I’ve watched many episodes of “So You Think You Can Dance.” I don’t think I can dance. I know I can.
But not like the dancing on this show: ballroom, salsa, hip-hop and such. No, I dance, albeit now in the den, as most of my generation did — flailing my arms and hips and legs around as our internal drums directed.
“Freestyle” dancing requires no training and no talent.
But singing is different. And I realized in church last Sunday that whatever singing talent I used to possess had fled like a congregation to the fellowship hall for pot-luck.
The opening song, led by First Christian Church’s vocally talented Steve Cox, was “He Keeps me Singing.” Well, Steve and God kept me singing until I got to the high notes. I couldn’t hit them.
Two years ago I could. This time, I sounded like Edith Bunker’s squawking, “Those were the dayyyys.”
Directly behind me, my friend Steve Magee was hitting that upper register as clear and loud and beautiful as Captain von Trapp in “The Sound of Music.”
When I was little, some elementary school teachers deemed that I possessed musical potential. Piano and voice lessons ensued. They assigned me solos. I placed first in talent shows. I fancied myself a little Nancy Sinatra of Summit Elementary. I know now that the pool of singing talent there was more like a puddle.
Those pipes and poise followed me straight to Denman Junior High, where my friend Darlene Godbold and I performed a Three Dog Night song, a cappella, in a quickly orchestrated talent show. Her mama sewed our attire — paisley bell bottoms and matching bell-sleeved tops. We were seventh-grade Chers.
We took the spotlight and microphone, and sang “One is the Loneliest Number,” our harmony, as pitch-perfect as Simon and Garfunkel.
Then came high school. I was saturated with vocally cocky confidence and was selected for girls’ sextet as second soprano. Our music teacher, Carolyn Smith, carted us female Osmonds all over Pike County to perform at ladies’ club luncheons. Praise abounded.
I continued voice lessons from teachers Carolyn Price and Susan Bamberg. Then something unexpected happened, but not to my singing skills. All that stage confidence evaporated like sweat.
I relished singing in choral groups and in church choir and in the annual musicals, but I’d developed an incurable case of solo stage fright.
One memory sticks. The MHS chorus was practicing numbers for a school assembly. One song, new to us all, contained a solo — all of three lines — which included one almost Whitney Houston-like high note. Choral director Bob Jones kept trying different sopranos. Nobody succeeded. When Bob got to me, he was exasperated and tired: “Janellyn, you try.” I hit that high note with precision and won the solo by default.
I practiced those three lines all day all week. It was show time and my time. And when I looked out over the sea of faces, I forgot every word of those three lines.
What does a pro do when she knows the tune and forgets the words? I don’t know, but this 16-year-old made up her own words that made absolutely no sense.
Bob raised one eyebrow as I sang out what he was later to teach me in speech: the art of impromptu. No one in the audience knew, as the song was unfamiliar and most weren’t paying attention.
Soon after, voice recital rolled around and it included two dreaded — and dreadful — solos. One was some silly 1690-ish British a cappella aria “Nymphs and Shepherds,” designed to show range and no doubt to impress the mothers who’d paid for the lessons. I suppose if I messed up, no one would know. But what was wrong with a chart-buster? Elton John’s “Goodbye Yellow Brick Road” holds incredible range, and our parents — and I — would’ve enjoyed it.
Surprisingly, I found “Nymphs and Shepherds” on YouTube. It provided a huge laugh as the opera lady sang it just like I had to: trills and runs and dumb archaic words that I remember even now.
After high school, the only folks who heard me sing were my college roommates, my students when I taught them folk ballads, and my children, who were forced into submission.
Once my daughter Meredith and I were in the car as I blared out some popular song on the radio. She asked, all casual-like, “Mama, who sings that?”
When I told her, thinking I was all with-it and in-the-know, she said, “Well, let ‘em.”
I got that. But church. I always felt joy in the pew as I sang every note of the hymnal songs of my faith. I can read music. I can carry a tune, and until recently, I could hit that high F.
Just now, I sang the words to “One is the Loneliest Number.” I recall every note. I just can’t hit them all.
One line goes, “No is the saddest experience you’ll ever know.” But I always heard it — and sang it — “Low is the saddest experience.”
So now in church, I’ll “go low” and let the two Steves take over. Yes, Edith, those were the days.
n n n
JANELLYN B. CORNACCHIONE is a recently retired teacher of 40 years in three Pike County high schools.
