Mae's Real Stories

Music came on large black disks called records when we were children. We had a record player that was a box with a large turntable on top, and we loved to play music. Our parents had grown-up records like Beethoven's Pastoral Symphony. Sometimes we listened to these records, but we also had many records that were just for children, just like Miriam and Alice and Theo have now.

One favorite was a folk singer named Burl Ives. He sang songs like "The Little White Duck" and "Oh do you remember sweet Betsy from Pike?" and "Froggie went a-courtin." In fact, you can tell that Raffi sings many of the same songs as Burl Ives.

We had other favorites too. Arny loved a singing version of "The Nutcracker Suite." We had a record of the story "In which a house is built at Pooh Corner," and a record of the poem about the Pied Piper of Hamlin. All of us -- parents and children -- liked the song "Old Man River" sung by Paul Robeson.

One thing that was very different about records instead of CDS: they were very short. After one or two songs, the record was over, and you had to change it or play it again. The other different thing was that the big, black records were very breakable. If you dropped one, it broke into several sharp pieces.