Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, December 12, 1993 TAG: 9312120004
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: ed shamy
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
The funnest part of all is the people that contests seem to smoke out of the woodwork.
Some of them are people we'd never meet - peas on separate platters, if you will - and contests are just enough lure to jolt their platter and bounce them onto ours.
The Trash Train Tunes Contest just ended smoked out some interesting characters.
But the funnest of all wasn't anyone who attached a witty note or added a snide comment to an entry.
Jeanette Crawford was funnest. Jeanette recorded her entry on her tape recorder at her home in Northwest Roanoke, gently packed the cassette into an empty box of lime gelatin and mailed it to me.
It was a delightful effort, a bluesy version of "I've Been Working on the Railroad," accompanied by some spectacular piano riffs - if that's possible.
Jeanette had recorded her song on her "old, tinny piano" the day before she donated it to the Salvation Army and it was hauled away.
On the tape, though, Jeanette sounded as if she'd recorded the song underwater - either that or she had a quavering voice akin to a foghorn with strep throat.
The judges still loved the music, so they made Jeanette a winner. But we knew we'd need to re-record the tune, so I visited her.
I played the tape for Jeanette and she slapped her hands over her face in embarrassment.
Jeanette is 72 years old. She doesn't sound at all like a foghorn. She's originally from Radford, where her dad was a train engineer for 42 years and her mom was a music teacher, hosting students on the big white upright piano in the parlor of their home.
One student mom didn't guide over the ivories was Jeanette.
"Too bookish," says Jeanette now by way of explanation.
But that didn't stop her from developing a passion and an ear for music.
Jeanette taught herself, but, for the first time in years, she doesn't have a piano in her home. She did, indeed, donate it to charity - because she couldn't afford to have it tuned.
I drove Jeanette to Leed's Music at Oak Grove Plaza - where folks were kind enough to let Jeanette use one of their pianos - so she could record her Trash Train Tunes entry anew, in a private room on a new piano.
Her eyes lit up when she saw that piano, a broad smile spread across her face. She heaved her purse onto the upright, sat down and spread her knotty, arthritic fingers over the keys.
Then, this woman who'd never been schooled in theory or chord structures or tempo, never been taught to read music or even to identify the keys, began to play.
Rich melodies resonated through the small rehearsal room, chords and short bursts of ragtime and jazzy passages sprang from Jeanette's mind and fingers. She played "Misty" for me, and she played "Muskrat Ramble" and then she got down to business to re-record "I've Been Working on the Railroad."
When it came time to go, Jeanette took her purse from the piano and lovingly stroked the instrument's wood. She left the room only reluctantly.
It had been a long time since Jeanette Crawford had played on a piano that fine.
She talked, on the way home, about how she'd always played for friends, and even at a few clubs, and how she'd written - in her mind only - arrangements for some of the tunes she'd heard over the years.
Keywords:
INFOLINE
by CNB