189. Money for nothin'

189. "Maple Leaf Rag" by Scott Joplin

Most musicians want two things for playing their music: money and awards. "Maple Leaf Rag" is the only song that I ever played that got me both.



Mom and Dad insisted that I take piano lessons while I was in elementary school. I'm not sure why I wasn't able to whine my way out of it or why my poor playing didn't discourage them. I played mediocre at best at the piano recitals and the Lava Hot Springs nursing home performances. "Daren, you have to practice that piece until you memorize it! You don't want to embarrass yourself in front of all those ancient gomers in Lava that have Alzheimers and can't remember anything at all, much less your memorized piano piece! Now practice for an hour a day for the next month until you can play it right!"

Fortunately, the lessons tapered off after Dad volunteered me to the Bishop to play the hymns in the opening priesthood meeting every week. Chad Cole had been the priesthood pianist for as long as I could remember, but he was about to graduate, and they needed a replacement. The first hymn I learned to play was "Sweet Hour of Prayer," because it's pretty slow and four of the five lines are almost exactly the same, which makes it one of the easiest hymns to play. And I played it repeatedly week after week until Dad complained about it, and he forced me to learn other hymns. I never did become good at playing any of the hymns. Few were mistake-free and played at the right tempo. But because I had to prepare to play a hymn every week, my piano playing did improve over the years, and I'd dabble from time to time with the sheet music my folks bought for my sisters to play. One book they bought was a Reader's Digest version of classic songs. Like any other Reader's Digest product, the songs had been shortened and simplified. But they still sounded good to me, and I liked to play a few of them because they either sounded really funny or sounded so serious that they had some comical value when played at the right moment--like the "Funeral March."


No other song in the Reader's Digest book had more show-off potential than "Maple Leaf Rag." It sounds like something that would be played as the background to a Charlie Chaplin silent film in which hilarious things keep happening to the Little Tramp. I remember playing it for the Hatch and Nielsen clan one summer, and they seemed mildly entertained by it, so I kept practicing it until I memorized the opening part and could play it at breakneck speed. Little did I know that this was the song that would be the one that would earn me a pocket portrait of a dead president.

I got the gig to play the song one day when my father complained about how the Bishop and his counselors and a lot of the other priesthood brethren were coming in late to the opening exercises. Now, nothing in the world incites the wrath of Earl like starting a church meeting late. I suggested in jest that maybe I should play "Maple Leaf Rag" to put a little pep in their step so that they'd get into the chapel faster. To my surprise, my father thought it was a great idea, and promised to pay me $20 if I played it in church that week as a priesthood prelude song. That may not seem like a lot of money now, but the internet's inflation calculator tells me that $20 in 1980 is worth the same as $61.23 in 2015. And that's pretty good pay for what I knew would be about 1 minute of piano playing.

When priesthood meeting came around, I plopped my Reader's Digest book on the piano music stand and started to play "Maple Leaf Rag" as fast as I could. Dale Hatch was the first to run into the chapel. He reached me at about the same time that the Bishop came through the chapel doors. I like Dale a lot, so I was a bit embarrassed that he was the one that told me to stop playing, but I really wanted that $20, so I kept at it. He quickly removed the book from the stand thinking that would end it, but I just kept playing my memorized piece. He then closed the keyboard cover, which ended the performance. I heard my Dad laughing in the audience and say loudly, "Maybe that will get everyone in the chapel to start the meeting on time!" The bishopric was not amused. They gave me a bit of a tongue-lashing right then at the piano, and I apologized and promised not to play it anymore, and I think I then played "Sweet Hour of Prayer" for the opening song. I got additional tongue-lashings by the bishopric after the meeting ended. And I was relieved of my piano-playing responsibilities for a few weeks after that. In particular, Dale was pretty disgusted with my behavior. But then Dale found out (probably from Ivalue via Chris) that my father had promised to pay me $20 for the stunt. After that, he understood my motivations a little better and forgave my insolent behavior towards him, and actually chuckled about the incident as we talked about it later in life.

The award for my playing came at the end of my senior year in high school. I needed to play or sing a song as part of the musical talent portion of the Mz. Marsh Valley pageant. I selected a medley of songs to play, including "Maple Leaf Rag" on the piano, "Tip-Toe Through the Tulips" on the ukelele, and "The Rose" on the tuba. I figured that it would look really funny for me to play "Maple Leaf Rag" really fast while wearing a dress.

When I made my way to the piano during the pageant, I tried my best to look ladylike as I descended the stairs in front of the stage. As I did, Doug Armstrong--one of my distant cousins on the Armstrong side of the family--was sitting in the second or third row by the piano bench, and he yelled out, "Hey gorgeous! How about a date!" A number of people in the audience laughed out loud at this, but I didn't react to him. I just took my time in sitting down at the bench and opening the keyboard cover while the laughter died out. I then put my fingers on the keys of the piano, turned my head to look at Doug straight in the eye, and in a loud, high-pitched lady-like voice said, "Fresh!" The audience roared in laughter, and a few second later I started pounding my way through "Maple Leaf Rag" as fast as my fingers would fly. I remember hearing some of the people up front go from laughing to gasping. Their reaction was like, "Woah! Daren can play the piano like that without any music?!"

The rest of my musical performance went well. My falsetto impression of Tiny Tim was well-received, and my emptying of the tuba spit valve got the gross-out "Eeeewww!" response I was hoping for. (I'd put a half cup of water in the tuba just to make sure it looked like a lot of spit was being emptied out on the stage floor.) The crowd's reaction after I blasted out the final low notes on "The Rose" was exactly what I had been searching for my entire school career as a class clown--laughter mixed with cheering mixed with applause. It was extremely satisfying and was everything I had hoped to get out of the competition.

I think my performance, especially the Maple Leaf Rag piece, exhibited enough musical talent for the judges to award me the grand prize--the Mz. March Valley trophy. I was a bit stunned at the end of the pageant when they gave it to me. My vote was for Sheldon because his trombone piece was excellent and he could also play music by just blowing into his hands! His hands were literally a musical instrument! Doesn't anyone else think that is worthy of the grand prize?! I really wasn't trying to compete for the Mz. Marsh Valley like some of the other guys. Like Sheldon, I entered the contest to just to see if we could make people involuntarily laugh so hard that snot would fly out of their noses. I didn't even wear a wig like the others because I thought I would look more hideously comical if I just had really short blonde curls instead of long flowing hair. I remember that some of the other guys (not Sheldon) looked really disappointed in the dressing room after the show, and the girls they had helping them were actually crying because they didn't win. I felt kind of bad because I really didn't want to win it. I only wanted to make people laugh. But such are the vagaries of beauty pageants. Sometimes the ugliest and least-talented ones will win.