When I was Junior High school I could actually sing a few notes. At least enough to prompt Mr. Taglino the music teacher into offering me an invitation to join the school chorus. I guess my voice never really changed as in getting deeper but rather I just lost whatever range I had. Mr. Taglino was a really neat guy who was the nephew of Neil Hefti who did many arrangements for the Count Basie band as well as writing the theme from Batman. So I was kind of impressed. It just lasted a couple of years but I remember singing Handel's Messiah at Christmas and a rousing performance of Carl Orf's Carmina Burrana in Latin long before it was used in every Gothic movie ever made.
I started thinking about those days recently when a strange confluence of events all fell into place. It started when we had Dee Snider of Twisted Sister on the air to talk about his show Gone Country. Dee is a fellow Long Island boy and I had heard that he sang in the chorus at Baldwin High school. Well he sheepishly admitted that not only did he sing in the chorus but that the chorus had been all state and had won numerous awards. It's not really the Twisted Sister image is it? I guess he was gonna take it. He then broke into a horridly raucus off key version of Handel's Hallelujah Chorus.
Next up a couple of days later we had Lenny Kravitz on the phone with us. It seems that his mom Roxy Roker of Howard University and the Jefferson's fame convinced him to join the California Boys Choir at age eleven. Lenny on the phone was so proud remenicing on the air about the awards they won and their performances at the Hollywood Bowl with Zubin Meta, the Joffrey Ballet and even the Metropolitan Opera. It's an influence you can hear in Lenny's music along with Jimi Hendrix.
Well the trifecta in this confluence came over the weekend when I opened up the March edition of Blender Magazine. A reader asked Blender about something Keith Richards of the Rolling Stones referred to in his autobiography. One of Keiths earliest live musical performances was at age nine where as a member of a boys choir he performed Handel's Messiah at Westminster Abbey at the 1953 Coronation of Queen Elizibeth II.
And Jimi Hendrix supposedly died at a residence in London that was once owned by George Frederick Handel. Hallelujah you might say. Or in Keith's case it really is the singer not the song.
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