Singing the Old, Old Songs: Finding Unexpected Joy During the Pandemic

By Beverly Hoch (Epsilon Phi, Denton Alumni)

Singing the Old, Old Songs: Finding Unexpected Joy During the Pandemic

Nadine Hoch and her daughter, Beverly Hoch

My mother wrote in my baby book that I was singing before I was talking. My dad must have believed that every occasion could be made better with a spontaneous, heartfelt song. He’d strike up our favorite old-timey songs as we drove the seven miles back to our house from a Sunday evening at my grandfolks’ farm. “O Mister Moon, moon, bright and shiny moon, won’tcha please shine down on me?” mother’s sweet soprano harmonizing at the sixth.

Dad always delighted us with crazy songs, sometimes playing his ukulele. Here’s one: “Kokadum, mickadee, lickadiddle huggyduggy” (come with me my little honey) “and ligadissen to my sogadong” (and listen to my song). My first stage was the dining room table. I was hoisted up by Dad for a stellar rendition of “How Much Is That Doggie in the Window?” (arf-arf). And I loved to climb up on the woodpile to serenade the neighbor’s cattle in the pasture behind the house.

The school music programs in Marion, Kansas, (population 2,300) flourished. Solos and ensembles regularly filled the community’s need for programs. There were dozens of Girl Scout songs and church choir. “Bursting into song” was what we did.

As a young bride, Mother bought quite a few pieces of sheet music while her husband Roland Meyers was deployed. She signed with a well-practiced, firm hand “Nadine Myers.”

And the encouragement expressed by the listeners was downright effusive, warm and real. The exception: my brothers, who thought I was too exuberant with the hymns in church. To this day I still can’t miss a good descant opportunity.

My music education came later, but early on it was not organized but organic. I was, by and large, left to my own devices to discover, develop and share my God-given voice. Grandma’s upright piano was moved to our house at some point, and it was fun to hear my brother struggle through “The Spinning Song” and learn “Chopsticks” and the rest. But it was the big cardboard box of sheet music that was pure magic. The beautiful covers, some already frayed and held together with adhesive tape and safety pins, advertised that they were well loved. The titles were like magnets: my 9-year old self just had to know what a song called “Crazy Words, Crazy Tune, Vo-Do-De-O” sounded like. I began to beg for piano lessons. And I was off to the races. I’d found an entry point of interest.

I’ve been the keeper of the sheet music ever since. Awhile back, we finally bought a nice antique music cabinet and I carefully went through, alphabetizing the love songs and separating the rest into groups like women’s names, World War I and World War II, novelty songs, dream songs and the like. The collection contains about 250 pieces, mostly my grandmother’s but many belonging to my mother.

Mother’s first husband, Roland, gifted her with some sheet music that he signed before he died in World War II.

Rediscovering the Old

At the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, my husband and I talked my mother, Nadine, who just turned 99, into moving in with us. Her nice retirement community apartment was less than a minute down the street from our house, but had been closed to visitors. That would just not do. And we had the room. Little did we know what a blessing that decision would be and now, a year and a half later, we can’t imagine the situation any other way.

So for fun, mother and I started tackling the sheet music at letter “A” and side by side, are slowly making our way through the collection. She knows many of them by heart and soon we had a fairly big stack of favorites set aside. We harmonize and laugh so hard we cry, and just sing our little hearts out. We take a nice long time scrutinizing the wonderfully detailed artwork on the cover. She usually wants to see what other songs are advertised on the back, too.

Many of the pieces that belonged to my Grandmother Corrine are tattered and worn and must be handled with great care.

Some of the old Irish Tunes in Grandmother Corrine’s collection actually came from her mother, Emma.

The really old ones, my Grandmother Corrine’s, are very fragile. Many of those are from her childhood, passed down from her mother, Emma. Irish songs “When I Dream of Old Erin, I’m Dreaming of You” and ones from World War I, “They Were All Out of Step but Jim.” Turning the delicate pages becomes slow- motion choreography as we hold the note (and our breath) for the next line. Mother remembers lying on a couch in the farmhouse living room on a hot summer day and crying as her mother played the old sad songs and wistful ones like “Beautiful Ohio” but also jumping up to improvise a tap dance to the staccato phrases of “The Glow-Worm” song.

Some are special gifts signed “to Nadine from Roland, ’42.” At that time, it was customary to bring your date the latest sheet music sensation. Roland was Mom’s high school sweetheart. He enlisted in the Air Force and she joined him in California where they were married. He deployed six weeks later. After piloting many missions, he perished over the Pacific Ocean. Reporting engine difficulty, he turned back to the base, the plane and its crew were never found. Needless to say, his gifts like “He Wore a Pair of Silver Wings” and “Meet Me Tonight in Dreamland” speak volumes of how the music of that era comforted a young bride through unimaginably difficult times.

We are nowhere near finished with this project. Next will be a journey through the decade collections beyond the 40s that I’ve added to my own library, along with all the Golden Era of Broadway folios (the ones with the photos in the middle). And we always fill in with the old hymns on Sunday, of course.

I can’t help wondering, in this digital age, what will happen to the scores, probably in excess of 10,000 songs, that I have accumulated during my singing and teaching career? It’s hard to find room for them now, and music libraries are already filled to the brim — “we are not accepting donations at this time.” Scan them all? They probably already are scanned and available somewhere.

But I’m feeling a tinge of “you don’t know what you’re missing” for the song spelunker who does not experience the pure joy gained by sitting on the floor in the corner of an ancient, dusty music store or between the library stacks pawing through an old cardboard box marked “miscellaneous.” The tactile reality, the fragrance of the old paper was a big part of the thrill for me. Discoveries will always be made thanks to the brilliance and scope of resources now, but the gems I found while browsing were some of the very best I ever sang.

During the recent virtual convention, I tuned in to Rachel Barham’s (Delta Nu, Washington DC Alumni) wonderful presentation about birdsong, not surprisingly, another passion of mine. She said something very profound and simple: “Love what you love.” This inspired me to take stock of those loves and feed them with attention. What or who drew you in to music? Then what drew you in deeper, then in so deep you never wanted to leave?

Were your entry points humble and haphazard like mine? Celebrate it and recover the joy.Right now, for me, during this unplanned luxury of time with my mother, that old sheet music collection has provided a wealth of joy. And once each month, weather permitting, you can find us out on the patio singing to the sky: “O Mister Moon, moon, bright and shiny moon, won’tcha please shine down on me?” Thank you, Mother, for hanging on to that collection in the first place, for instilling in me a love of the old, old songs. And oh, thank you for the piano lessons.

Mother poses with some of her favorites from our family’s vast collection of sheet music.

Nadine’s Alphabet of Favorite Titles (for today, at least)

A: Always

B: Beautiful Ohio

C: Calico Rag

D: Deep Purple

E: Every Time it Rains … (Pennies from Heaven)

F: Fit as a Fiddle (and Ready for Love)

G: The Good Ship Lollipop

H: He Wore a Pair of Silver Wings

I: I’ll Be Seeing You

J: Just a Song at Twilight

K: K-K-K-Katie

L: Let Me Call You Sweetheart

M: Meet Me Tonight in Dreamland

N: A Nightingale Sang in Berkley Square

O: The Object of My Affection, Over the Rainbow

P: Peg-o-my Heart

Q: (There’s a) Quaker Down in Quakertown

R: Red Wing S: Stardust

T: Too Tired

U: Until We Meet Again

V: Vo-Do-De-O!

W: What’ll I Do?

X: Kiss Me Again

Y: You’ll Never Know

Z: Zip a Dee Doo Dah!

Beverly Hoch, soprano, (Epsilon Phi, Denton Alumni) joined Mu Phi Epsilon in 1971 at Friends University in Wichita, Kansas. She was a 1977 winner of the Sterling Staff Award and coordinated that event, now called The Mu Phi Epsilon International Competition, in 2011 and 2021. An ACME designee, she has enjoyed an international singing career in opera, recital, chamber music and oratorio performances. Her discography includes “The Art of the Coloratura” with the Hong Kong Philharmonic, “Die Zauberflöte” as Queen of the Night with Roger Norrington conducting and “Carmina Burana” with Charles Dutoit. She taught singing at Texas Woman’s University in Denton, Texas, for 20 years and is music director of First Presbyterian Church. She and her husband, jazz trumpeter Mike Steinel, helped found the charity Instruments of Change International for Covenant Children Inc. which has provided musical instruments and instruction to children and young adults in South Africa, Haiti, Israel and Kenya as well as domestically.