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Yoko & Isoko Ono; Ellen & Betty O'Neill |
Several years ago I stumbled upon Yoko Ono's Desert Island Disc, recorded Friday, June 15, 2007, when she was 73 years old.
Yoko's story brought me an unexpected connection to the whole beautiful, shared notion of mothers & daughters, a choral connection across cultures and decades. Amazing.
It was for her selection of the song "When I Grow to Too Old Dream." Here is the story she tells of why she chose it. Her distinctive, slight voice somehow made the story even more poignant and resonant:
Yoko: "This is a very personal memory for me.
One day I just felt I wanted to call my mother.
The way she said "Oh Yoko" I thought there was something strange.
And then she said "I just fell in the kitchen," or something like that.
And I thought, this is serious and I thought I had to do something, but I was in New York and she was in Japan.
So I said, "Ok Mommy, let's sing that song, remember that song you used to sing."
and I started "When I grow too old to dream."
[And my mother started to sing back very weak and very haltingly.]
Ok. Let's start again, "When I grow too old to dream. . ."
I kept repeating it and repeating it and she finally sang the whole line.
I was so choked up. And my assistant called to Tokyo, to the hospital and got the ambulance to go to my mother, and she was saved."
And that is how Yoko Ono kept her mother calm and alert while her assistant telephoned Japan and got her mother help.
"When I Grow Too Old to Dream" is a song with music by Sigmund Romberg and lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II, published in 1934. (Yoko Ono was born in 1933). It is one of those extremely special tunes, like Amazing Grace and Danny Boy, that strikes a chord deep within many, many people.
The terrible scenario of an elderly loved one who has fallen is one that every family has known. Keeping her mother calm and alert was absolutely the thing to do, very quick thinking on Yoko's part. And of ALL the songs in ALL the world she could use, what pops into her head in that desperate moment is a song in English that her mother sang to her as a child. Isoko of course also sang songs to Yoko in Japanese, but "When I Grow" has a tune that can connect soul to soul very deeply. Perhaps that is why it popped into her head in that stressful moment.
I hadn't thought of the song in years, but my mother, who was born the same year as Yoko, sang it to me too when I was a child.
What makes my mom's rendition so special is that she cannot "carry a tune." My mother can hear distinctive notes in a song, and can recognize songs, but she struggles to re-create differing pitches of any kind. Her notes often come out as a monotone. And yet, her love of songs and desire to share was so strong that I did hear "tunes" come through that monotone. And this song in particular, which I have known practically since birth.
When I grow too old to dream
I'll have you to remember
When I grow too old to dream
Your love will live in my heart
So, kiss me my sweet
And so let us part
And when I grow too old to dream
That kiss will live in my heart
And when I grow too old to dream
That kiss will live in my heart
The song was used in the 1935 film The Night Is Young, starring Ramon Navarro and sung by English light opera actress Evelyn Layne.
Leonard Maltin is not fan of the film: "Novarro, wretchedly miscast and mugging mercilessly, brings his 10-year MGM career to a pitiful end playing a Viennese archduke who spurns his royal fiancee for a fling with ballerina Laye. Oscar Hammerstein/Sigmund Romberg score, including "When I Grow Too Old to Dream,'' is an insufficient saving grace."
Gracie Fields and Nelson Edy had early hits with it, followed by Nat King Cole and Doris Day. Yoko used the Gracie version for her Desert Island Disc. That is not my favorite, because it's too operatic for such a gentle tune (although it does have the nice intro verse). Here is Linda Ronstadt in a lovely duet with Kermit & Muppet chorus, also with the intro verse.
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