Dad's 78 RPM Record Collection

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Mark's Music

(The following story first appeared in Christian Single Magazine, June 1993)

A Father's Song
by Mark Coppola

In the corner of my apartment sit four old and crumbling boxes. They contain a collection of 78-RPM records from the 1940's that were moved from home to home by my father ever since he was a teenager. Prior to his retirement in Florida, he chose to move with them no longer and gave them to me.

These records aren't just some antique collector's treasure one might find at a weekend garage sale. They represent the heart and soul of my father's youth. My father can still remember saving for and buying each one with as much anticipation as I had done with my first Beatles album. These were the teen idols of his day who created dreams through their spiral etchings in plastic. Benny Goodman. Harry James. Gene Krupa. And most prominently, "Old Blue Eyes," Frank Sinatra.

Yet unknown to that kid from Hoboken who was crooning a nation, there was a would-be singer from the East Side with dreams of grandeur. Somewhere along the way those dreams yielded to the responsibilities of raising a family.

Every now and then I dust off a record or two and listen; and somewhere between the scratches remember.

I remember my father telling me of how he could hear Frank Sinatra for free at the Paramount and how he scoffs at the thought of paying fifty or more dollars to hear him today.

I remember my father singing along with recordings as my sisters and I, sitting on the living room sofa, became his audience. We laughed as he took a spoon in hand for his microphone and as I beamed a flashlight upon his face. He might even take hold of one of us, personally directing the lyrics like some Catskill night club entertainer. This was home. This was his stage.

I remember the music history books that he would read while commuting to and from Manhattan. The Biographies of the lives he might have lived.

I remember him taking me to music lessons but never having the time or the money to do the same for himself.

I always felt that my father really had a great voice and if never having pursued the path of his teenage dreams bothered him he never let it show.

Perhaps, somewhere, in some corner of all our homes is a box of records or other tangible evidence of the path not taken. Perhaps it's an old photograph, or a pair of ice skates hanging from a rusty nail in the basement, or an autographed baseball mitt on that top shelf in the closet.

I hope that when my father looks back on those records or listens to Frank Sinatra sing, "...I did it my way," that he does so without regrets. Because every time that he sat on a commuter train, or passed up a promotion that required relocation, or didn't buy that new car because I needed a new pair of braces, he brought life to the best of love songs. And that makes him the best singer I know.