Just Kids From the Bronx by Arlene Alda

Author:Arlene Alda [Alda, Arlene]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Biography & Autobiography, Nonfiction, Personal Memoir, Retail
ISBN: 9781627790963
Barnesnoble:
Publisher: Holt, Henry & Company, Inc.
Published: 2015-03-03T05:00:00+00:00

VALERIE SIMPSON

Pianist, singer, composer

(1946– )

Both my grandmothers lived in the Bronx and had pianos, but nobody in the family could play them. That was the setup for me to learn, because everyone could sing. I can only think that the pianos were there, just waitin’ for me to come along—destined to play them because of the musical gift that was given to me. My grandmother put me in front of the upright and I just kind of knew it. I was four or five when I started playing piano by ear.

When I was about eleven years old I took piano lessons and learned to read music, but for a long time I fooled the teacher because she’d play the song and I would just remember and repeat it. Then she got hip to me and stopped playing, so I had to learn to read the notes. I played Bach and Chopin—classical music—and then I got a scholarship to a place called Chatham Square. It was at that time I realized I was never going to be a classical pianist and that I didn’t want to be one. I quit and started playing more on my own.

I was raised on Jackson Avenue in a three-story building that my grandmother owned. When it came time for junior high school, our neighborhood school wasn’t that great, so I was bused to Junior High School 22, which was a better school about fifteen or twenty minutes away. We were the first black students to go to that school so I felt a big responsibility because I was going to get this good education and I was going to represent the whole black race. Don’t mess up now! I wanted to do well. Nobody told me that, but I felt it on my own.

In that junior high school a lot of good things happened. They had musical programs, and when the teachers found out that I played the piano I got out of class a lot. That worked out really well for me. I was recognized for what I could do musically, and they made a way for me to do it. Some of the kids saw me get that special treatment, like getting pulled out of class, so I wasn’t exactly a favorite among my peers. I can remember almost getting into a fight with a girl because she thought I was stuck on myself, you know. Teacher’s favorite. The girl was bigger than me, so my younger brother, who was bigger than both of us, intervened and got me home.

Because I was such a standout in junior high school, when I got to high school I became almost like wallpaper. I disappeared. I didn’t want to be the one that got called out in that same way anymore, so I played very little piano in school in those days.

But I loved playing handball in the Morris High School yard, which was right across the street from us. I was really good at it. I’d hit those low balls, you know.

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