By Bruce Farrell Rosen,
A couple of years before my mother, Alma Rush Rosen, passed away from lung cancer in 1999, she lovingly offered me her prized collection of high-fidelity albums that she had collected with my father throughout their marriage, which had ended in divorce in the mid 1970’s. It was a heavy stack of about fifty albums, dating back to the 1940s, but mainly compiled in the 1950s, in the years before and after my birth in 1955.
My father had been in a big band in his younger days in Montreal, a saxophone player, and my mom had a voice that captured the essence of these songs. I remember falling asleep as she would sing the lyrics to Frank Sinatra, Tony Bennett, Andy Williams, Perry Como and Sophie Tucker.
My mom’s speaking voice was the sound of coffee and honey. But her singing voice had a higher range, and virtually everyone that I had known from her youthful days—sisters, brothers, friends–had told me that her singing voice should have been on an album, and that given her beauty she should have been in films. She was even the first runner up in the Miss Toronto Pageant in the early 1950s.
I have this photo of her, in a black sleeveless dress, cigarette in hand, as she sits at a New York City dinner table next to her good friend, Andy Williams. She would always tell stories of his kindness, and class, with Mr. Williams sitting so close to my mom, one can assume that there might have been more to it than friendship. She had always told me that his voice was her favorite.
I had not leafed through my mom’s record collection in many years. But a few days ago, I stumbled on The Great Sophie Tucker, the Decca Records label just below the title. Immediately, I traveled from 69 years old to about four, the sound of my mom’s young voice, the scent of our Toronto moving through my entire being.
The album scratches just slightly on my record player as I listen to “Some of These Days,” the first song on the second side.
“Some of these days you’ll miss me honey…some of these days you’ll be so lonely…”
Tucker sings as she describes the anguish of losing love but also the knowledge that her effect on the man that once fell for her will not be overcome. Sophie Tucker stares right through me as I look at the album cover, and in that stare is the presence of my mom, looking right into my soul. And she is transporting her memories of her youth, the feelings that she must have had as she listened to this song dozens and dozens of times.
It is almost as if my mom wants me to remember my ancestry as I look at this album. The back of the album reads that “some fifty years ago Sophie escaped an anti-Jewish riot in Odessa. Sophie was born one hour after her mother boarded a ship for America…” And she sounds like my grandmother, my mother’s mother, when it reads “her earliest memory is of her father’s beanery in Hartford, where Sophie acted as a waitress, cook, and handy man. She was a big girl with enormous blond braids and a loud voice. There was no confusion about the orders when Sophie called em.”
There is an alchemy to music. And that alchemy is transferred from the musician, the singer, the guitarist, the conductor, the symphonist–the alchemist–to the receptive, active, inspired listener. And as the transference of this alchemy occurs the scents, the sounds, the memories, the images, the echoed voices of those we’ve loved, or who have hurt us, the friends, the brothers, the sisters, with whom we shared so many precious but no longer distinct and clear moments can flood our bloodstream in a way that tells us once again who we are, who we were and who we always will be. The alchemy of music is the magic of memory–activated in new ways to remember our lives in new ways, to be given new meanings, or to be able to just go back in time and enjoy the person that has receded into the past.
And of course, new music can give us new memories, and can continue adding to the sound track of our lives–to be remembered in ten years from now, telling us who we are today.
Carl Gustav Jung described the alchemy of music as transformation, and as the “suffering of the music maker is transmuted into inner gold” so too, I would offer, is there a transformation into precious gold for the listener, even for an instant.
Into the early 1960s the music most heard at my home was Elvis Presley. Like many women (and men) my mom adored him. The album GI Blues was constantly being played and it turned out that we loved the same song more than any other, “What’s She Really Like”.
“What’s she really like
the girl that you see me with ?
What’s she really like
The one I’m so dreamy with ?
Well, let me tell you she’s wonderful,
She’s marvelous and she’s mine…”
I put this one on after listening to Sophie Tucker and I can see my mom’s face filled with euphoria. We’re singing it together at this incredible moment–the alchemy is fully in effect. Gold is being created from sound into memory; and memory is being transformed into my mom’s joy and laughter.
She reminds me of a story from her diary:
We were living in southern California. A woman who lived across the street owned a red convertible sports car. She had platinum blond hair and though I was quite young I remember her as being quite attractive. She had been in a few films and had small roles. She had been an extra in some films and apparently, she had been on the set of an Elvis film. Her name was Winnie.
Winnie had asked my mom to drive her to somewhere in Los Angeles or Beverly Hills because her car was in the shop. She wouldn’t tell my mom the person that she wanted to visit–only that it had to do with work, and it would be in a very expensive neighborhood. The way my mom tells it they arrived at a gorgeous Beverly Hills mansion. Winnie asked if my mom didn’t mind staying in the car for about an hour or so, and then they would go straight back to Santa Susana.
After about an hour my mom knocks on the door and is invited inside by the attendant. Inside Winnie is with Elvis Presley. Apparently, they were having an intimate conversation. Elvis sees my mother, and apparently must know this beautiful woman. Winnie introduces Elvis to my mom. My mom is clearly startled and captivated. And so is Elvis. He wants to get to know her. Not much later my mom says they must leave, that she has kids at home and the babysitter cannot stay too much longer. Elvis shakes her hand and says she is a beautiful woman.
The next day or day after Winnie receives flowers from Elvis Presley with a note that these should be delivered to my mom. Winnie is jealous but of course makes the delivery. The note says that Elvis would love to see her again. But of course, my mom gives Winnie the message that this is impossible and that she is a married woman with small children.
I have no doubt this is a true story. And it comes flooding back to me as I listen to “What’s she really like”.
In September 1999, my mother died of lung cancer. Her final words to me were ” If You Ever Need Me, I Won’t Be Far Away.” And so, I made this the title of my memoir published several years ago.
During the last several weeks of her life I would fly from my home in San Francisco to Santa Clarita several times. And on my last journey to visit her only days before she passed away, the airplane headphones played the song The Great Beyond from the band REM:
“I’ve watched the stars fall silent from your eyes…
I’m pushing an elephant up the stairs
I’m tossing out punchlines that were never there
Over my shoulder a piano falls
Crashing to the ground…
“I’m breaking through
I’m bending spoons
I’m keeping flowers in full bloom
I’m looking for answers from the great beyond…”
There could be no song on the planet that more completely captured my feelings as I made my final trip to visit my mom. My tears poured as I heard it, and I am back in that moment on that flight as I hear them tonight. And yes, the answers have come from the great beyond.
Bruce Farrell Rosen has retired recently after forty years as an investment manager in San Francisco. He is also an author of two books, “If You Ever Need Me, I Won’t be Far Away,” dedicated to his mom, a psychic, and “Bombed in his Bed: The Confessions of Jewish Gangster Myer Rush.” He has authored numerous articles for the BBC, Baseball Hall of Fame, San Francisco Chronicle, Marin Independent Journal, the “New York Daily News, Times of Israel, KQED San Francisco and others. He lives in San Francisco, California.
