Each Sunday night in 1963, when Judy Garland sang to a live TV audience, she sang to me, too, just a kid in my pajamas taking in one last TV show before bedtime.
Week after week, I watched her nod and blink and run her fingers wildly through her hair. She’d wind the microphone cord around her hand and sometimes press it close to her like her life depended on it. Quite apart from her big voice and legendary stardom, her edgy restlessness intrigued me.
While she mesmerized her audience on Sunday nights, it was nothing compared to what she and I did together, especially when my mom’s freshly waxed kitchen floor needed buffing . . .
So much drama, Judy and me
The electric buffer—something like an upright vacuum—had this wonderful handle at just the right microphone height for a little Judy. I sang into it, sometimes twisting the buffer’s extra long cord around my hand and whipping it about when the lyrics needed a visual boost.
I pulled the mic close, I dropped it for dramatic effect and lifted it back up again–a Judy-inspired move for sure.
We had no Judy Garland records, so I drew only from my memory of Sunday night’s show. Still, my imagination was enough. Besides, Judy gave me so much drama to work with.
Sometimes I threw the cord over my shoulder as I walked about. Sometimes I wound myself up in it and then clutched it to my heart. In times like these, Judy and I were kindred spirits; we commanded our cords, our stages, our timing and delivery.
And, mind you, we didn’t just do the nostalgic, winsome “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” thing. We did “Stormy Weather” and “Smile” and “Old Man River.”
Simply mesmerizing, that’s what we were. Sometimes I’d check the reflection of my Garland-esque pose in the oversized front room picture window.
“Just like Judy,” the reflection reassured me.
My mom once said Judy seemed nervous when she sang. I didn’t know what “nervous” meant. But if Judy could sing nervous, I could sing nervous.
Why Judy captured my imagination, I’ll never know. Maybe her voice intrigued me, maybe her drama. Then again maybe inspiration flowed not from Judy at all, but from my mother’s Hoover floor buffer and that remarkable cord.
Top photo: Judy, Pathé UK, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Morris Sampler 