The Tenor Bluff

My choir teacher in middle and high school was a rotund and robust fellow named James Mahoney, a lover of wine and food and song alike. While I was never the most talented singer in the world, Jim saw fit to showcase me from time to time – a solo here, a jazz choir placement there – knowing full well that putting me in front of a microphone was a recipe for trouble. [Like most people in Roscommon, he knew my grandfather as well as my parents, so I always suspected that he went a bit easier on me than I probably deserved.] And my memories of Jim are oversized, just like the man himself.

From the view of a teen-aged dullard such as myself, adults like Jim were open to superficial ridicule. He always wore an ample cardigan and a world-weary attitude (most likely from decades of hearing bum notes and complaining kids) but even at my intellectually limited age, I knew that he never once compromised his love for music. So many memories: Jim chuckling at Aaron Clark as he stormed out of class for reasons known only to Aaron, Jim allowing us to play chess when we should have been practicing, Jim staring down me and Scott Church after we fucked around miming cymbal crashes, and many more. On one occasion, I drove back to Roscommon from St. Helen with Scott, Jim, and Marc Olson in my car as we listened to a Sam Kinison cassette, with Jim laughing and shaking his head at my youthful folly. Sadly, I also remember walking out of the choir half-way through my senior year when Jim wanted to move me to baritone or bass. [My pride wouldn’t agree to it, even though I knew he was right.]

Aside from the music, I have Jim to thank for inadvertently expanding my social world in my junior year by allowing me and Scott and Bob Gulick (two seniors, BTW) to form the nucleus of the tenor section; Scott had the notes, Bob had the high range, I had the volume, and together we blew the other sections away, cultivating some strong friendships in the process that last ‘til this day. The last time I saw Jim was at my Uncle Butch’s funeral, years ago, and he looked as I had always remembered him – a little ruddy around the cheeks and nose, a bit too big around the midsection, but full of affection and warmth in my time of need.

In K-12 education, music is one of the content areas under attack, as it doesn’t neatly fit into the parameters for success as established by No Child Left Behind. But under Jim’s guidance and care, no child was ever left wanting if there was a song in his or her heart that needed to be heard. In eighth grade, I was so angry at Jim for giving a solo to a learning disabled boy named Bobby Nowak instead of me, but that solo was most likely one of the greatest gifts that Bobby got in middle school, an act of kindness that betrayed his caring spirit. James Mahoney passed away this week, his health slowed by age and appetites, but he will live on whenever I hear Chicago or Earth Wind & Fire, whenever I harmonize in the shower or my car, whenever I put on a cardigan and go teach a class. To paraphrase Elton John, Jim’s gift was his song, and I am a better person for having sung it under his watchful ear.