A Brother Like Norton

7-25-24 mm

A BROTHER LIKE NORTON

* Circa 60’s-70s (2685)

“If you bring forth that which is within you, that which is within you will save you. If you do not bring forth that which is within you, what you don’t bring forth, will destroy you.”. Jesus

   My brilliant brother Norton was the eldest in the family.  We had 2 younger brothers, and I, the only girl, was 4 years Norton’s junior. Norton took music seriously at an early age, studying classical piano. Later, in college, he’d switch to classical organ. Such an esoteric instrument, and I was proud of him, as my main role model. He poured himself passionately into every discipline he took on. Then, later returned to his first love, piano. I suppose, he hoped music would save him.

As a young teenager (those nowhere years when I felt both invisible and painfully conspicuous), I was curious about Norton’s popular music anthologies stashed among his extensive music collection. I had little interest in classical music; there were no lyrics, and the musical notation might as well have been in Swahili.

When he left his door unlocked, I’d spend hours sitting on the cold tile floor in his basement bedroom leafing through his collection of song books.  I was searching for something I might recognize and try to sing. From an early age, singing was soothing to me. I wasn’t snooping, but wanting to be near and know the secrets of my revered and mysterious brother.

I marveled at the incidental things he left haphazardly on a dresser or his desk. Things he collected in his everyday life: snapshots of friends, books of poetry, cufflinks, a fountain pen, postcards from Europe. Interesting stuff I didn’t have yet. He had refined tastes and specialized in collecting ceramics, photographs of famous opera singers and composers and long playing records by celebrated artists I had only heard of from him. Fascinated by perusing the curios displayed in his room, I hoped he would not surprise me and find me there. This was his space. But, in our crazy family, respecting anyone’s boundaries hadn’t been discussed.  But we did respect padlocks

 When he was feeling generous or bored, he’d manifest a Judy Garland song book, and encourage me to sing Somewhere Over the Rainbow.

“A Taste Honey” was one of the first ‘grown-up ’songs I learned under his tutelage.  Norton loved classical music, but he also surreptitiously appreciated “popular standards.” He liked the song “Autumn Leaves” and taught me how to sing it in French. At that time, I couldn’t see the point in singing it in another language, but learnt it because Norton was the type of brother that if he suggested it, I knew it was a worthwhile thing to do. He helped me by writing it out phonetically. Later, I found singing in French and other romance language an interesting and a rewarding challenge.  When I started singing professionally it opened doors for me as well as my proclivity for learning foreign languages.

 I was hungry to express myself musically. An example of having a passion yet not having access to a voice teacher who taught non-classical singing. I didn’t know such teachers even existed in Seattle.  I picked up music by listening to my parents’ record collection, the radio’s pop station, and elementary school and Church. Or, if my brother introduce it to me.

I wondered how singers learned to read those esoteric symbols and bring a song to life. I imagined it was beyond my abilities, and wouldn’t be my talent, it was my brother’s. There was  some big heartedness in his attempts to teach me basics, like the Solfege method (do, re, mi…) of reading music, how to warm up my voice with scales and a few Maria Callas arias.

But I believed, that unconsciously, I might be stepping on his toes by being too interested in music.  I knew this and tentatively proceeded in my own indirect way.

I loved it when Norton would take time out from his disciplined practice for some comic relief. Then he’d invite me to sing some songs, which he’d teach me. He’d play selections from that big book of Organ Favorites for Special Occasions. “Roses and Lollipops” was a favorite that I related to. Both the melody and the words were easy for me.  As well as “The Boy Next Door.” He’d invite me to sing them and in so doing, teach me the ones he liked.

As a classical musician, he didn’t transpose songs into my key.  My voice didn’t consistently fit the key that the song was written in. At times, he laughed at me, and even I admit my voice sounded funny sung in a key that was unmanageable. When he was bored and through with this departure from his practicing, he said,

“Go now, I have to practice; your voice is giving me a headache.” I didn’t argue with him as I was getting a headache from his playing the song in the wrong key for my voice.

I’d leave his studio, accepting his opinionated artistic personality and those outbursts I felt better off ignoring. (Might miss out on future acerbic gems of his wit). Unfortunately, his behavior made me assume erroneously,  I couldn’t sing. (Could he have been feeling competitive?) As much as I loved singing, I didn’t dare take it seriously, and no one in my family encouraged me except for occasional family gatherings. My singing more often became a platform to goof-off and make fun of myself, as I was “so bad.” But I hung in there. At least I was getting some attention.

Despite his intermittent cruel humor, I felt I could learn things from him that I’d never learn from anyone else, which, was not healthy in the long run. I learned I had to take abuse in order to get a little of something I desperately desired.  Eventually, as I got older, I would tag along with he and his friends to drag shows at clandestine gay bars like The Golden Crown or Shelly’s Leg one of the infamous gay bars in Pioneer Square.  Drag bars were my classroom in dramatic, comedic, performance. It was an education in creating over the top persona[TN1] s and tapping into a performers connection to an audience by entertaining freely and without inhibitions.

Our home was often pulsating with Norton practicing Mozart sonatas, Beethoven, Bach preludes and the list was endless. I especially enjoyed listening to his dreamy interpretations of Chopin. It was one thing my parents didn’t seem to mind. Or maybe that was what made them drink?

In his teen years Norton had his share of troubles with the kids in the neighborhood. He was different than the others, although I never saw him that way.  It’s interesting what you don’t notice when you admire someone. I sensed he was ‘gay’, but no one spoke of it or knew precisely what that was—and why it was a problem. It seemed a non-issue to me. There was an underlying, subtle tension in our home toward him, stemming from that unspoken topic.[TN2] 

In our neighborhood, there were several, edgy juvenile delinquents around Norton’s age. When he was 16, this mob of “ thugs”—harassed him regularly on his way home from school. They followed him to find where he lived. hoping to gang up on him.

For me, his adoring 12 year old sister, witnessing this was eerie and disturbing. I watched in awe from the large living room window as this group of hoods leaned against our dad’s meat truck, chanting “Norton! Norton! Norton!”, each one holding an ominous water balloon poised to be pounded on my brother.

Our mother, who never took ‘crap’ from any one (when it came to picking on her kids), went out on the porch, slamming open the metal screen door.

She yelled in her surprisingly deep, smokey, masculine-timbre voice,

 “Get the hell off our property or I’ll call the Police!”

They knew she meant it—or worse—as she walked threateningly down the steps, grabbing hold of a rusty rake leaning against our house to wield as a lethal weapon.  They sensed she was capable of anything[TN3] . 

I loved her for that uninhibited way of yelling, and she meant business. (Maybe that’s how I developed my commanding voice!) I was glad the bullies were on the receiving end of her wrath for a change, and not me.

Because of his acute creativity and humor, I didn’t take into account all the pain he experienced at school. He hid that from everyone. It was a treat to hang out with him, and sometimes I preferred my brother’s company over my own friends. As siblings, we spent endless hours improvising and recording self-generated, psycho-drama- musicals based on our alcohol-fueled parents and relatives and their peculiar, boozy friends.   Our “plays”, as we called them, were based on a standard ‘horror film plot’ with unrestrained, almost hysterical madness depicting the familiar, adults we observed and laughed about behind their backs.  After taping, we’d listen and laugh till we cried.

 “You kids are nuts; you can get into trouble for doing that!” (As if there was a special police squad on the prowl for nutty kids.) They tried to hide their inexplicable enjoyment, but they had a love of dark comedy, Jonathan Winters, Phyllis Diller and Lily Tomlin records. As a family, the one thing we enjoyed, besides eating delicious meals was to listen to these genius’ comic and laughing together. Ah, to be young overflowing with imaginative mischief! What a satisfying, dangerous thrill! I wondered what might have happened had we seriously gone into comedy together?

Norton found regular employment in churches and occasionally participated in concerts, recitals and competitions. When I got my drivers license I gladly became Norton’s chauffeur. Norton didn’t get his until years later. I’d  hang out at the church while he practiced, and then bring him home. It was around that time, when I started examining the way I used my time. It needled me, that I didn’t have a passion to pour myself into as well.

 One of the benefits of hanging around the church was I began to occasionally sing Lutheran solos, under his questionable tutelage.  Like “Were You There When They Crucified My Lord?” He encouraged me to turn and gaze dramatically at the large crucifix, to dramatize the awful truth to the congregation. I was directed by Norton to also deliver a morbid, and theatrical rendition of “The Old Rugged Cross.” Plus, I got paid.

Life was entertaining growing up as I was regularly exposed to the performance arts. Norton was the great director and I was the malleable, fledgling, actress. The drag queen he was afraid to be, doing anything he asked.

At 17, a senior in high school, I’d been on one of my first real dates with a guy whom I had a shy crush on. (He’d just graduated from high school.) That year, I had blossomed (gratefully) into a young Maria Callas look-alike.

Norton was 21 and attending the University; majoring in piano, exploring new forms of expression, and a noticeable, confidence and panache.

. I was envious that my brother and Munson Kangee, his eccentric and equally nerdy friend since grade school, were often doing creative, fun projects without me, like writing plays making home movies, and performing them for the community in the Kangees’ backyard.  Munson’s mother doted on her two unconventional sons and encouraged all creative endeavors. This included the delegation of Munson’s younger brother David to play the unsavory roles—such as prisoner, crazy person, and the slave. I was hurt that they didn’t think to include me, but I was fully occupied doing summer-stock at the Green Lake Bathhouse Theater.

On this particular night, Munson, (who eventually became a well-known—art critic) and Norton, held a mock nightclub show in Munson’s family’s rec room, where he and Norton had been secretly rehearsing for weeks. I was invited and encouraged to bring my new ‘boyfriend’.

Munson played piano and Norton sang classic jazz numbers! This was something NEW. I hadn’t ever heard him sing seriously before. He had rarely shown an interest in popular music, let alone an affinity for singing it. His tone was deep, warm, whimsical, and sophisticated, He utilized a half talking, half singing style. It mesmerized me as it revealed a side of Norton that I had no idea existed.

But, most importantly, something about me was born that night that shook my world. More than a pleasant surprise, I had a realization: I MUST do this![TN4] 

 I accepted that Norton’s preference for classical music was somehow superior to my love of popular song and jazz. Classical would be the only thing he would ever want to perform. Yet he performed jazz standards impeccably, with a style unlike any singer I’ve heard since.

The nightclub act in progress hadn’t been mentioned before my seeing it, which made it all the more riveting. The night of that performance, the Kangee basement transformed into an actual night club.  The mystique and professionalism of my brother and his friend, ignited my fantasy-driven essence, and steered it to form. Witnessing Norton’s—blossoming—captivated my younger self completely!

 Norton sat casually on a stool, trim and fit, wearing hip-hugger bell-bottoms and a dreamy blue knit shirt, opened at the chest. This new Norton was a variation on a motif that was never before seen. It seemed like he was stepping through a portal up into his grander, more accessible self. No longer the focused, classical misfit, now he was sophisticated, impeccable, with a mouthful of polished, jazzy innuendos!

He interpreted hip jazz tunes with such élan and showmanship that I was hypnotized. I watched with studied intensity which ingrained on my imagination so deeply that I copied this persona he was using as a ‘lark;’ but I did it seriously. It’s imperative to have a role model at some point, and he was divinely mine in that moment. That night, an epiphany was on its way—and heading straight to my psyche. [TN5] 

What really got me was his ability to command the attention of the whole room. I paid attention because I wanted what he had; in fact, I knew I had it, I just had to get busy and start revealing it, never imagining that I’d be stepping on his toes.

His smooth performance jolted me out of my limited scope of what music could inspire in an audience. I was overcome by seeing my closest role model, my big brother, reveal a hip, cool, fabulous side of life! In my own mind, this gave me permission to explore the possibility that I, too, could do this—and maybe even better? I was resonating all over the place!

I fell under the enchantment of a ‘muse’ as he sang “You’re Getting to Be a Habit with Me,” “Just One of Those Things,” “What Are You Doing the Rest of Your Life?” “Once Upon a Time”; “Close Your Eyes.”

 I clung to every lyric, every understated double entendre. Intoxicated with the energy of both Munson’s perfectly simple, yet spare piano accompaniment and Norton’s warm, mischievous talk-singing. 

 His interpretations and unique showmanship made an enormous impression and the seeds were sown. 

Years later Munson dramatically bellowed at me.  “And Norton will NEVER FORGIVE YOU FOR THAT!” I had no idea that was the direction Norton hoped to explore.

Munson implied that I stole Norton’s dream!  I thought Norton already had his dream: playing the piano and, later the classical organ!

I needed a dream, damn it! The dream knew it as well and took me over, knocked me down, and captured me completely—right there in the Kangee basement! And it has never let me go.

 [TN1]important

 [TN2]Well said

 [TN3]Great moment

 [TN4]Nice!

 [TN5]important

IN THE BEGINNING THERE WAS TRATTORIA

One of the most pivotal friendships I made in Seattle after graduating from college in the late ‘70s was with an Italian American woman, Jackie Roberts, who had moved to Seattle from New York with her boyfriend and business partner. They had previously spent time in Italy and had fallen in love with the mom and pop bistros there and decided to open one in Seattle.

In the oldest part of Seattle, Pioneer Square, they discovered an abandoned diner from the 1930s and revamped it to resemble an authentic Italian-styled trattoria—and they called it Trattoria. Pioneer Square was experiencing a renaissance and was repopulating with serious artists and unique art galleries. There were jazz record shops, night clubs, and nice restaurants galore. There were bookstores and boutiques alongside the pawnshops, girly clubs, and the down-and-outers of skid row. Diversity at its finest.

    I met Jackie at a swinging party, hosted by one of the many new friends I made in Seattle after graduating college. He was also one of the first talented pianists I worked with, John Engerman. The party was an ongoing event at the Engerman residence, filled with actors and artists of all disciplines: performing, snorting coke and smoking weed, and bragging about their latest acting gigs while having romantic intrigues, sometimes falling in love and even getting married!

 I was often in attendance, as I considered them my new sophisticated friends who were in the arts, like I wanted to be.  This particular Sunday, I was in good form, very open to meeting new people who might help me get connected in theater or music. Jackie, new in town, fell in love with me since I reminded her of her!  Before the party was over, she offered me a job as a waitress at her new Trattoria if I needed a job. I was just out of college with a degree in theater and music, so it sounded perfectly logical to me!

At the Trattoria, I became the Pioneer Square lawyers’ favorite lunch counter experience—due to Jackie’s persuasive charm and her continuous prodding of me to sing.

But at the start, I didn’t sing. I was learning how to actually wait tables, something I had never done before. It was a relatively short work shift they offered me, from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. Monday through Friday: lunch rush. The Trattoria helped me to develop confidence dealing with “hungry” customers, which in a way, was similar to singing, only the audience is hungry for something else, and I had to deliver it.

First, I enjoyed the ease of cleaning off the tables. I had had plenty of experience doing that at home when I was a young girl with three brothers. Gee, I was getting the hang of being a waitress. I could do this!

 The table cloths were vintage patterns of red and green flower prints made of oilcloth. These table cloths were novel, having been utilized by postwar Americana truck-stop cafes: they never wore out. Other popular eateries soon started using them, but Jackie instigated that craze, along with many other trends in Seattle.

Jackie created the cozy, funky, family-like ambiance in that corner café, ensconced in large windows overlooking both Yesler Street and Post Alley. Yesler was named after one of the first pioneers who bought up and developed early Seattle. It was an active, long street, lined with funky as well as smart art galleries, jazz clubs, and beauty salons, and it went all the way east to Lake Washington. Rent was cheap, so artists’ studios and galleries straddled every block in the vicinity of Pioneer Square.

Every week Trattoria offered a new “lunch special.” Everything was popular, even a bizarre mélange of dandelions and wild greens on pasta. I loved the almond torte, ricotta cheese pie, and Carmela—all unusual for Seattle at that time, and tasty!

Since it was a compact restaurant, all tables and swivel seats at the counter/horseshoe bar were normally occupied during the lunch hour. There were hungry judges in white shirts, magistrates, and both novice and cut-throat lawyers. We fed various stragglers who worked for the City at the Public Safety Building and promising young artists who lived in warehouses and loft spaces in Pioneer Square’s old deserted buildings. This was during the grand resurgence of Art in the late ‘70s that totally revamped Seattle and added to its quirky personality.

Our customers would enter the ambience provided by Jackie’s LPs—a veritable smorgasbord of Mediterranean crooners, like Louis Prima, operatic favorites, and eclectic jazz I hadn’t heard before like Esther Saterfield, Chuck Mangione, and Dakota Staton. The records were stacked next to the record player, which Jackie took charge of.

Once customers were seated, diners scanned the menu, and I’d take their order. Then they’d chat or discuss their briefs (for a short ten minutes) until the food came. When everyone was seated and served, tables turned once during this two-hour lunch service. It was fun to watch serious faces digging into their steaming plates—perfectly cooked pasta or an overloaded meatball sandwich—with large paper napkins tucked into their shirts.

I usually wore tight, low-waisted bell-bottom blue jeans and a tie-dyed, shirt. The café provided a clean apron that I wrapped around my waist good and snug. I was currently taking the pill, so my boobs felt huge. I didn’t really like that look, but at the time it seemed I was stuck with it, and I noticed it worked for this clientele.

One day while I hurried in to work (a railroad crossing had forced me to be late), I tried to explain to Jackie that “I had to wait for the train.” She thought I was making a sexual innuendo and laughed at my feeble excuse. She had a more sexually explicit humor than I understood. Almost getting high that day from the intoxicating smell of garlic, I thought what a great marketing strategy it was to have the kitchen sautéing garlic in butter and letting that aroma waft onto the street! It was the perfect ruse to seductively bring in random customers who at first weren’t even sure they were hungry! But once they were seated and reading the short menu, then they were off to the races.

One step inside the Trattoria, you’d meet the consoling smell of chicken soup bubbling away, along with the aroma of tomatoey Marinera sauce—very appetite enhancing! Working there, it was easy to put on the pounds because I got to eat whatever I wanted at the end of my shift—except the deserts, thank God.

I couldn’t remember anyone ever mentioning that pasta could make you fat. I didn’t especially care for it as a kid. As I grew up, we’d never eaten pasta with just garlic and butter. We were Sicilian; we didn’t mess around with that kind of sissy Italian fare! My family sautéed garlic in olive oil and anchovies. Then we added parsley or flavor-laden sugo made of ox tails and pork bones. (No wonder I avoided it as a kid. I would become a vegetarian within the next decade and never look back.)

But pasta with garlic and butter was an entirely different thing! Now as a blossoming young woman of marriageable age, I was bringing on the baby fat again. I felt a little “chubby,” but Jackie assured me that I was simply voluptuous. Which I appreciated, but didn’t particularly like. The owners, Jackie and her boyfriend, were equal-opportunity employers. They often generously hired street drunks to be the dishwashers when the sober ones didn’t show up.

After work hours, sometimes Jackie and I would hang out together, chatting about our as-of-yet untold futures. One day Jackie confronted me directly—something I normally discouraged people from doing.

“Julie, what do you really want to do with your life?” (I wondered if she was thinking of letting me go?)

I felt uncomfortable, but couldn’t dodge it. “I’ve been considering getting a job as a Metro bus driver.”

Jackie reacted with total revulsion. “Julie, if you do something like that, it’s going to ruin your whole life!”

So, I blurted out, “I wanna sing!”

“You say you wanna sing? So, then SING!” She made it sound like, “Just do it, for God’s sake! It’s not that hard, if it’s your passion.” I needed someone to say things like that to me.

Soon the day came when Jackie and I agreed that I would sing! Every seat at the horseshoe counter had been served—spaghetti and meat balls, or linguini and clam sauce, or Cascioppo’s Italian sausage sandwich—and everyone was happily inhaling their juicy dish of pasta. With all that eating and very little talking, there was a slight lull.

I took a moment to catch my breath. Jackie looked at me, eyebrows raised in a question. I nodded, secretly wishing I didn’t look like some overworked, overweight, voluptuous waitress. Suddenly, very abruptly, Jackie lifted the needle off the current record, and she yelled, “Okay, Julie!” (Like I needed her to tell me!)

A dramatic Mario Lanza tune seemed to fly out of my mouth totally acapella! With my whole self, I sang “Be My Love, and with your kisses set me yearning!”

Except for my singing, the room went eerily silent. At first their jaws dropped! But when they realized that they knew me (oh yeah, she’s the one who took our order), then they relaxed and resumed eating. Occasionally, as they chomped away, they’d stop and listen as I cautiously meandered around the horseshoe, smiling coquettishly at anyone whose eye I could catch, wanting to make everyone feel included.

After I sang the last note, the applause was shockingly boisterous!

From then on, I was more than a waitress.  Every weekday at noon, the lunch counter was taken over by a variety of lawyers, clerks, and judges, parading in to eat a succulent, inexpensive Italian lunch. And almost every day I broke into one of Mario Lanza’s semi-operatic, full-voiced songs: “You Are My Love” or a rousing “Come Prima, Come Prima, I'm In Love!” or an anthem “You Light Up My 'Lunch',” (Cindy Boon’s big hit). It was at that time that I started to take liberties with lyrics and make them more pertinent to the situation. I mainly sang just one song each day. It wasn’t something I particularly wanted to overdo. (Keep ‘em wanting more, ya know?)

I transported these guys in three-piece suits back to a Felliniesque village in Sicily. At first they were alarmed, then slowly but surely, charmed. This was exciting—a sort of daily marathon! And I helped make it happen. Soon popular word-of-mouth made the Trattoria super lively with business. I hoped someone handsome and successful might discover me, fall in love with me, and take me away from this job (which eventually seemed to happen, but nothing serious.) Whatever opportunities came my way, I tried to make them work for me like stepping stones.

I’d proven myself as a spontaneous, instantaneous singing waitress who could think on her feet. And the tips they left informed me that they liked it!

This eventually paid off when I was issued parking tickets. I’d be summoned to assert my “innocence” for getting parking violations. (Seattle use to be a gentle town to drive and park in.) I always chose to show up at the courthouse to contest the ticket, as I had more time than money! Explaining the circumstances to one of those kindly middle-aged judges often got the infraction dismissed. Through working the lunch counter, I got to know many affiliates in the judicial system. And my traffic tickets became insignificant, unnecessary demands placed upon me—the charming, singing Italian waitress to the judges (who might say, “Looks like the meter maid overestimated the time you spent in the ‘loading zone,’ I dismiss this case.”).

 Together, both Jackie and me and the cafe added perfectly to the old-world charm of Pioneer Square, transforming the once-strategic corner of Post Alley and Yesler into almost the “Little Italy” of Pioneer Square. Plus, Trattoria featured my family’s Italian Sausage! Which wasn’t quite as famous as it is today.

It was novel, being a singing waitress. And Jackie was a good friend. I did it to please her, and in exchange, my tips increased, and it somehow guided me to pick up where I had left off singing with Bill in cocktail lounges in California. It inspired me to go on a diet and start building a real career, this time on my own terms.

BEAUTY AND THE BEAST, You have to start somewhere, somehow.

I wasn’t sure how to be ‘invited’ into the world of music, nor had any idea what that would look like, until my senior year at Ballard High.

Bill, my friend from high school, was playing guitar for sports events, parties, dances, and grand openings. A classmate as well as a neighborhood friend, Bill Chism played guitar exceptionally well for a kid. One day while I happened to be hanging around at his home, he played “The Girl from Ipanema.” I mindlessly sang along, and at the end he said that I had “a pretty good voice.” I thought he was jiving me, but he wasn’t really the type who jived girls. Maybe he might possibly have had a slight crush on me, and I chose to ignore that. He was a serious, dedicated guitar player.

We goofed around with me singing to his accompaniment, some of the top hits of the day. “Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow?”  “Girl from Ipanema” “A Taste of Honey” and “Never Can Say Good-Bye”  which would eventually be our nightly closer. Not taking his compliment too seriously, I began to find music a stimulating, more colorful way to express emotions I had no idea how to express, and to let people know me, without over committing myself to any real involvement. This was a new, more interesting form of interaction; possibly the beginning of the new Julie.  

Bill arranged my first professional gig at a grand opening of a new beauty parlor in Bellevue, an up and coming wealthy suburb across Lake Washington in Seattle! He owned a sound system, microphone, and a car, so he generously paved the way with all the difficult minutiae. Plus, he was reliable, respectful, and a good driver. Bill was an only child, with a swinging stepfather as well as a real father who was Native American and quite the Bohemian, living in a big old house near Green Lake.

Bill and I were good friends without romantic entanglements. I introduced him to my best friend Petula, and while in high school they had some kind of starry-eyed liaison, which included making out while drunk overlooking the Sunset Hill Bluff, and occasionally going to the drive-in movies. The three of us had some classes together at Ballard High and were kind of like a benevolent gang. One, “Contemporary Problems,” was taught by a really cool teacher, Dan Logan, who insisted we call him Dan. We mainly chatted and pretended to be doing our school work. School was a socializing necessity.

Musically, I was ready to roll before I realized I could sing.  It was easy and fun to sing all those familiar songs my parents had played for years, and through osmosis, I had memorized and built a large repertoire without even knowing it! “Please Release Me”, “Make The World Go Away”, and one of my favorites “How Are Things In Glocca Mora?”

Since Bill informed me that I sang well, I ran with it. At that point in my life, my brother had never complimented me on my voice, so I imagined I wasn’t any good. I enjoyed learning new good things about myself through others’ observations, rather from my family.

During my last year of high school, my family’s current listening hit list included the double album, Judy Garland live at Carnegie Hall, which they all loved! I loved the big band arrangements that were specifically built around highlighting Judy to be the great star she was! (I wished someone would do that for me.) Bill good-naturedly tried, and learned these unusually strange songs to him, on guitar. His accompaniment felt sparse, but my acting ability and the desire to sing and captivate listeners with the panache of the sophisticated songs got me going! Slowly but surely, we turned into a musical duo, which was a popular thing in the late ‘70s.

We were both nineteen during the summer when Bill invited me to join him in Redwood City, California—a small town outside of San Francisco. He had been visiting a rich uncle down there, and eventually he got his own apartment with a swimming pool. Bill’s goal was to get us gigs in cocktail lounges. Our musical lives were beginning. And having gigs was an important part of the plan.

I took the Greyhound Bus to Redwood City, California, and was willing to participate in this professional singing adventure. Not sure if my parents really had any idea what I was getting into. They knew Bill and thought he was a nice enough kid.  At that point I had spent one fabulous year at a state college in Ellensburg, having spent Winter quarter in a travel-study program in Mexico, I had begun to develop a taste for adventure, with unpredictable experiences.  

I agreed to this new escapade of singing in bars and touring through that area of California, which included San Francisco. We wanted to work at little cocktail lounges and restaurants. In Seattle, Bill and I would be underage for working in bars. But in California, the age for drinking and hanging out in “dens of inequity” was nineteen!

Bill’s apartment was off Camino Real in Redwood City. The local bar in his neighborhood, the Orange Duck, also located on Camino Real, served as our very first, authentic nightclub experience. The outside of the building resembled a vivid yellow shoebox with several supersized, brightly painted, perky, orange ducks dancing about. But inside it was dark and mysterious, and I found it somewhat alluring. It reeked of spilled alcohol, nervous sweat, and gun powder. It was an authentic sleazy, cocktail lounge. I felt, in some way, since it was California, I had ‘arrived’ into a brighter paradigm.

Bill had been playing solo at the Orange Duck for a few months, and he realized it wasn’t that fun without someone else there. So, Bill made the arrangements and sent for me. We fit the time-slot that was available then. As “boy on guitar and a pretty girl in a sort of sexy dress singing”, we were part of the perfectly ridiculous zeitgeist of the time 1973. Since it was our initial foray into the ‘professional’ world of music, I was a little shy about giving us name. Did we really have any kind of branding or personality warranting a special name? We were simply doing songs I knew, and a few that Bill suggested. Considering that other duos had a name I threw around the idea, mainly as a joke, “Beauty and the Beast”. Bill being the strong stoic type with a beard, resembling a ‘beasty kind a guy’ and beauty, well, that was me! Bill humored me and never took offense at my off the cuff absurdities.

Bill sat on a stool, so he could hold his guitar in his lap, and work the amplifier. I always stood so I could move around, dance a little, create some energy, plus it’s not easy to sing sitting down. If I got tired of singing, I suggested Bill play one of his virtuoso solo numbers which included, a show stopping version of Malagenia on his acoustic guitar. Everything was new to us,  made it up as we went along. I often wore turbans on my head as they had been popular in the 40’s with glamorous movie stars. Unfortunately, the ‘retro-vintage’ look wasn’t quite happening yet, I was always a bit ahead of the curve, and I think I ended up looking a bit odd when I wore them. I remember audience members asking me why I wore them and suggested I take them off, since I had a beautiful head of hair, long and wavy.  I think I was trying to create a unique style, which I hadn’t quite figured out yet and it wasn’t working.

    We got paid $10.00 per hour each, plus regular tips, and people bought us drinks—which led me to wonder if this was “Getting to be A Habit With Me?” I always accepted a drink with “Thanks I’ll have Scotch.” To refuse an offer of a drink almost felt like it would be rude. I wanted to say, “No thanks, but, you can put the money you were going to spend on the drink in our tip jar!” But, again, I didn’t know if that was considered rude? One night, I remember that Bill actually passed out, face first, on stage! That took the cake. He quickly revived and slightly embarrassed took a break, as did I.

But at the time, it felt as if Bill and I were successful and on a roll—everything was possible!

We easily “graduated” to better places, which wasn’t hard, since the Orange Duck was about as low as you can go. The Villa Roma, still in the same neighborhood, was slightly more upscale, an Italian bar and restaurant. It was hard to take the gig seriously since the club normally had a piano player and a singer, so we were forced to share the stage with a large piano, that no one was playing. We had to situate ourselves around the piano, where we kept the music, our drinks and my lipstick, and mararacas which I’d pretend to play when we did Besame Mucho.  Villa Roma with a slightly higher-class clientele opened a few new doors for me.  In fact, I developed a slight crush on an older Italian man, a regular, Jimmy, who reminded me of my father. (I was homesick.) He finally asked me on a date and planned to take me to dinner. I was really looking forward to that. At the beginning of our date while driving to the restaurant,  I wished he would have mentioned that he had heart trouble. It sounded slightly clichéd, but it was honestly an innocent wardrobe malfunction, the zipper up the back of my dress suddenly broke, and I was mortified. I felt like this must be the worst thing that could ever happen to a woman on a date!

I told him, “The zipper on my dress just broke!” (As if he would know what to do!) I wasn’t wearing a coat because in California it was warm and the nights were balmy and casual and people didn’t need coats, especially if you were young, and didn’t have a coat for going on dates.

He immediately pulled over by the local fire station and explained calmly to me he was having a heart attack!  

I always dressed a bit more provocatively than was appropriate for a date, not really having the sense of decorum needed by a young woman my age. Plus, I only had two kinds of clothes: everyday jeans and shirts, and my night-clubby, halter tops and flirtatious/risque evening gowns!

Somehow firemen appeared out of nowhere. He had one of those bracelets that alerted the nearest fire station, I assume.  They put him on a stretcher as he hobbled out of the car. I got out of the passenger to watch, dumbfounded. And Jimmy, bless his heart, had the where with all to take out a wad of leafy green cash and told me to take a cab home.

The firemen looked up at me, briefly between pounding on Jimmy’s chest. I was in awe. I had never seen someone being given life support.  

“Is there anything I can do to help? I asked, hoping they wouldn’t think of anything. I wasn’t about to explain to a group of firemen why my inexpensive , dress had a broken zipper! I took the money and beelined it to a nearby cocktail lounge to call Bill.

 After the summer, we were landing higher-class gigs. But I decided to go back to college—this time[  in Bellingham—and major in Theater. Bill was sad and disappointed.

 “Why would you want to leave this great situation we’re finding? You’re working a lot, and you’re meeting a lot of interesting guys!” He must have been distraught, because he asked me that over and over again.

I ignored his pleas. I innately knew I had to get out of there.

Perhaps I felt a fear of the unknown.  When you’re young, you make decisions and do things that make all the difference when you’re older. I don’t know why I had a deep desire to get a degree and be in the cocoon of college up in Bellingham, away from Seattle and California. Maybe I felt I wasn’t prepared to face the music industry or the realities of life. I did not feel there was much potential for growth in music as a duo. And Bill didn’t mention any specific aspirations other than playing in cocktail lounges, drinking, and meeting pretty girls who were readily available to him once they learned we were not a couple.

It’s funny how audiences often assume you’re married to the person who accompanies you. It often is a sort of musical marriage, but we were definitely on different tracks in the romance area.

However, I was proud of my successful experience that when I returned home to Seattle, I boasted to my father how much money I was making! I had heard my parents talk finances, and often my father wasn’t even making that much money! Ten dollars an hour was good money at the time, in 1972-73. I didn’t realize my boasting may have hurt my father’s feelings, but it was unimaginable that I, his hopeless unmarried daughter, made more money than he did!

    Bill had a reel to reel tape recorder, and we had rehearsed a lot in our little apartment. We attempted to make a semi-professional recording in the living room with selections of our current repertoire. That was one brilliant step that Bill took in the direction of musical growth.

More than anything it was an earnest attempt to document what we had done all summer, and it was not too bad. I had not recorded my singing before this experience.

When I returned to Seattle, I played it for my mother and my older, musically trained  brother Norton in our family’s living room. Soon after the first song was almost finished, Norton started laughing because apparently, I was behind the beat, or Bill was ahead of the beat, some kind of technical musical faux pas. I hadn’t noticed before, but now, as Norton pointed it out, with contagious laughter even more so in the second song, all the flaws I began listening carefully with a critical ear as well, to what it was, and I too, began giggling, more and more until it was a form of humorous, hysterical,frenzy. His laughter ignited my ability to laugh at myself as well. We were laughing, so hard tears were rolling down our faces, but my mother wasn’t laughing, she was listening. As was often the case, Norton pointed out to me how funny I was, something I wasn’t trying to be. I hadn’t noticed, those flaws at the time. It made Norton wild with emotional frenzy and sarcastic deriding comments, to the point where I laughed so hard I cried.  Norton often made me laugh till I cried that was part of our dynamic. This time was different, we were laughing at how preposterous my efforts at trying to be professional in music actually sounded.

I hid the tape in my closet for years, never listening to it again. I’d look at sometimes in it’s bright blue box it was in when I first bought it. Since reel to reel tape players were becoming obsolete, I figured I’d ever have a chance to play it again. Norton’s tape deck was no longer working.  So why keep it? Little did I know how technology would change the world, and how tapes could be converted to other kinds of listening data.  One day, while packing to go back to college, getting rid of things I was positive I would never want to revisit that memory again, I threw it out. Hating the fact that I had ever made something so ‘worthless’. Planning on doing something much, much better, someday.

 Today, I painfully long to listen to that recording. I would cherish hearing my younger self, who had had very little training, and even less encouragement yet, audaciously stepped into the unknown world of music and making a major attempt at it. To hear the innocence of that voice, the energy of raw expression of a 19- year- old ‘wannabe’ night club singer. I laid down the singing dream and went to college and study with some wonderful teachers. I slowed down, and took some time to find out what I needed to know in music. I didn’t take the laughter as an insult, but I often wonder what it might have been like if my brother, had instead of laughing at me, took me under his musical wing, showed me something. Apparently, that was not my destiny. I learned other ways of asking for guidance, and eventually, I came a long way from that day.

We’re often encouraged to be rid of old things, to make room for the new. No one ever talked to me about posterity.

 [.

Meanderings about my forthcoming memoir Janurary 4th 2022

My memoirs, February 12, 2019

 WONDERFUL THINGS ARE HAPPENING TODAY. I feel I need to keep telling myself that.

Waking up I realize another exciting adventure is here.

Yea sure, back home in Seattle and things are starting to be predictable again.

 I tell myself such things so as to enliven myself, as if with a magical, stimulating unicorn prod.

I’m not so much writing this book for others, or to have it be a successful bestseller, as to simply help me see my life in perspective, which may lead to something changing,more satisfying. (I hope, I hope!)

A sweet spot to finally put all those scraps of paper, poems, quotes which I love to collect.

Sit down type it up.

Turkey, India, China…Oh my!

 What did it all mean? I am a world traveler and I did it by having someone else pay for my ticket. I sing for my journey. I am a globetrotting chanteuse.

Still, it is lonely in this surreal adventure. Why can’t I embrace this experience more? Why can’t I love being abroad just a little more?

 As much as I love all the excitement, adulation, variety and stimulation of a new culture, now at the ripe age of 58 I’m wondering if it’s just too hard for me ? Like my fearless, intrepid, inner explorer is getting tired of the confusing ‘reward ‘of it all.

 I need to do one more trip. ZANZIBAR and Tasmania keep running cross my mind. These exotic names evoke a more interesting place than they possibly really are.  I hope the romance of travel is not totally gone.

This world is so romantically divine and perfect for love. But where’s mine?

Things are changing everywhere. I find corporate take -over, exploiting the poor, audaciously disappearing them when buying up the land, for instance, becomes cause for concern.

I ask do I even want to do this again? Maybe, as I go through my vivacious, esoteric and sometimes eccentric song repertoire, I will see what I want to deeply develop and share with this sad world. The songs I choose to sing represent the real ‘Julie’ and what I am going through?  Do I have that repertoire? Does it exist yet?
I have changed. What IF I only had one year left of this precious life to experience? I would want to make these last happenings my most authentic moments.

There is no time to waste! I have to choose 20 songs. And then, darling it’s over. 20 songs to learn deeply, and have them be perfect, polished like my family gems.  And then soon enough, it will all be over. Yes, that’s a great premise to light a fire under one’s lazy bones.  (I’m not lazy about this, just feeling a constant, low level state of confused creativity) Haven’t artists always been like this? Depressed! There are too many songs I love to sing. Falling in Love With Norway was one of my latest.
The Spanish songs, so romantic, I must include Alejate; Poinciena; Besame Mucho. Ah Besame Mucho was hot for me in Paris in the late 80’s, but now, now what?

Summer in Seattle, hotter than hell! 97 degrees!

August 4th, 2014

Just checking in with you, how is your summer going? I hope FANTASTICALLY. How about this heat?

I accidentally went to Denny Blaine Park, because I couldn't find Madrona Beach. I was delirious from the heat, and my AC in the car, has never worked. I don't mind it, except these few hot days, when it's unhealthy to be in a car in the city without air conditioning.

Having stopped by  the High Spot for an iced coffee, and was told it was too late. After 4 they clean the machine. Shucks!

Did you know it's really wild there during the week? At Denny Blaine Park.   Nude sunbathers, lesbians in all their wild varieties, and tattoo art that out does and boggles the imagination of any swinging metro sexual.   Lots of groovy pit bulls, (such nice dogs to swim with), but no cats, I noticed.  A nude man picking blackberries off the bush at the edge of a small cliff, and dropping them occasionally into receptive, nubile, beauties opened mouths.   Everyone appearing to finally be having the fun they need. The police do not come by, and marijuana is in the air!

It was so hot, I didn't care. Normally, I'm a bit fussy, but I set my blanket, and pillows and unwrapped my new kick board that I picked up at Grocery Outlet for $3.99 and it was heavenly! Do you swim? If not, get a kick board and just hang out in the lake. I met some charming Hispanic fellows in the lake, from Mexico. Water makes us all blend so sweetly.

Let's get together if you're still here. Maybe for a cup a coffee for lunch, I'm dieting.  Like you did at one time?

The dirty job of being a Diva

I like to write things.

Photo was taken by Lori Goldstone at brother Tony's  fantastic party where I felt young again! Why

Discover your inner vocal talents

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Are you an absolute beginner or intermediate singer who enjoys singing for fun? Take your singing to the next level and learn to strengthen your singing, presentation, and confidence for any venue. You will come away from class knowing how to warm up your voice, approach and learn a song without becoming overwhelmed, and enhance your stage presence. Please come to the first class with a song you would like to sing and perform (or see instructor). A $10 materials fee is due to instructor on the first day. Scheduled Classes Tu 6:15pm–8:15pm Feb 25–Mar 18 (4 sessions) $115.00 On Campus: LB Bldg, Room 1131 (Main Campus, Map) 9600 College Way North Seattle WA 98103 Enroll Now

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Happy New Year 2014...Yikes, it's tomorrow.

Hello There, Yes, You! How are you? I'm good, busy, trying to finish up all those last minute things to get ready for a fabulous New Years Eve celebration here in Seattle.

Where am I singing? Everyone wants to know? Well, it's a private party. And it's going to be fantabulous. I'll make it that way. Come hell or high water, it's gonna be groove-a-lishious! Let me know if you want to crash it.

Today, I want to say I love this totally gray day in Seattle. It is so gray, I feel like I'm in a cloud as I gaze out my penthouse window, through the branches of that familiar, friend, a Poplar tree that looks in on me during all moments of the day and night.

I have no curtains that need pulling. I love the crows and hummingbirds that sometimes peep in. An occasional arborist (not an abortionist) has enjoyed a surprise viewing, once a year. I wish management would warn me when he's showing up so I could at least make sure I have on that creamy Negligee I've been saving for my next cruise.

Happy New Year 2014. "If you don't succeed, try and try again, and if all you do is lose, better find away to win." anonymous

May I borrow a cup of sugar, Monsieur?

My first international trip was to Paris, at 27. My generous Norwegian boyfriend sent me there for one month so he could remodel his kitchen in peace. He had no idea what he was setting in motion: Since that first taste of long distance travel, I’ve almost lost count of all the places I’ve been. Though it took guts to accept the offer, Paris is where I sprouted my wander-lusty wings and discovered my talent and confidence in singing and entertaining foreign audiences. In Paris, the development of my many characters (for example Star-Baby of Paris, the fame driven country and western singer) originated. Paris is also where this non-traditional Seattle,jazz singing native spent the most time outside the USA. One month turned into four years, with several transcontinental flights to make sure my boyfriend was still waiting patiently. Four years is a long time to spend anywhere, especially when you’re young and clueless. Even though I was mature in many ways, I was still pretty innocent: trusting freely, making friends with total strangers, and going with the crazy flow and emotional upheaval that comes with gullibility. I felt comfortable trusting everyone in Paris at first, because I had to. Trusting hotel managers not to break into my room and ravage me, trusting what other people said to me in French as kind and encouraging, trusting that the child I heard crying in the apartment a few doors down wasn’t being beaten by her frustrated, cruel father. I remember waking up early one Sunday morning to the sound of a child’s cries. “No, papa…no, papa.” And then, screams and the deep sobbing of a child in desperation. I heard the slow, continuous blunt thuds that went on too long. I wasn’t sure what to do, but it didn’t sound good. I called my Swedish friend Gunila, who was like the older, wiser sister I never had but really needed. She worked in Paris as an ex-ray technician and practiced Reiki. She loved collecting eccentric foreign visitors like me, and was crazy bout her African boyfriends. She cultivated them, and married them all, which was encouraged and legal with certain African tribes. Ah Parreeee! Gunila lived about a mile away from my apartment. I phoned her uncharacteristically early that Sunday morning, telling her I thought the child down the courtyard from my door was being beaten. In an almost hushed tone, she explained that in France, they don’t take notice of child abuse. It’s private and belongs to the family. To intrude would be considered very rude. Uncomfortable listening to the cries, Gunila encouraged me, if I was so concerned, to go knock on their door and ask to borrow a cup of sugar or something. “At seven in the morning? How do you even say that? Pardon Monsieur, puisse empruntez une tasse de sucre, s’il vous plait?” I couldn’t bring myself to that level of obtuse courage. I imagined him saying, “Sure, let me just stop beating my child for a minute, and see where I’ve put the sugar.” After involuntarily eavesdropping, for endless moments, on this child’s terror, it eerily stopped. I felt a chill. Going back to sleep was out of the question, even though I’d had an extremely late night singing at the Hollywood Savoy, in Les Halles—a popular American-styled cabaret in Paris at the time. I felt sick in my heart and mind. Not knowing exactly what to do, but knowing in my gut, not doing something was wrong. I dressed quickly and went out. I walked and walked, and finally found myself at the River Seine, a calming place to really “be” in Paris. I stopped at a café and bought an espresso, and a basket of croissant. Later, I found out that if you eat one, it’s inexpensive. But if you mindlessly eat the whole basket that is placed in front of you, it’s not only expensive, but strange. I was so unsettled, and I didn’t really know the correct behavior—even about this little part of the culture. As the thought of that child’s distress flooded into my mind once again, I wondered "Do I just swallow this foreign tradition I perceive as injustice, like I did those croissants and their cost?"

The sun, especially bright, at the beginning of spring, contrasted with my dark mood combined with a hangover from the early morning’s frightening wakeup call, not to mention too much champagne sipping throughout the night while singing and flirting with strangers. Returning to my home, I happened to run into the father and his young daughter coming out of the courtyard. His austere look scared me. The girl seemed about nine, holding onto her daddy’s neck, for a joyless piggyback ride. Her eyes looked tired, red, and cried out. Our eyes met. Her face was empty, expressionless. His face, harsh and pale, cold, hard like a craggy-edged cliff, yet she clung to him. I felt an unspoken knowing in her eyes: She knew, I knew. I was embarrassed that I hadn’t gone to their door and altered in some way what was happening. I could always use some sugar. What was wrong with me, that I had so little courage? Was it my fear because of being a foreigner, not feeling the right to intrude? Was I fearful of his wrath—that he might beat me? I vowed in silence never again to miss an opportunity to stand up for a child being abused. Since then, in all my travels--Istanbul, Bali, India, Mauritius, Hong Kong—whenever, wherever I feel called to the situation, I have kept my vow not to be concerned with what anyone thinks. It’s less stressful in the long run. As an adult, who’s made it through a difficult childhood, I know how hard it can be for kids. Once in a while an adult made a real difference in my life. Part of me gained strength from this, and guides me to know this is what I am supposed to do--be a vigilant guardian for the vulnerable ones. Taking the risks to be an entertainer, to go to Paris, to have a career set in numerous cultures are part of what taught me to be willing to take that awkward chance that, at times, can change the energy of the moment to something better. Even in Paris, the most beautiful city in the world, I discovered there can be a call to step in and “borrow a cup of sugar.” Who knows? I might sweeten someone’s day. “Puisse, empruntez un tasse du sucre? “Merci.”

Wild women don't worry, except every now and then

Here I am in the Crystal Lounge at Le Royal Meridien Hotel in Bombay. This is the substitute band, and I now have a new rhythm section. Lenny Heridia on piano continues as a steadfast side kick. Julie Cascioppo sings WILD WOMEN DON'T WORRY.

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