Music Goes Round and Round

I even learned Latin hymns

Music can relax you and move you to another place. You listen, think, glide, and travel to other worlds round and round, and it comes out somewhere, but who knows where? Bill Haley and the Comets, Carl Perkins, and Red Prysock did it for me years ago. Similarly, opera, jazz, country, and zydeco, among others, appeal to me these days.

Even the church hymn did it.

I remember the days when I attended a church retreat. Although we were obligated, I came to enjoy them, especially the Latin hymns.

The church was cool and damp, with a stale, musty smell when the ceremonial incense was not burning. The retreat may have brought me closer to God, but I was more drawn to the music, particularly the benediction hymns like Tantum Ergo. I didn’t understand Latin, but it did not diminish my appreciation. What mattered was that I memorized words that fit the mesmerizing melodies I could hum.

Tantum ergo, Sacramentum

Veneremur cernui….

Let us adore so great a sacrament.

Some years later, I recited the hymn verbatim to one of my Providence College Dominicans. "You know,” he said, "it was composed by St Thomas Aquinas.”

Church hymnals were not the only music of the day.

Our third-floor tenement was full of sunshine on Saturday mornings when Mom listened to WHIM radio and DJ Bob LaChance. Bob’s enthusiasm, singing, and music added to the glow. That is why she loved him.

While Mom did housework, she sang along with Bob on those Saturdays. She danced around the bed as she was making it and sang at top pitch. Unlike my Dad, who, if he ever sang, did it in monotone, Mom was good, though I did not appreciate her early morning march singing “Onward Christian Soldiers” to wake us on school days.

One Saturday, Bob introduced a tune that was simply entertaining. As I remember, he said: “I’m going to play a real oldie that many of you may remember. Here goes.” He played The Music Goes Round and Round, big band stuff featuring Tommy Dorsey.
“I love that song,” Mom warbled. “Your Dad and I danced to it years ago. It was so popular that one radio station played it for the whole day, over and over.”
Bob, a tenor, sang along with the Dorsey band while Mom accompanied him.

I blow through here
The music goes round and around
Whoa-ho-ho-ho-ho
And it comes out here.
I push the first valve down
The music goes down and around

Whoa-ho-ho-ho-ho

And it comes out here

“Round and round? Mom, what’s he singing about?”

Just as the song ended, Bob commented, “This is a song about a tuba. You blow in the mouthpiece, and the music goes around and around and comes out of the big bell.” Of course, I loved it.

Some years later, I was working at the City Hall Store at Christmas and heard a distinctive tenor behind me, “Do you mind waiting on me?” I knew immediately who it was.

“Sure, sure,” I replied, turning and blurting, “I know who you are!”

He was smaller than I thought. He was wearing a black topcoat and black soft hat, dressed, not at all, like what I thought a disc jockey should. It was Bob LaChance. Then again, I never thought about what disc jockeys wear. The voice was the only thing that mattered.

“You do? How?”

“My mother listened to you every Saturday morning and sang along with you. I recognize your voice. I remember the morning you played I loved it.”

“You remember that? Why, thank you.” He seemed pleased. I liked him.” You know, it is about a tuba.”

Round and round. Really. Just the other day, I thought of the song. It reminded me of what music can do for you; it takes you on a journey, transporting you to another world and out of your own. Remarkable. I tapped my fingers, eventually learned the tune… whoa, ho ho ho ho, ho…and it comes out here.

And so too does Tantum ergo after all these years.

Yes, it comes out here or wherever, who knows?

No, No, wait. It never comes out. Music is like that. It remains a part of you.

Maybe still back in the sunny tenement? Or the church.