen Him in the watch-fires of a hundred circling camps,

They have builded Him an altar in the evening dews and damps;

I can read His righteous sentence by the dim and flaring lamps:

His truth is marching on.

(Chorus)

Glory, glory, hallelujah!

Glory, glory, hallelujah!

Glory, glory, hallelujah!

His truth is marching on.

I have read a fiery gospel writ in burnished rows of steel:

"As ye deal with my contemners, so with you my grace shall deal;

Let the Hero, born of woman, crush the serpent with his heel,

his truth is marching on."

(Chorus)

Glory, glory, hallelujah!

Glory, glory, hallelujah!

Glory, glory, hallelujah!

his truth is marching on.

He has sounded forth the trumpet that shall never call retreat;

He is sifting out the hearts of men before His judgment-seat:

Oh, be swift, my soul, to answer Him! be jubilant, my feet!

Our God is marching on.

(Chorus)

Glory, glory, hallelujah!

Glory, glory, hallelujah!

Glory, glory, hallelujah!

Our God is marching on.

In the beauty of the lilies Christ was born across the sea,

With a glory in His bosom that transfigures you and me:

As He died to make men holy, let us die to make men free,

While God is marching on.

(Chorus)

Glory, glory, hallelujah!

Glory, glory, hallelujah!

Glory, glory, hallelujah!

Our God is marching on.

He is coming like the glory of the morning on the wave,

He is Wisdom to the mighty, He is Succour to the brave,

So the world shall be His footstool, and the soul of Time His slave,

Our God is marching on.

(Chorus)

Glory, glory, hallelujah!

Glory, glory, hallelujah!

Glory, glory, hallelujah!

Our God is marching on.

I like that this song ties us all together. As a family, my dad, mother, brother, and I sang this in a church service. We sang all four parts because that’s how we sang everything. While not knowing anything about my great grandmother’s musical taste, I can say with certainty that she was familiar with “The Battle Hymn of the Republic.” And in the same way that my grandson sang my momma’s song to me, the tradition of the music carries on.

Music to share – The Mormon Tabernacle Choir has a beautiful version of this song.