When the water aerobics instructor at Palo Alto’s Oshman Family JCC played “Bye, Bye Love,” Wake Up Little Susie” and “At The Hop,” I was suddenly back on my beach blanket, going steady and enjoying the time of my life as a teen.
Then I remembered the boy who broke my teenage heart — but that’s a different story.
Generally, I am thankful for “oldies” music and the dormant memories it reawakens.
In the 1950s, teens pursued dating with a passion. We also married very young and starry-eyed. In the late 1950s, the average age for a first marriage was 22.6 years for men and 20.2 years for women, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.
I was the ripe old age of 22 when I got married in 1965. In some cases, including my own, it didn’t last. We divorced in midlife. I will never be starry-eyed again, but songs help me remember what it was like when love was a “many splendored thing.”
Today I have no idea what songs are on the charts or even the names of the singers. But whenever I hear the descending chords that introduce Tony Bennett’s “I Left My Heart in San Francisco,” I’m ready to burst into song.
The same thing actually happened to Bennett in 2021, before a sellout crowd at Radio City Music Hall. Six months earlier, Bennett’s family revealed that he was grappling with Alzheimer’s, and they weren’t sure whether he could continue to perform. But whenever he heard the piano intros to his hits, he came alive and his voice soared.
“He became himself. He just turned on,” his wife, Susan Benedetto, told “60 Minutes.” “It was like a light switch.”
Bennett died in 2023, but his music will always “fly me to the moon.”
When choirs bring the oldies but goodies to senior facilities, residents can feel young again, at least for a while.
I’m a longtime member of HaShirim, a South Bay Jewish chorale. Audiences of various religious persuasions are moved by passionate songs we perform in Hebrew and Yiddish. But when we begin the tuneful hits by Irving Berlin, George Gershwin and Rodgers and Hammerstein, audience members sing, clap and tap their feet. They light up with Berlin’s “No Business Like Show Business” and “Alexander’s Ragtime Band.” When a concert concludes with Berlin’s “Always,” some even shed wistful tears.
Audiences also adore traditional holiday favorites — and aren’t always charmed by unfamiliar ones. When the Palo Alto-based Aurora Singers director Dawn Reyen opened one December program at a senior home with lesser-known music, one of the caregivers interrupted the program by calling out, “Can’t you just do ‘Jingle Bells?’” And that’s exactly why “Jingle Bells” often shows up in Aurora’s wintertime sing-alongs.
Likewise, pianist-playwright Hershey Felder’s annual visits to the Bay Area often include a sell-out evening of hits from the Great American Songbook. At Moldaw Residences, the retirement community on the Palo Alto JCC campus that my husband and I now call home, a singer-guitarist leads residents in old favorites every Wednesday.
For many years, my husband and I celebrated New Year’s Eve at our own home with showtunes and folk favorites, inviting friends over to “Sing In the New Year” with us. What made the party a hit was not the food, champagne or décor. It was the palpable joy of singing familiar songs together.
Now when we watch videos of those parties, we smile and tear up. We no longer live in that home where we hosted big bashes. We live in an apartment in Moldaw’s independent living complex. We can’t help but miss our house, those celebrations and the friends who are no longer with us. But when we see the joy on our guests’ faces during a clip of “Roll Out the Barrel,” we are glad we made it happen.
HaShirim members volunteer to lead singing at Moldaw’s memory care unit. One resident will join in on Yiddish songs like “Raisins and Almonds” or “Tumbalalaika.” Another, who has the Great American Songbook in her head, will lead us all. She knows the songs of my parents’ era, like “I’ll Be Seeing You” and “Five Foot Two, Eyes of Blue,” and of my grandparents’ era, like “Toot Toot Tootsie” and “Meet Me in St. Louis.”
Back to that boy who shattered my heart: I will never forget the day I accidentally broke the Johnny Matthis recording of “The Twelfth of Never” — a gift from that boy. I wept, and I kept the pieces for weeks.
Fortunately, when we share oldies, it usually feels like “happy days are here again.”