More from Debbie:
“The Sound of Music” SHOULD be my calling card. Why? Because when I was three years old, I looked at my grandmother, Bubba, and said, “Bubba, teach me how to play the piano.” At age 13, she had been a student of music at the conservatory in Memphis, Tennessee; she rode the train twice a week, alone, from her home in Williford, Arkansas, to Memphis to study music, for which God made her.
And so He made me. I took to the 88 keys like a fish to water. It became apparent to me, however, that my place was at the bench in the church when, at age eight, Bubba and her mother, my great grandmother, plopped me down at the piano and had me play hymn after hymn, verse after verse, while they sang along. Nothing could have seemed more right.
Around my 10th year, Marilyn Cover taught me how to play the ukulele and the guitar, and she coached my best friend Susan and me so that we could sing parts – me on soprano and Susan on alto, and the next year, Becky Ellison joined us and we became a trio at the Thayer United Methodist Church.
So today, after having played hymns, preludes, postludes, offertories, and special music for the past 47 years, 25 of them spent at Broadway Presbyterian Church, I think I can say that I know how my life was to unfold – singing and playing praises to the Lord. And that means that the Broadway production “Rock of Ages” is really my musical – not the play itself, but the title. “Rock of Ages, cleft for Thee. Let me [find] myself in thee.” And I have.
“The Sound of Music” SHOULD be my calling card. Why? Because when I was three years old, I looked at my grandmother, Bubba, and said, “Bubba, teach me how to play the piano.” At age 13, she had been a student of music at the conservatory in Memphis, Tennessee; she rode the train twice a week, alone, from her home in Williford, Arkansas, to Memphis to study music, for which God made her.
And so He made me. I took to the 88 keys like a fish to water. It became apparent to me, however, that my place was at the bench in the church when, at age eight, Bubba and her mother, my great grandmother, plopped me down at the piano and had me play hymn after hymn, verse after verse, while they sang along. Nothing could have seemed more right.
Around my 10th year, Marilyn Cover taught me how to play the ukulele and the guitar, and she coached my best friend Susan and me so that we could sing parts – me on soprano and Susan on alto, and the next year, Becky Ellison joined us and we became a trio at the Thayer United Methodist Church.
So today, after having played hymns, preludes, postludes, offertories, and special music for the past 47 years, 25 of them spent at Broadway Presbyterian Church, I think I can say that I know how my life was to unfold – singing and playing praises to the Lord. And that means that the Broadway production “Rock of Ages” is really my musical – not the play itself, but the title. “Rock of Ages, cleft for Thee. Let me [find] myself in thee.” And I have.