I'll Call It Like I See It

by sheila morris

Tag: neil diamond

  • Tina and Elvis

    Tina and Elvis


    My first major league concert was to see Brenda Lee perform in Houston when I was in the seventh grade in 1959. My daddy and mama took me to see her because I loved her songs and her singing when I was thirteen years old living in a small rural town in Grimes County near the Sam Houston National Forest deep in the Piney Woods of southeast Texas. I was raised on gospel music concerts in singing conventions at Bays Chapel Baptist Church on Sunday afternoons following dinner on the grounds. Good quartet singing with different relatives participating, good piano playing by the greatest gospel piano player of all time Charlie Taliaferro.

    I can’t imagine either one of my parents spending money to buy the tickets – much less driving me nearly 80 miles from Richards to Houston for the Brenda Lee concert unless they had planned a side trip to the Bargain Gusher to look for clothes for work. What I remember most about my first concert experience was the large number of strings hanging from Brenda’s petticoats. We must have had binoculars; she must have been without a wardrobe person that night.

    Through the years my memories of musical concert experiences include Neil Diamond, Elton John, Diana Ross, Dolly and Kenny, Dolly by herself, the Judds (twice), Cher, K.T. Oslin, Bette Midler, Patti LaBelle, Cynthia Clawson (in church – does that count?), Willie Nelson (twice), Nancy Griffith, Alison Kraus, Melissa Etheridge, the Indigo Girls and the infamous Prince concert for my 65th. birthday. Infamous because Prince was one of Pretty’s favorites – we had great tickets, but I listened from the steps of an exit at the Colonial Life Arena – the decibels were intended for younger ears than mine.

    What I think about today, however, are the two performers I had the opportunity to see but passed on for whatever lame reason I had at the time: Elvis and Tina Turner. For the life of me I find these two blanks on my concert cards the most troubling since Elvis’s Golden Records released in 1958 was the first lp album I ever owned. My maternal grandmother’s sister, my Aunt Dessie from Houston, gave the album to me because she knew I had a portable turn table in a small square blue box that would play it. She was right – I played that album over and over again. Thank goodness the turn table was sturdy.

    Elvis was the young man with sideburns who promised to spend his whole life through loving you which I interpreted as loving me, but he was then drafted into the Army during the Korean War. I couldn’t believe the government was that cruel when Elvis sang they shouldn’t be. Yes, Elvis, the man whose musical career I followed throughout his life from sex symbol to husky size. He made sixteen personal appearances in Houston between 1954 and 1976, but I saw Brenda Lee.

    Elvis also sang one concert at the Carolina Coliseum here in Columbia on February 18, 1977…six months before he died. I remember thinking I ought to go since I lived within 15 minutes of the coliseum – but opted to wait for a later time that was not to be. As for Tina Turner – what was happening in my life that would prevent my attending her concerts at that same Carolina Coliseum in 1985 or 1987 or 1993? Pretty told me she saw Tina with her sister Darlene at the 1985 concert – in her BS (before Sheila) years. That’s Pretty for you – naturally she wouldn’t want to miss Tina’s hits like What’s Love Got to Do With It?, Private Dancer, Nutbush City Limits, We Don’t Need Another Hero, and my all-time favorite of favorites Proud Mary. Clearly I missed the Tina personal appearance boat, but wait. All was not lost.

    Thanks to the 21st. century miracles of You Tube videos I’ve had the best seat in the house at Tina Turner’s concerts in Barcelona, London, Amsterdam, Rio – I’ve joined tens of thousands of fans at some of the largest venues in the world. I’ve drooled as I watched Tina perform Proud Mary with Beyonce at the Grammy Awards – and shed a tear during a special performance of Simply the Best on the intimate set of the Oprah Winfrey Show for Oprah’s 50th. birthday celebration where she and Tina embraced after they danced together. Oh yeah, I’ve seen Tina in concerts, in interviews, in a documentary of her life – the good news is I can watch her whenever I want to, as often as I like and not have to worry about the person in front of me being too tall.

    Pretty indulges my Tina time with a smile of understanding, even encouragement. She still owes me for Prince.

    As for the old Elvis You Tube experience, count Pretty out.

    ****************

    This post was originally published in August of last year – what prompted the reblog? Oh gosh, coincidentally going to see the recently released Elvis movie in the same week I randomly scrolled You Tube and landed on the Amsterdam Tina concert. What are the odds?

  • Tina and Elvis

    Tina and Elvis


    My first major league concert was to see Brenda Lee perform in Houston when I was in the seventh grade in 1959. My daddy and mama took me to see her because I loved her songs and her singing when I was thirteen years old living in a small rural town in Grimes County near the Sam Houston National Forest deep in the Piney Woods of southeast Texas. I was raised on gospel music concerts in singing conventions at Bays Chapel Baptist Church on Sunday afternoons following dinner on the grounds. Good quartet singing with different relatives participating, good piano playing by the greatest gospel piano player of all time Charlie Taliaferro.

    I can’t imagine either one of my parents spending money to buy the tickets – much less driving me nearly 80 miles from Richards to Houston for the Brenda Lee concert unless they had planned a side trip to the Bargain Gusher to look for clothes for work. What I remember most about my first concert experience was the large number of strings hanging from Brenda’s petticoats. We must have had binoculars; she must have been without a wardrobe person that night.

    Through the years my memories of musical concert experiences include Neil Diamond, Elton John, Diana Ross, Dolly and Kenny, Dolly by herself, the Judds (twice), Cher, K.T. Oslin, Bette Midler, Patti LaBelle, Cynthia Clawson (in church – does that count?), Willie Nelson (twice), Nancy Griffith, Alison Kraus, Melissa Etheridge, the Indigo Girls and the infamous Prince concert for my 65th. birthday. Infamous because Prince was one of Pretty’s favorites – we had great tickets, but I listened from the steps of an exit at the Colonial Life Arena – the decibels were intended for younger ears than mine.

    What I think about today, however, are the two performers I had the opportunity to see but passed on for whatever lame reason I had at the time: Elvis and Tina Turner. For the life of me I find these two blanks on my concert cards the most troubling since Elvis’s Golden Records released in 1958 was the first lp album I ever owned. My maternal grandmother’s sister, my Aunt Dessie from Houston, gave the album to me because she knew I had a portable turn table in a small square blue box that would play it. She was right – I played that album over and over again. Thank goodness the turn table was sturdy.

    Elvis was the young man with sideburns who promised to spend his whole life through loving you which I interpreted as loving me, but he was then drafted into the Army during the Korean War. I couldn’t believe the government was that cruel when Elvis sang they shouldn’t be. Yes, Elvis, the man whose musical career I followed throughout his life from sex symbol to husky size. He made sixteen personal appearances in Houston between 1954 and 1976, but I saw Brenda Lee.

    Elvis also sang one concert at the Carolina Coliseum here in Columbia on February 18, 1977…six months before he died. I remember thinking I ought to go since I lived within 15 minutes of the coliseum – but opted to wait for a later time that was not to be. As for Tina Turner – what was happening in my life that would prevent my attending her concerts at that same Carolina Coliseum in 1985 or 1987 or 1993? Pretty told me she saw Tina with her sister Darlene at the 1985 concert – in her BS (before Sheila) years. That’s Pretty for you – naturally she wouldn’t want to miss Tina’s hits like What’s Love Got to Do With It?, Private Dancer, Nutbush City Limits, We Don’t Need Another Hero, and my all-time favorite of favorites Proud Mary. Clearly I missed the Tina personal appearance boat, but wait. All was not lost.

    Thanks to the 21st. century miracles of You Tube videos I’ve had the best seat in the house at Tina Turner’s concerts in Barcelona, London, Amsterdam, Rio – I’ve joined tens of thousands of fans at some of the largest venues in the world. I’ve drooled as I watched Tina perform Proud Mary with Beyonce at the Grammy Awards – and shed a tear during a special performance of Simply the Best on the intimate set of the Oprah Winfrey Show for Oprah’s 50th. birthday celebration where she and Tina embraced after they danced together. Oh yeah, I’ve seen Tina in concerts, in interviews, in a documentary of her life – the good news is I can watch her whenever I want to, as often as I like and not have to worry about the person in front of me being too tall.

    Pretty indulges my Tina time with a smile of understanding, even encouragement. She still owes me for Prince.

    As for the old Elvis You Tube experience, count Pretty out.

    ****************

    This post was originally published in August of last year – what prompted the reblog? Oh gosh, coincidentally going to see the recently released Elvis movie in the same week I randomly scrolled You Tube and landed on the Amsterdam Tina concert. What are the odds?

  • oh yeah, I met Neil Diamond once


    Peering into the darkness from my designated position next to the pianist who would accompany me for my two songs I had to sing for the four vocal judges sitting in the audience that were my jury and would determine my final exam grade in my voice class, I was unable to see the judge who had asked me about my attendance at the Neil Diamond concert that night. The bright spotlights directed to the stage to simulate actual performances blinded me.

    “I heard you on the radio this morning,” he continued as I tried to melt into the floor from embarrassment. Surely not one of these classical music teachers had even heard of Neil Diamond and would think pop music was the last rung on the ladder of musical hierarchy.

    “Congratulations on winning the two tickets to the concert – and the backstage pass. That’s quite something,” he said.

    “Thank you, sir. I rarely listen to that radio station,” I lied. “I was just trying to relax for the jury today. Lucky,” I mumbled and then tried to regain my composure to sing the Italian and German songs I had prepared.

    ***

    In 1969 I was a twenty-three-year-old lesbian struggling to find a girlfriend and the meaning of life – but mostly a girlfriend. I was a displaced Texas girl living in Seattle, working for a local CPA firm doing taxes and bookkeeping, and looking for love in the only comfort zone I had: the Mercer Island Baptist Church which had been introduced to me by a straight woman I worked with at the CPA firm.

    I came from six generations of Southern Baptists and was thrilled to know Seattle even had a Southern Baptist church out there in the wilds of the Pacific Northwest. In my flight to escape my family and my “passing” as straight in the Houston area I drove 3,000 miles to a place where I didn’t know a single person except my lesbian friend who traveled with me, a girl who turned out not to be a lesbian (much to my disappointment) and left me two months after we arrived to move to California with a man she met at a bar. I hadn’t really made a plan to find friends.

    Enter the Mercer Island Baptist Church with mostly other displaced southerners whose religion made them feel that they were strangers in a foreign land, biblically speaking. That church became my lifeline to community with the unintentional bonus of developing my own personal “gaydar.” Without delving into specifics, let’s just say that lust and hormonal longings became so intertwined with my religious understandings at the time that I answered a clear call from God to move back to Texas and enroll in the Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth. The “call” came in the form of a rejection by a married woman in the church that I was madly in love with but a woman who was older, wiser, had three very young children, and identified as heterosexual.

    My mother wept when I called her to tell her of my career change and told me she believed I was following the path predetermined for me at my birth when she gave me to God for Christian service. Unfortunately, my voice teacher at the seminary seemed to disagree with my mother’s euphoria. As a matter of fact during one of our lessons, she abruptly asked me why I had decided to pursue a career as a church music director when I had such wonderful opportunities in business as a CPA. Church music directors were mostly men, she went on to tell me as I sang the scales with less enthusiasm.

    My music teacher was right on all fronts, but I’m not a quick learner so I stayed in the seminary for two years after switching my major to theology which didn’t require standing in front of four teachers singing words I didn’t know the meaning of. After two years at Southwestern, I left with a girl friend I had met there which in my mind at the time proved that God truly answered prayers.

    My new girlfriend was my date for the Neil Diamond concert that night in Dallas, and we did go backstage after a fabulous concert to meet him. He had long hair at that time (circa 1971), appeared to be exhausted, was shorter than I expected, but shook hands and spoke to each of us with a slight smile. I seem to remember a female guitar player who left with him…

    Yesterday I heard that Neil Diamond is retiring from touring as a result of Parkinson’s Disease, and I had a flood of memories of that night in Dallas so long ago. The world has lost a great performer, but thankfully we have his concerts preserved for posterity via new technology.

    Today is Neil Diamond’s 77th. birthday, and I would like to sing Happy Birthday to him, but alas, I’m worried that it might be slightly off key. Instead, I will simply thank him for the music he wrote and performed during the past 50 years of his life -and mine. His songs have brought joy to millions of people who will remember them with their own feelings, but not everyone will remember the privilege of meeting him backstage.

    Stay tuned.

     

  • I’m a Believer


    Valentine’s Day…love…flowers…love songs…long walks holding hands…movies with happy endings…lingering looks…Hallmark cards…chocolates…romance.

    I’m a believer – not a trace of doubt in my mind. I’m in love…and I couldn’t leave her if I tried.

    Neil Diamond wrote and recorded the song I’m a Believer in 1966 but The Monkees version is the one I sometimes hum and occasionally even remember the words to actually sing it out loud by myself.  It’s also the finale number for the first Shrek movie and I like to think of DonKEY singing it with such gusto and True Love victorious in the hearts of Shrek and Fiona.  I thought for sure they lived happily ever after until I saw Shrek movie #2 followed by Shrek movie #3.  That was a couple with relationship issues.

    Alas, all relationships have issues because life moves around and through us like the plight of the Prince who longed to make Fiona his bride so he could rule the Kingdom.  He tried and he tried but Fiona’s True Love for Shrek ruled instead.

    Teresa treated me to a Burlesque Show at a local theater for Valentine’s night, and it turned out to be an eventful evening.  The show was entertaining with a great emcee and talented performances and, well, lots of Burlesque complete with colorful feathers and other cleverly placed teasers on the scantily clad actors.  Oh, my.

    If we had just gone home after the show, we would have missed the drama that was even more fun.  Think about our truck keys locked in the ignition in a dark parking lot and then think no cell phones because each of us thought the other brought one.  Now picture the kindness of a stranger who drove me home to get a spare truck key while he dropped Teresa at the car of the friends we were meeting for dessert after the Burlesque show – the friends who had almost given up hope on us since we had no way to call them.

    Then imagine my driving in Teresa’s car to meet all of them at a restaurant which was still serving at that hour of the night and feeling relieved to have resolved the locked key dilemma only to get a text message from our Canterbury Road neighbor on the newly retrieved cell phone that says: Did you feel the earthquake?  The TV news says it was 5.4 on the scale.  Sounded like the roar of a plane falling from the sky.

    Seriously?  Yes, and we must have been the only four people in South Carolina who didn’t feel the earth move.  Not even our dogs were wigged at the earthquake by the time we made it home on Valentine’s night.

    Life often interferes with our plans, but True Love learns to roll with it and laugh at the follies we create for ourselves.  If we believe, not even an earthquake can shake us.