What We Were Taught

Today I got this meme in a text from a friend. One of those internet declarations that gets passed around like gospel: “School never taught us how to do our taxes, but we sure learned how to square dance.”

My first thought—and the response I sent in the group chat—was:  “No shit. Anyway, here’s how you play Hot Cross Buns on a recorder.”

Because of course public school never taught me how to file my taxes or balance a checkbook. But it did teach me plenty of things I didn’t really need: square dancing, That’s What I Call Recorder Hits of 1733!, and that the mitochondria is the powerhouse of the cell.

And then, right after I sent that reply, I had a memory.

It was the beginning of fifth grade at Alpine Crest Elementary School. My first year there, after spending kindergarten through fourth grade at Rivermont Elementary. Our music teacher was Mrs. Baker, and she taught us all the usuals that public school kids learn in music class: recorder theory, square dance basics, and how to sing Row, Row, Row Your Boat as a round.

But in one of those classes, she was trying to demonstrate or expose us to different kinds of music—different kinds of singing. I don’t remember most of what she played. But I do remember what she played when she tried to show us jazz or scat singing. The song was being sung by Ella Fitzgerald.

And I was taken. Immediately. There was something in that style, and more importantly in that voice, that grabbed hold of me in a way I hadn’t felt before. I didn’t have words for it, but I knew I liked it. I knew I wanted more of it.

At home, I asked my dad if he had ever heard of Ella Fitzgerald. I told him about hearing her in class, and he did what my dad has always done—he went and found something for me. A day, maybe two days later, when I got home from school, he handed me a CD copy of the double album Ella Fitzgerald Sings the Cole Porter Song Book. It’s funny to think now of just how much of who I am today was shaped by the times my dad listened to me and then gave me something--an album, a movie, a book--that would change everything.

I remember putting the cd into my dad’s cd player. I wasn’t immediately blown away by the first track, All Through The Night, but I skipped around and found things that hit. I Get a Kick Out of You. Let’s Do It, Let’s Fall in Love. Then I put in Disc 2. I Love Paris. Love for Sale. Night and Day. I’ve Got You Under My Skin. And, unexpectedly, one of Cole Porter’s least favorite songs he ever wrote—Don’t Fence Me In.

There’s a story, possibly apocryphal, that songwriter Arthur Hamilton originally wrote the song Cry Me a River for Ella to sing in the 1955 movie Pete Kelly’s Blues. The story goes that the movie’s director and star, Jack Webb (yes, Joe Friday from Dragnet), didn’t believe Ella could convincingly deliver the rhyme: “Told me love was too plebeian / Told me you were through with me, and…”

Webb asked Hamilton to change the lyric if he wanted Ella to sing it. Hamilton refused. So the song didn’t make the movie. But if Webb objected to the lyric, it didn’t stop his ex-wife, singer Julie London, from being the first to formally release the track a year after their divorce.

Ella finally recorded her version in 1961. And in doing so, proved once and for all that she could deliver any line convincingly—whether it was “told me love was too plebeian” in Cry Me a River, or:

“Just turn me loose
Let me straddle my old saddle underneath the western skies
On my cayuse, let me wander over yonder
’Til I see the mountains rise, underneath the Western skies.”

I was convinced on first listen—as I remain convinced some thirty-five years later—that Ella’s is the voice of American music writ large. There are arguments to be made for Elvis Presley, Frank Sinatra, Michael Jackson, and others. But to me, Ella is the voice of the Great American Songbook, the voice of jazz, the voice of America.

And really, to get back to where I started, isn’t that the point of education? Not just to teach us that a² + b² = c², but to expose us to ideas, information, art, and artists that challenge us, change us, and give us a chance to discover the things that move us. The things that stick.

Because here I am, thirty-five years after Mrs. Baker played Ella in that classroom. Thirty-five years after my dad brought home Ella Sings the Cole Porter Songbook. I still have that cd, and I still say I’d rather be listening to Ella Fitzgerald sing than doing my taxes.

(When he’s not writing, Matthew Kerns can be found listening to Ella or serving time for tax evasion.)