Music and Family

I was so excited to do this blog! The picture above is my mom, Donna Spitzer, and myself during winter break this year. My mom is one of my best friends. We have grown so close over the past four years after she was diagnosed with breast cancer, but the only thing music related I know about her is that she swears she has no musical talent. Unlike my dad who participated in marching band all the way through school (tuba) and took piano lessons as a teenager, my mom can carry a tune vocally but that's about it--at least to my prior knowledge. My dad has always been very open about his musical life and his musical taste is the one I have the most knowledge of, so I am glad that I now had the excuse to get my mom to open up about her own musical experiences.

 

 

 

My mom was born in Faulkner, Maryland. Faulkner is a small town in Charles County, considered to be Southern Maryland. Faulkner had a very small rural population of farmers and fishermen. You can kind of imagine it like the stereotypical good ole' southern town--the Bowlings (my mother's maiden name) are everywhere in southern Maryland and everybody knows them.

Interview

Chloe: Growing up, where did you hear music? This can be anywhere from your home, school, stores, etc.

Mom: Church and home...School.

 

Chloe: What was your experience with music in school?

Mom: Since I went to a Catholic school, it was basically all church or religious music. We had a church service every week as part of our schooling. And special occasions, they had you know things where you put on performances around Christmas time. I think it was mainly used and designed to reinforce what you got at church. I mean my school was taught by nuns, which you don't really see even at Catholic schools now-a-days.

 

Chloe: Did you play any instruments or sing?

Mom: No instruments. Of course, you were expected to sing as part of the stuff at school and church. But that was where everybody participated; I didn't participate in choral groups or anything.

 

Chloe: You said you experienced music at home. What kind of music and in what ways?

Mom: Stuff on tv had music like Don and Marie Osmond. The Osmond Family was like the Jackson Five, where they had a TV special and at some point the youngest (Donny and Marie) became more popular. These two eventually had their own variety show and she loved country music and he loved rock-n-roll. There were six of us (mom being the eldest) with ten years between me and the youngest so anything we watched had to be something everybody could watch. We only had one TV--well actually, I didn't know of anyone growing up who had more than one TV. MomMom (her mom) and my grandparents would listen to what I guess we would call "old country." You know like Johnny Cash, Loretta Lin, and Patsy Cline. 

 

Chloe: Did your family perform music together?

Mom (2nd from left) and her sisters

Mom: Other than participating in church services singing together, at Christmas time when the tree was first put up we would decorate it and sing Christmas carols together. My cousin convinced me to enter a 4H talent contest with her one year as a singing group. MomMom got her friend Mrs. Gee, a music teacher, to give us some lessons and we did the talent show. They picked the top however many acts and had another show from different counties. We made the first cut but we didn't make it to the final. I have no idea what we sang, but I was petrified on stage. I just looked straight up while we sang and made myself blind by looking into the spotlight. Our school never had a big stage or anything so it was really strange. We were gleeful, jumping around and hugging each other after but I think it was more from just being able to remember the words.

 

Chloe: What was the music that you listened to for personal pleasure?

Mom: I guess I just listened to rock-n-roll music. I don't really remember us having a lot of playing our own music. If MomMom had the radio on in the kitche, she would get control. Maybe I listened to light pop music--John Denver and The Carpenters.

 

Chloe: Was this the music that was considered mainstream for people your age?

Mom: I would say yes. Probably like a lot of young people--riding the bus to school and back--I would hear kids talking about groups that were whatever mainstream that I didn't know anything about. But I think they fell in the same genre.

 

Chloe: What was the first sort of music you owned? And what was the format?



Mom: It would have been a vinyl album and I think it was probably the Eagles.

Chloe: What was your first live musical experience?
Mom: Probably wasn't until I was an adult or older teenager. I went to some concerts with daddy (referring to my father). We saw Alabama, Boston, Elton John and Billy Joel. Daddy took me to my first play or musical. When I was growing up we didn't have money to afford concerts. I mean, daddy just had a different experience then I did. He grew up closer to DC, so as a kid he could travel to DC to see the symphony perform. There were only two children in his family and both parents. MomMom worked two jobs all the time just to pay the bills--so we didn't really have leisure money.

Chloe: Was there any type of music that was considered controversial: socially or just within your family?
Mom: I would have to say we didn't feel any impact if there was because we lived a sheltered life growing up. Some other people were exposed to things we weren't. If anything, but not really musical, as an early teenager the movie Staying Alive with John Travolta came out. The music became really popular, but the movie was not considered good by MomMom. If we had money for movies, MomMom would call Aunt Nancy (her sister) and would look it up in a Catholic newsletter to see if it was a good movie or not.