Stand Up Straight and Sing! Read Online Free

knew I could sing with more power than some of my peers, there was no acknowledgment whatsoever that my voice was any more special than that of any of my friends who sang. I realized early in my professional life—and I still celebrate it now—that I was very lucky to have that part of my life unfold in such a way. None of us children were given reason to consider ourselves more special than the other. Yet collectively, we were special in the eyes of the community that nurtured and supported us. We were lucky to have had the support of our parents, teachers, and other influential adults in our lives. They understood the importance of these meaningful interactions, both to our early socialization and to the development of our communication skills, the ability to express ourselves in front of others comfortably and confidently—skills that would turn out to be extremely valuable later.
    My parents were constant observers of how my siblings and I deported ourselves, what our school responsibilities were, what we were meant to be doing on any given day. I can still see myself standing in the hallway, with my mother getting herself ready for the day and my father preparing to take us to school, reciting a poem that my school’s class was charged with presenting on Monday mornings. My father would say, “Now, you’ve got your poem ready?” And I would say, “Yes, of course, Daddy.” And I would recite it, stumbling all the way, and my mother would say what she always said: “Stand up straight, honey.” I can still hear her voice. Stand up straight. And even on this day, I am sure she is looking down on me, saying the same thing, particularly when I fall into resting in my right hip, a lifelong tendency. When I realize I am doing it, I do my best to correct my posture. Stand up straight.
    The act of standing in front of crowds, large and small, and offering a performance of some kind, was as natural as passing around the Ritz crackers with pimiento cheese at the end of a program. I do not remember my first solo performance (though there are a number of stories circulating, purporting to know what my first song was), but I do know that my big numbers around age five were “Jesus Loves Me” and “Jesus Wants Me for a Sunbeam.”
    Church gatherings on Sunday afternoons were held often in the living rooms of members of the congregation, and there were many times when this took place in our home. My mother would play the piano and I would sing something, and then I would go back outside to continue playing with my friends. (I was particularly fond of playing jacks with the girls of the neighborhood.) Even though being called into the house to perform interrupted my playtime, I was always happy to do the actual singing. I would be rewarded with cookies and juice from the grownups’ dessert plates. Those Sunday-afternoon gatherings were called silver teas, as the funds collected for the church’s activities were not expected to be grand sums of money, so “silver” could be offered, rather than dollar bills. They were far more important as social occasions than as fundraisers.
    I sang my first opera aria in junior high school, under the direction of the choral director, Mrs. Rosa Sanders, who had decided that I should learn a special song: “My Heart at Thy Sweet Voice,” from the opera Samson and Delilah by Camille Saint-Saëns. Of course, I knew the story of Samson and Delilah from Sunday school, but I did not speak French, the language in which the opera was written. Instead, I learned the song in English and sang it at various churches, recreation centers, and even at a supermarket opening around the Augusta area. After we had done that for a while, Mrs. Sanders decided that I could move on to singing the aria in French. We found a recording of the great mezzo-soprano Risë Stevens performing it and I mimicked her, singing it precisely as she did. I would listen to the recording over and over again, sing a bit, and