Tone Deaf

Are you a good singer? Did God bless you with the kind of pipes that can blast out a tune, perfectly on key? If so, I envy you. I’ve known since I was a wee one – because others have told me – that I cannot sing. John Lennon once said, “Every child is an artist until he’s told he’s not an artist.” I think that maybe I might have once been a singer…until I was told I wasn’t.

—   —   —

Every year, my grade school, St. Agatha, held both a talent show and a Christmas program. Every classroom had a singing and dancing routine in both productions. For the talent show, in addition to each class’s act, students were encouraged to “try out” with an individual or group act.

Mrs. M, our music teacher, and Mrs. D, our art teacher, were the judges each year. They determined which of the auditioning acts could go on to perform in the talent show.

One evening when I was in the Fourth or Fifth Grade, Suzanne’s mom invited all the girls in my class over to her house one evening. Suzanne’s and Susan’s moms had chosen several songs that the girls could use to audition for the upcoming talent show. The girls then picked which song or songs they wanted to sing. The moms hoped to get three or four girls interested in singing the same song and that became the act. The girls in the new group would then huddle together to discuss what they would wear and how they would stand while performing.

I chose to join Michele and Suzanne in an act in which we dressed up like old wash women and sang Coney Island Washboard. (You know we had nothing to do with picking this circa 1932 song by the Mills Brothers!) We planned to wear old lady dresses stuffed with pillows and we would kneel on stage around a big metal tub. One of the moms had a couple of washboards we could use so while we sang we could rub clothes up and down the washboards. Entering the stage would be part of our act. We planned on climbing the stage’s side stairs that the audience could see, carrying pillow cases full of laundry.

After school several days later, Mrs. M stopped Michele, Suzanne and me as we were walking together down one of the school hallways. We were hoping to get a little practice time in before our audition.

“So, girls, what’s your act going to be?” She asked.

“We’re going to sing Coney Island Washboard,” we responded in unison.

“The three of you?” She asked.

“Yes.”

Mrs. M looked at me pointedly. “You’re in the act too, Jill?”

“Yes,” I answered sheepishly, anxiety splashing over me as though I had accepted an ALS Ice Bucket Challenge. Sudden. Electrifying. Agonizing.

“With your voice?” She asked. Though she had the decency to lower her voice a bit, my friends could hear her well enough. I was mortified. I desperately wanted to disappear.

Instead, I responded, “It’s okay. I’m just going to move my lips. I won’t sing.” The jig was up. My secret out. My friends were hearing me admit to Mrs. M that I was a fake. What would they think of me? Would I still be allowed in their act?

I stayed in the act, but I was so embarrassed to be there. My friends knew I was a fraud. We passed the audition and two of the three of us sang in the show!

—   —   —

Patty was a friend of mine and an incredible singer. We were in Sixth or Seventh Grade, when I sat in the backseat of Patty’s mom’s car along with several other girls from our class. Patty sat up front. I’m not sure where we were going but we were about to leave the St. Agatha parking lot. A popular song came on the radio that we all knew the words to, and everyone started singing.

Within just moments, Patty’s mom called from the front seat, “Hey! Someone back there is flat. Who is it?”

Like I was going to admit it was me! Wouldn’t you know it! I had finally conjured up enough confidence to finally sing – really sing – in front of my friends and… Bam! Busted. I immediately stopped singing. I knew I was the off-key crooner. Again, I was embarrassed beyond belief. And again, I committed myself to being the world’s most magnificent lip sync-er ever never heard. (Long before lip syncing became a thing.)

—   —   —

Mrs. M was an accomplished opera singer. She was a Fifth Grade teacher at St. Agatha, taught Music to most of the different grades. On weekends she regularly sang opera at a local Italian restaurant. And to round out her spare time, Mrs. M also served as the director of the parish’s youth choir.

All the girls in my class wanted to be in the youth choir. And while I didn’t want to sing in a choir, I also didn’t want to miss out on what all the other girls in my class were doing. On the first day of practice, Mrs. M asked us to take a seat in the choir section of the church. She instructed the girls who were altos, to sit in the lower section and sopranos to sit in the upper section. If we didn’t know what we were, we were to sit wherever we wanted because she would be listening to us and determining what type of singer each of us was.

This, of course, was a problem. I was a lip sync-er, not a singer. Could I pull this off?

As Mrs. M walked along my row, listening to “us” sing, she paused in front of me. Could she tell I wasn’t singing? I have to think so. I ended up in the soprano section, probably because there were more sopranos than altos and they wouldn’t need me to contribute. Which was fine with me because most of my friends were in the soprano section.

During my two years of youth choir, if I wasn’t yucking it up with my friends in the soprano section, I was sweating bullets, fearful that Mrs. M would make me sing by myself to her critical ear. And instead of determining whether I was an alto or soprano, she would kick me out of the choir altogether, insisting I was no singer at all.

—   —   —

Mrs. M was my music teacher for most of grade school. Most weeks we would practice singing the songs that would be sung in Mass the following Friday. I may have been in Fifth or Sixth Grade when the class (I think just the girls), were practicing a song in Music class. Mrs. M chided the class, saying we weren’t singing loudly enough. My friend Carol and I decided to accommodate Mrs. M by singing as loudly as we could. This did not induce the reaction we had been anticipating. Instead of giving us a “Bravo!”, Mrs. M scolded the two of us for yelling and not singing properly. She then went a step further. I swear that woman hated me.

She asked me to sit in the front row, changing seats with whoever had been sitting there. She then asked me to sing the scales. I complied. She told me I wasn’t singing. She instructed me to say “Hi” as though I was greeting someone I hadn’t seen in a long time.

“Hi!” I said.

“Try being a bit more breathy and excited when you say it,” she coached, as all my friends sat around, bored. “Raise the pitch of your voice.”

“Hi!”

“No. Again.”

“Hi!”

“No. Again.”

After five minutes of humiliation, Mrs. M finally gave up on me. It was apparent that I would not be encouraged to raise my voice to sing in class ever again. She should have been more careful in what she had asked for… I decided to kiss my career as a soloist good-bye. With my friends, I opted to be the funny one, making fun of myself and my poor singing before Mrs. M had another chance to do it herself.

—   —   —

I knew then and I know now that I have a flat singing voice. Shoot! I have a monotone speaking voice! (Funny that I’m an aspiring voiceover actor!) I can tell sometimes when I am singing to the radio. I’ve always sounded better at singing along with male singers like Bob Seger and Bruce Springsteen. At least I’ve always thought so. But sometimes even singing along with their songs, I have a tough time staying on key.

My husband Pat and I started dating in high school and he has never been a fan of my singing. In fact, he regularly criticized it. Come on! I wasn’t even allowed to sing along with the radio in my own car! Whenever a favorite song would come on in the car and I would start singing, Pat told me to plug my ears so I could hear what I really sounded like. He assured me that I would not like what I heard. I promised myself that when I became a rock and roll icon, I would not ask Pat to be my manager. Truth be told, though, when I did plug my ears and listen to myself, I didn’t like what I heard!

I take some comfort in the fact that Meghan has never asked me to be quiet when she’s caught me singing yet when Pat starts bellowing a tune, she’s quick to cover her ears and yell at her dad to “Stop!” Ha!

—   —   —

Today, when I do sing, it’s in the car, I’m either by myself or with my dog Cash — who, incidentally, loves my voice – and I never plug my ears.

So, maybe I’ll be sitting next to you at church or at a concert, and you’ll wonder why I’m not singing along with all the others. The simple answer is this: I’m doing you a favor.