This Teacher Rocked!

 

In case you ever think music teachers aren’t influential, think of Susan Stark.

 

As my 7th grade music instructor, she was expected to teach us the 1800s classical works and such traditional songs as “My Country ‘Tis of Thee” and “Oh Suzannah,”

 

Not Mrs. Stark. When she saw me with a copy of “Song Hits” magazine, she enlisted me to bring in all of my copies from home and help her come up with some pop songs for the class.

 

 This was 1954, when “Stranger in Paradise” and “Mr. Sandman” topped the charts. She wrote the lyrics on the blackboard, and the class eagerly sang along.

 

Next she encouraged me to play an unorthodox boogie woogie song I had learned, using her classroom piano at Portola Junior high School in El Cerrito, Calif. My music went over quite well in a talent show, and one of the greasers persuaded me to play it again.

 

A year later, she rounded up a bunch of us boys for an assembly show in which we sang “What Shall We Do With the Drunken Sailor?” unknowingly preparing me for singing it as a senior adult with the Washington Men’s Camerata.

 

Do you think I am writing about her impact on me? Well, no.

 

Four years later, she coached another boy, the son of one of my mom’s friends. “You collect records. Why don’t you bring some of your favorites, and we’ll play them in class and you can talk all about what you like about them,” she told him. They weren’t Beethoven or Mozart.  They included “I’m Walkin’” by Fats Domino and “Boppin’ the Blues” by Carl Perkins.

 

Next, the boy played some blues music at the very same piano I used. He didn’t stop there. He came back and played that piano after class, drawing a small enthusiastic crowd, including a drummer who wanted to join him. They went to the drummer’s house and collected others to play.

 

The boy, John Fogerty, and Creedence Clearwater Revival were headed to the Rock n Roll Hall of Fame.

 

“Mrs. Stark was a great inspiration,” he wrote in his book ”Fortunate Son.” “Rather than thwarting me when I went off to the piano to bang out some rock and roll–which I’m sure sounded pretty awful–she encouraged it and acted like it was the coolest thing in the world.”