Mama taught herself to play...on the black keys. Which is how she taught me when I was little.
Mama had guitar lessons and her grandparents couldn't afford to do all the lessons Sherry wanted to do. She'll tell you, she wanted to do EVERYTHING...except for football.
Mama's little room was part of the old room of Grandma and Chud, so there was even still a window between Mama's little room and the house, but with no glass. It was an inside window.
Mama put the organ in her room.
It was right behind their heads, she tells me. It must've been so loud.
Sherry would play hymns and songs from some old books she rounded up.
If Grandma and Chud weren't alseep yet, Mama would hear Pearl say...
"Play another one..." when she finished a song.
There was a book of songs from the 1940s, and, country music, and popular music, too.
"Mmmmmmm-huum-huum...mmmmm...huum," Mama hums the old songs first when she's trying to remember the words.
"...huum...we stayed until the folks went home..."
"It was called 'I Had But Fifty Cents," Mama remembers.
And funny songs, like...
"Yes, We Have No Bananas...
and The Flying Trapeze...
you know, popular music."
And all the hymn music.
