Her `Tammy' still sings true

The Boston Globe

Beverly Beckham

I was such a goofy kid that I actually believed that when you grew up, life turned into a musical. I was raised on musicals - Judy Garland, Doris Day, and Gene Kelly singing and dancing on the small TV in our living room, ``The King and I,'' ``Annie Get Your Gun,'' ``South Pacific'' - blaring from a record player when the TV wasn't on.

Music filled our little house. My mother sang. I sang. My father tried to sing.

I thought everyone sang.

Singing was so much a part of my world that I didn't think twice about getting up on stage at Symphony Hall and belting out ``Tammy,'' from ``Tammy and the Bachelor,'' in front of a crowd of hundreds when I was 10 years old. This is what people did, I thought. They sang. They danced. Plus my best friend Rose stood on the stage and sang, too.

The Policeman's Ball was a big deal back in 1957, and Symphony Hall was an even bigger deal. My father said it was where rich people went to listen to music. So that year, instead of buying just two tickets for my mother and himself, he bought four tickets so Rosemary and I could go.

The place was magical, a fairy tale, all crystal and gold and starched tablecloths and clinking glasses. Women wore swirling dresses and men had shiny shoes. Lights flashed and cigarette smoke swirled and the band - I'd never heard a live band before - played and played. The dance floor was never empty.

Until halfway through the night, when a girl Rose's and my age was invited up to the stage to sing.

And just like that the orchestra became background music, people stopped dancing, and all eyes were on her. This was exactly as I'd imagined. The grown-up world was a musical.

Rose and I were not novices. We had sung ``Tammy'' at least a million times before we sang it at Symphony Hall. We crooned it walking to school, walking home from school, walking around the playground, walking downtown. Alone or together, it was the song we practiced over and over in an effort to sound just like Debbie Reynolds, in an effort to be Debbie Reynolds.

Rose trilled the ``Whip-poor-will, whip-poor-will, you and I know'' part even better than Debbie Reynolds, I told her, so she always sang the second half and I always sang the beginning.

Still, we had no intention of singing anything the night of the ball until that girl we didn't know stood center-stage and dazzled the crowd.

Then there was no stopping us.

I sang, Rose mute beside me, and when I finished the crowd clapped, thinking the song was finished. But then the band started again and Rose sang her half, and at the end the applause was even louder.

All the rest of the night, people said, ``So, you're the girls who sang?'' and ``Good job!'' and ``Well done'' and we basked in the praise.

And then the ball was over and years passed, lots of years, Tammy and the Policeman's Ball relegated to ancient history, to a long closed-off corner of my brain. Until one night when Lucy, my first grandchild, was a baby, and I'd sung her every song I could think of and still she wouldn't sleep. So I reached way back into the past and dusted off ``Tammy'' and sang not just the first verse but the whip-poor-wills, too, again and again and again.

And Lucy closed her eyes. And relaxed. And fell asleep.

They all fall asleep to this song. Every one of my grandchildren loves ``Tammy.'' I read them their stories. I sing them their own special songs. But it's ``Tammy'' they beg for, ``Tammy'' that makes them - thank God something makes them - nestle into their pillows, pull up their covers and yawn.