My sister Leslie and I don’t talk that often on the phone, but when we do, it usually goes on for a while.
Recently when we were chatting, she noted that she has figured out the difficulty with singing in the various musical groups she has led or has sung with, over the years and currently.
It’s that, when we were growing up, singing with our father, it felt as though we never rehearsed. That was actually untrue: in singing in the car, at the dinner table, in the living room, and at the campgrounds, we WERE rehearsing all the time. It just didn’t FEEL as though it was rehearsing, because we never had to set time aside to do so.
One of the sad truths is that, as far as we know, there are not any recordings of Dad, Leslie, and me singing, or even of Dad solo when we were still living in Binghamton, NY in the 1960s.
She thinks that we, plus perhaps her daughter Rebecca Jade, ought to get together and work on some musical thing. The family being bicoastal – they live in the San Diego, CA area – I’m not sure how that would work. I did note that, if I get out there, and we were going to try to record something, we would – alas! – have to actually rehearse.
Happy birthday to the middle child.
This is such a classic portrait. I have one of me and one of my sister in the same pose at about the same age. It’s wonderful you and your sister are still close.
What a cute little girl your sister was ! In my family nobody ever sang, we have terrible voices, sounds as if you walk on a cat’s tail !
We used to sing all the time in our family, too. Dad couldn’t carry a tune in a proverbial bucket, but Mom was a jazz singer by profession. Even though I was the only daughter to pursue singing as a career, my two older sisters were very good. The middle sister, Jo, used to sit in rarely at my gigs and sing “Sing I Fell For You.” And you’re right… that musical “muscle” stays flexed when singing is second nature around the house. Lex and I harmonize all the time on Beatles songs and such…