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When I got up to say a few words about my grand-mom at her funeral, I decided to talk about her love of music and her desire to share that love. A couple of years ago, when Jake was 2 or 3, grand-mom came to Maryland for a visit. Jake had a child sized 5 dollar out of tune ukulele that he liked to beat the floor with. My grand-mom picked up the ukulele, began to tune it, and then proceeded to play a medley of songs on the instrument. A couple of months ago we went to visit grand-mom at her house in New Jersey. During the visit, she took Jake over to her badly beat up piano (at least 10 of the keys were completely dead) and attempted to teach him how to play a song with her. I don't remember the song, but I do remember how intent she was on getting Jake's fingers in the right position and to follow the right notes. At the funeral, my Aunt Martha made similar remarks, commenting about how my cousin and his friend came home from college with a couple of guitars and a keyboard. My grand-mom picked up the keyboard and started jamming along.

Looking through the index, Ethel's love of music is clear. Out of the roughly 550 cards in the purex box, 65 (more than 10%) are in some way related to music. These include record reviews, band and singer biographies, transcribed movements from songs, and complete lyrics for famous songs. My first thought was to scan all 65 in but again there are time (and maybe even bandwidth) constraints. So instead I thought I would just highlight some of the ones I found the most interesting, or the ones that demonstrated the range of music related index cards.


Examples like these are very typical in the index. Each card includes the title of the song, who wrote and/or performed it, and a brief transcribed section of the song. Included in these four are an Irving Berlin song, the Simon/Garfunkel song "Homeward Bound," Hank Williams' "Homesick," and the Honduras National Anthem which we are told was selected by a competition and adopted in 1915.
Here are four more similar cards for "The Horse Trader's Song" which is a gypsy folk song, The Rolling Stones' "Honky Talk Women," The Eagles "Hotel California," and "Hor Klokorna Med Angsligt Dan," which is Swedish.

Sometimes these cards are followed by another card that expands upon the limited information initially provided. Here are a couple of examples.


The second card for "A Hot Time in the Old Town" provides the details about when the song was first printed in 1896. The second card for Hank Williams' "Honky Talk Blues" includes the entire lyrics for the song.

Two cards I find pretty interesting focus on the more tragic side of Rock and Roll.

I looked up Doug Hopkins on the Internet (the real one, not my grand-mom's paper version) and found out that he was a founding member of the Gin Blossoms (a band I think I saw perform live) and had committed suicide in 1993. The second card is a clipping that reports the drummer for the Doobie Brothers motorcycle accident in 2001.
As detailed in previous posts, numerous of the index cards are folded in order to include additional clippings and information. The music examples usually highlight record reviews and related news. Here is the card and the contents for John Lee Hooker.

What I really think is cool about these types of music index cards is the varying range of musical genres represented. While I didn't scan the contents of these following cards, they do reflect the broad interest of the index.

While Hootie and the Blowfish and Whitney Houston have gained a great deal of mainstream popularity, Hot Chip is a relatively obscure dance punk band. And while a lot of the cards do feature mainstream rock and roll artists, classical musicians (among others) are also included. I must also mention that the Whitney Houston Card includes different colored ink, giving the appearance that Ethel was updating the card as Whitney's career unfolded (to put it nicely). The last two words on the card are not dated but read "drug addict." For some reason that makes me chuckle.