After rattling my kindergarten teacher, Mrs. Leatherwood’s, brain for weeks fooling on the class piano, my mother declared I had some musical talent and found a piano teacher for me. Her name was Ethel Bullard.
Mrs. Bullard was the focus of my Saturday mornings, well, besides Mighty Mouse and the Beatles cartoons. Since my mom and dad insisted I practice a half hour a day (they would have taken to straight Jim Beam if they had to listen to more than that), I was usually OK with my lessons and could bang along with Mrs. Bullard to the “Step-by-Step” books or the Carl Fisher series.
First, you’d ring the doorbell and be greeted by Mrs. Bullard as she was teaching the kid before you. She was a teeny little bird-boned lady with significant glasses and two grand pianos stuffed into the smallest living room on Lombard Ave. You’d snake your way past the pianos and 60,000 music books, sheet music and records to the back of the house and wait in the little room with the Archies.
Mrs. Bullard specialized in the Archie comics. I had never met Betty and Veronica and Jughead before hanging out in her back room. She had stacks of Archie books. So you’d get all wound up reading about how jealous Betty was?wasn’t Veronica the vixen? Anyway, all very entertaining until the other kid left and she called you into the front room.
You’d play on the piano next to the front door. She’d sit with you and patiently work with you on your scales, then the Czerny exercises or whatever, then your actual pieces. If she was pleased, she’d stick a little “Excellent” sticker on that page in your music book.
The next step, after racking up a few “Excellents” was to play in a recital. That meant dressing up in something maroon and velvet and shyly doing your sonatina after somebody else did something a little less complicated. The show got more complicated as it went on, with one of the REALLY good students as the grand finale.
But the crown jewel of learning to play piano with Mrs. Bullard was to go downtown to district or state auditions. I could never figure out why we auditioning, but a stranger or two would critique us and give us a certificate. I did fairly well and I still have the yellowy, fragile certificates in the cedar chest.
I played with Mrs. Bullard from kindergarten through eighth grade, then focused on the cello, boys and growing my hair long in high school. Never forgot her sweet nature or how darned well she played. I’ll always appreciate her?one of those very good Oak Park memories?and I can still sort of play Moonlight Sonata.