My Love For Singing (1)

I thought this would be a good time to say a little something about my love for singing.   My mother taught me to sing when I was very little.   I loved singing and my family soon picked up on the fact that I could sing on pitch.   It was many years later before I realized I do not have the natural gift of rhythm, but I can do pitch.  I have to work hard at rhythm.

All through school we had various kinds of singing programs and I always looked forward to them.  Once I went to a 4-H club meeting in Abilene.  I was about 9 or 10 years old at the time.   It seemed to me like there were 3 or 4 hundred boys there.   Most of them were trying to be nonchalant.   The featured speaker was trying to draw them out.   He said, “How many of you know “Home on the Range?”   I was sitting on the front seat or close to it.  As an eager young man,  I held my hand high.  It turned out that I was the only kid in the meeting who would admit that he knew it.  So the speaker had me to come to the front.  He stood me up on a chair and together we sang “Home on the Range.”  My peers said things like “Bales, how could you be so stupid?”   In truth I enjoyed my moment in the sun.

When we moved to Clyde, singing was highly valued.  Since we sang acapella, we were expected to do it well.   R. M. Pyeatt and Earl Slater were the first songleaders I remember.   Earl Slater was related to Will W. Slater, who wrote the song, “Walking Alone At Eve.”   Brother Pyeatt’s favorite song was “When All God’s Singers Get Home.”   In my mind I can still see him tip toeing in order to reach the high note in the chorus.  I think of him every time I hear the song.

To help us learn music, the church conducted singing schools.  They usually every night for about two weeks.   We were taught to read music by using shaped notes, which is almost a lost art into today’s world.  We did get a smattering of musical theory and we then began facing the challenge of learning to sing parts.   I did not have a bass voice, but the bass notes were easier and I tried to sing bass.   Later I switched to tenor.   Since then I’ve discovered that I’m a baritone.  Baritones are a dime a dozen, and they don’t write a part for us.