Some people get their adventure thrills from bunji jumping, or climbing Mount Everest, or swimming Lake Ontario. I got mine during the thirty seconds when I sat on the bench and played Last Date on Floyd Cramer’s piano.
We were visiting Nashville, touring Studio b at the time, shepherded by a guide who could not possibly have been older than twenty-five. Reaching back into history for stories that happened twenty years before her birth, she showed us the cabinet Elvis damaged during a recording session temper tantrum. She showed us the exterior bricks that had to be replaced when dolly Parton, on her way to make a record, hit the building because she failed to apply the car brakes soon enough. She showed us pictures of the Everly brothers and Eddie Arnold. We stood on the spot where Roy Orbeson stood to hit the high notes of Only The Lonely. She showed us a film clip of Jim reeves recording blue Canadian Rockies. Forty-five years of living peeled away and the music of my youth filled my heart to overflowing. Then she showed us the piano Floyd Cramer played when he recorded Last date. Anyone who wanted to was invited to sit on the bench and play.
If I had been myself at the time, if I had not been bewitched by the falling away of the years, if I had paused to remember how long it had been since I last played Last date, I would never have sat on that bench. But I was not myself.
For as long as I can remember, I have wondered about Floyd Cramer’s piano. Was it different from mine? If I played it, would I sound like Floyd? I had a piano when I was a kid, and it just didn’t sound like Floyd Cramer’s piano. Floyd’s piano sang in my radio. It danced. Last Date was one of my favourite songs. I loved the “bent” notes, the “slip” notes that gave the phrases their little lilt. I could play Last Date when I was a kid but it didn’t sound like it did when Floyd played it. Somebody told me it was the pianist that made the difference, not the piano.
Then, when I was in my late forties I got the chance to play a piano that sounded a little bit like Floyd’s. I was taking piano lessons in the living room of Linda Borty. Every Saturday I stumbled through my scales on her grand piano. She gave me some Bach, a little Beethoven. She liked to keep a balance between classical and popular. One day she got out Last Date by Floyd Cramer. She opened up the music and played it for me. Linda could have played any piano and sounded like a pro. But she was a grand musician when she played her grand piano. She could bend the bent notes, slip the slip notes. Her piano sang. It danced.
Linda lived music. She carried it to people, took it with her. Just as she had chosen music for students and choirs, she chose the music for her funeral. Two different versions of Last Date were played. The first was a tape recording of Linda playing it on her piano. The second, slightly slower, a quarter tone higher, was Floyd’s own recording. The two songs were different, and each was beautiful.
If I had been myself, I would not have sat down, dry-mouthed and terrified, on the bench in front of Floyd Cramer’s piano. I would have worried about the dozen strangers who were listening. I would not have touched even one of my trembling fingers to the C above Middle C. But alas, I was not myself. I must have been remembering the piano recitals in Linda’s living room. I must have been remembering how good her piano sounded, even when you played it poorly. I must have been remembering how it never mattered if you messed up at a recital. Because there I sat, in front of Floyd Cramer’s piano, playing for a crowd of strangers, forgetting the left hand and playing wrong notes with the right.
For all I felt, I might just as well have climbed Mount Everest. I was brimming with a wild anticipation, drawn by that irresistible urge to try, breathless with lips brittle as paper when I had finished, exhausted and exhilarated all at the same time.
No recording was made, so we shall never know how much I sounded like Floyd. But the piano sounded just like his, and I feel certain I heard Linda cheering above the polite applause.
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