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Memories of Music in Lowell

May 14, 2025 by DickH Posted in Uncategorized Leave a Comment

Leo Racicot and two students preparing for a school musical.

Memories of Music in Lowell

By Leo Racicot

Our mother’s mother, Adele, had the most beautiful, high, clear soprano. She loved to sing. I have only to close my eyes, and I can still hear Come, Come, Come to the Wildwood, I Come to the Garden Alone and Alexander’s Ragtime Band. But other than Nana, I don’t think anyone else in the family was musical. We knew from her stories that our mother, Edna, had sung in her church choir when she was a girl but we never heard her sing around the house or in the yard while hanging the clothes out. Not one note. In spite of this, I was surrounded my entire young life by music. I loved it. Even though I came of age hearing The Beatles and The Rolling Stones — the rock revolution tidal wave of the early ’60s. (I still vividly remember the first time I heard The Stones’ Paint It Black, while walking along the boardwalk at Hampton Beach, blasting out over the intercom system from the Hampton bandstand. The menace in the air was thick, even frightening, and I said to myself, even at that young age, “A dark change is coming….” But my parents married when they were older so I was also weaned on the music and singers of The Great American Songbook; whenever we went motorin with our Aunt Marie in her Rambler, she’d have on the radio Nat King Cole, Jo Stafford, Rosemary Clooney, Bing Crosby, Al Martino, Frank Sinatra. I took instantly to that music and still love to listen to it. No one was like them or the songs they sang. It’s so hard to believe Barbara Streisand is in her 80s. The first time I heard her seems like only yesterday — my mother, sister and I were eating in George’s, a local pizza joint. Someone put a nickel in the jukebox and this voice, so new, so unlike anything we had ever heard before, sang People, and I swear — every single person in that noisy restaurant went stone cold silent, even the waitresses, and listened. The very silverware and ice glasses stopped clinking. I will never forget it. It was as if a filmmaker hit the Stop Motion button on a camera. Everything STOPPED…

Only friends from that time in my life can verify that I was able to mimic Streisand, note for note, perfectly, her, Judy Collins, Joni Mitchell, Judy Garland. With Julie Andrews, I could even reach the high A above C in the finale of Do Re Mi. I kid you not. I loved to sing and listen to music. I’d hole up in my bedroom for hours listening to the LPs and 45s I’d picked up at Record Lane on Central Street for a dollar, two dollars. I can’t believe my eyes when I see what vinyl costs today! I especially loved Broadway showtunes. My four favorite shows were My Fair Lady, Camelot, and later on, Sweeney Todd and Maury Yeston’s Nine. I’d crank them up and sing along at the top of my lungs. My mother would tolerate this for a time then yell above my voice, “Leo! Will you shut that GD music OFF!!” I also took to the music and musicians of The Folk Music Revival: Bob Dylan, Judy Collins, Richie Havens, Peter, Paul and Mary, Phil Ochs, Odetta. I couldn’t get enough. I even begged my mother to buy me an autoharp one Christmas so I could sing and strum along with their records. For one whole year, the tenement apartment above us was vacant so I’d go upstairs, find a corner window in an empty room and sing my lungs out. The empty room made for great acoustics. The poor neighbors.

I always wanted to take piano lessons and begged my mom for years to buy me one and see to it I got lessons. An antiques shoppe up in Milford, New Hampshire, The White Elephant, inspired me. It had dozens and dozens of old pianos: grand pianos, player pianos, upright and toy pianos. My mother, remembering her school chum, Gertrude Foster had been a whiz on the player piano in high school, almost relented. But the money for a piano and lessons simply wasn’t there. And the apartment we lived in wasn’t big enough to accommodate a piano. She used the same reason for not letting me have a big dog, like a Lab or an Irish Setter. “Too small in here; the dog wouldn’t be happy.” To make me happy, she bought me a small (toy) organ. That was fine for me. I remember following along the sheet music for The Tennessee Waltz, A Pretty Girl is like a Melody, Largo, Fascination and such but after a while, it became clear I wasn’t going to be another John Kiley, who played for Bruins, Red Sox and Celtics games or another Bob Ralston, the organist on The Lawrence Welk Show. Across the country in the 1960s, families would gather around the TV set every Saturday night to watch Larence Welk and his champagne music. Friends poke good-natured fun of me for still liking Welk but it was and is tuneful, wholesome music and what’s wrong with that?? Anyway, I knew I wasn’t going to be mastering the organ any time soon.

Instead, a chance to join The Saint Patrick’s School boys’ choir under the direction of Mr. Charles McGrail (later, Reverend Charles McGrail) came up. After my audition, Mr. McGrail told me I had perfect pitch and was an alto. Studying with him, singing with the other kids made for joyous years. One big event — our group was invited to be part of an Archdiocesan “sing”, consisting of many other Catholic school choirs throughout New England. We were to perform at Boston’s Symphony Hall. We rehearsed for weeks under the baton of Mr. McGrail, who was ably assisted by Sister Magdalen Joseph, SND de Namur, the school’s music teacher. Sister was a hoot; more than sing, she tended to send out across the classroom a sharp sort of warbling yodel — sister was by that time older than your average bear, keeping time to the beat with a wooden arithmetic ruler, slapping it against her ample bosom. Most fun of all were the Saturdays we kids piled into the vehicles of parents carpooling us to the various area rectories and halls across the state to join with other choir kids. I especially remember Christine Hoffman’s mother’s station wagon, which was a good size, but which couldn’t accommodate the number of us students being assigned to it. I and some others wound up being herded into the back, riding backwards all the way to Saint Monica’s in Lawrence and the following week to Saint Cecilia’s in The Back Bay. I’d never ridden in a car backwards and would have thrown up but was having too much of a ball. It was all so exciting. The day finally arrived for our two concerts. The whole choir, under the direction of famed conductor, Theodore Marier, was led to the stage and told us how he wanted us grouped. We were instructed to “Relax. Take a deep breath.” All-at-once, the curtain opened and I’m sure I wasn’t the only kid who gasped — there before us was a sea of black-and-white: hundreds of nuns and priests made up the entire audience. I don’t mind telling you I felt more than a little faint. Shivers were coursing through my body. Mr. Marier stepped to the podium, raised his baton and bid us begin. Our combined voices rose in song and in prayer to the ceiling. It was thrilling. The acoustics of that great hall were thrilling. We sang Wanderers by Gerhard Track, Spring Song, a Polish folk tune, Psalm 150 by Lewis Lewandowski and finished to thunderous applause. Our concert wasn’t over; a second audience, made up of our parents, relatives and friends was seated and we repeated our performance for them, Mr. McGrail later told us, “Beautifully”. (Interesting aside: years later, when I was working at O’Leary Library, ULowell, I boasted to my music major friend, Nancy Bluestein, who was impressing me with the many places she’d performed, “I sang at Symphony Hall once!”. She looked at me dubiously, paused for a second and said, “Where? In the Men’s Room?)

And speaking of Saint Patrick’s, in the early ’70s, Sister Mary Jeanne agreed to let me organize a school drama/chorus group there. (Sister had been my 8th grade teacher and was now school principal. The kids and I had great fun putting on Christmas skits, talent shows and pageants, and we did a terrific production of You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown, the memory of which lingers today. A few of the performers still fondly recall how well our version went off, and I’ve seen other professional productions of this show that weren’t half as good as ours. No kidding!

When The Sound of Music came out in 1965, I must have walked from our house in The Acre downtown to The Strand Theater on Central Street at least a dozen times. I loved the movie and Julie Andrews that much. Those were much safer times and a kid of nine could walk by himself unharmed any time of day, or even after dark. I remember there was a little footbridge that took me from Dutton Street over to Shattuck Street (where there is now a tiny park and tiny replica of a trolley). The wood of the bridge was already starting to rot and in my kid’s wild imagination, I was always afraid the bridge would give out under me, sending me into the scary, brackish water of the canal where waiting trolls would swallow me whole. But hey, it was a shortcut to my beloved Maria von Trapp and the von Trapp family singers, and the best movie musical ever made.

Oh, my friend, Joe, just reminded me that the very first rock concert we went to was by James Montgomery Band at Lowell Tech’s athletic field, up off Riverside Street. In those days, the college (I attended Lowell State Teachers College) hosted lots of popular performers. I remember hearing Pete Seeger, Buffy Sainte Marie. Tim Buckley, Tim Hardin, and the great Charles Aznavour.

Another source of regular music in Lowell was band music; I could be wrong but have noticed that the great, fun parades Lowell used to have are now completely gone from the city’s culture. I loved standing on the sidewalk — a good viewing spot could be had standing in front of City Hall on the Merrimack Street side. It was a blast listening to the rousing band music — John Phillip Sousa and Aaron Copland. The colors of the musicians’ uniforms, the clowns, the majorettes all dazzled. I even got to march in a few parades myself; with my Boy Scout Troop 13, led by scoutmasters, Ray Bourque and Bill Riley, and other times with our Lowell High School drill unit (ROTC), led by Colonel John Beaulieu and Lieutenant Phil Dancause. Marching in parades sparks the spirit but can be murder on the feet.