"Sing, Sing, Sing." I always remember that old school black and white Looney Tunes cartoon with this song going on and on. I first saw it when I was about 5-years-old in Alaska. So cool! Not too long afterward, I heard the song again on my father's 1959 Telefunken console (via Short Wave signal from Paris or Munich(?) Back then, the TV was in the basement, the Telefunken was upstairs in the living room which by the way, is still serving up that warm tube sound in my studio today. I tune in to 101.9 WLIF during the holiday season. It's a wonderful thing to hear those old holiday tunes coming out of the console.

I listened to the Telefunken a lot in those days and I always thought the whole band was in the console (it sounded so real, and loud; and it was a big thing for a little kid sitting in front of it). I liked the wooden turntable that you could pull out from the console when you opened the right-side door. The turntable had all 4 speeds and multi-stack adapter for 45s (how cool is that). Slide the left door, and the warm yellow backlights behind all the stamped out graphics of music notes and staffs for tone setting, city names for the short wave frequency bands, and of course for those of you that know - the "Magic Eye"! Magic Eyes are fascinating, a multi-layered green indicator with a middle black pupil. If the station is tuned in, the eye becomes mostly green with a very small black pupil. The pupil varies in size, in real time, relative to the signal strength all the way to covering the entire green eye when there is no signal.

One thing I was not fond of was a static-y AM and SW signals, so I'd constantly change channels to get clear stations. Using the Magic Eye to tune in short wave signals from Europe and adjusting for drift was a like full-time job for me (same still today). I would slowly tune it really slow to get the eye as closed as possible. The other thing I did not like was that really loud annoying guy that talked in between the songs. I thought he was a giant bully since he and all those players were crammed in that big box together and he stopped them from playing so he could talk. I figured he was bigger than them since he was louder (no different than today except I'm pretty confident that they’re not are in the box, at least not all of them).

OK, back to the story; So I had seen the cartoon, then not too long afterwards, heard it through the Telefunken upstairs. I was visualizing that Looney Tunes sketch in my head while listening to it on this big loud stereo console; and man, that was All She Wrote; a seed was planted in me for good.

Within a year, I was in 1st grade in Myrtle Beach and bouncing between Charleston SC. My father was in Vietnam and sent us a Sony mini-reel-to-reel recorder so we could record ourselves and mail the tapes back and forth (4" reels, really neat). My sister and I would gather friends into groups to record plays and I would make Gameleon ensembles banging pots and pans or whatever was around. We recorded ourselves accosting the dogs and recruited the babysitters to be character performers and sing since they were older and sounded like adults. The plethora of prolific productions we created were simply astounding. Few were spared back in those days when they came over. For the rest, the red button was on and a production was in process, so we had to record and perform. I guess some things don't really change. Just think, all those tapes were reused dozens of times, so who knows how many future Emmy's, Grammy's and Toni's were erased ;-)

Ashton practiced and performed music from the start. He became a teacher and a Maestro, but more importantly a mentor to everyone. Everything he said to you was meant to plant a seed. I was a student of Ashton's, but while he did not know what or how to teach me about recording, he was a mentor, no different than his music students. And just listen to all the great sessions I was able to record thanks to him. Just hit the record button and play, that's the way it had to be for him, and we are all better musicians and people because of him.

Thank you for your kind and generous donation. Proceeds go to The Fletcher Music School Scholarships at CCBC Essex.

Now go and listen to more songs and albums on this site and remember to - "Sing, Sing, Sing"!