Dean Martin "Volare" (1958)
Volare
Music always filled my family's home when I was growing up. I recall as a very young child listening on a portable record player to 78's that belonged to my mother and ones that she'd bought for me. I loved them all whether it was "The Ballad of Davy Crockett" in my collection or "I've Got My Love To Keep Me Warm" in my mother's collection. For me all music was good.
In 1958 when we moved to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, my parents bought brand new furniture for every room of the duplex they moved into. The furniture they bought for this move was the first they ever owned in their marriage. Prior to that we'd lived in furnished rental houses. It was like being born into a world where everything was new and for us I guess it was.
One of the highlights of the new furniture was a hi-fi record player that they put in the dining room. The hi-fi design matched the rest of the furniture. It was a Danish modern-looking affair light in color that stood on four dowel-like legs. You could put a stack of LP records on the spindle and they'd play a couple hours.
My mother would put a stack of records on and do her housecleaning while I swirled around the house acting like a kid. I don't know where she got those first record albums but she had an assortment of compilations of the hits of the day along with albums by the popular artists like Frank Sinatra, Perez Prado, and Louis Prima with Keely Smith. I enjoyed my mother's music and listening to it seemed to brighten her days.
Then there was the radio. When the hi-fi wasn't playing, the radio was often on. The AM stations mainly played music. I don't know if there was much in the way of talk stations then. If there was, that's not what my mother listened to in the daytime while my father was at work. She listened to the music.
And I listened to the music. The boppy tunes and happy ditties. Or sometimes it was those haunting tunes that were kind of happy and kind of sad. Songs like "Volare" where Dean Martin sang about happy hearts and flying away and words in a mysterious language that made no sense to me. It was a song that mystified me yet made me feel happy.
The music of my mother and father is now my music along with so many other kinds of music. There are times I'd be content to fly off to the clouds on that old music. In my mind, I'm still dancing in circles in the living room of that Pittsburgh duplex as my happy heart sings "Volare".
What songs do you associate most with your childhood? Did you have a stay-at-home mom and did she listen to music in the daytime? How old were you when you first began to appreciate music?
