The Day The Music Arrived

Witch Doctor Vs. Purple People Eater and So Much More

The music arrived when I was eight years old, and not a moment too soon. It was the summer of 1958, and we were upstairs cleaning up a new dormer that replaced the attic in our small home in Franklin Square, Long Island. Until that moment, I had a mind that tended to drift. If I wasn't playing ball or flipping baseball cards, I liked to lay on my back on the lawn on warm days, look up at the sky, and watch cloud formations. There was nothing going on at all.

I liked my family okay, but from a young age, at breakfast Sunday mornings, I would look around the table at my younger brother David, and our parents, and I would think: They seem like nice people. I wonder who they are?

A radio was playing, and two songs back to back shook me to attention: "Rockin' Robin," by Bobby Day, and "Cherry Lips," (an oldie from 1955) by a group called the Robins. I identified with the names: as a pint-sized kabbalist, I read meaning into names and patterns. I thought maybe we were related to the Robins. …