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pharmacist. I was the youngest of four kids, so I got to listen to rock and blues music from my
older brothers and my sister. I listened to pop radio,
and my brothers listened to vinyl records in the
basement. That’s where I heard Muddy Waters for
the first time. My grandparents had a player piano,

which I was very intrigued with whenever we
visited. My mother also played an upright piano at
our house. We had a Wurlitzer 2-tiered organ (see
similar item left) which my mother was able to
master to play hymns and patriotic songs, while my
dad never got much past “Never on a Sunday,” a
lounge song, which I though was a riot.

We took family vacations up to Vermont and Maine

almost every year and we would sing as a family on
those trips, which I thought was the norm. As a
teacher my mom directed Middle School musicals
and she learned the piano parts for the songs for
rehearsal. We all knew the songs for “The Wizard of
Oz” and “Alice in Wonderland” by heart. My mother
loved musicals and we would watch all the old

Ginger Rogers/Fred Astaire movies as well as Mary
Poppins and The Sound of Music. My sister and I
used to re-create scenes from these movies with our
neighbours' kids and put them on for our parents. My mother had a knack writing replacement
lyrics to popular songs such as ‘Sweet Georgia Brown’ and ‘Yankee Doodle Dandy’ for social events,
be it a birthday or retirement party. I watched how she came up with lyrics, seeing lists of words
to rhyme with next to the verses. Sometimes she’d even ask for suggestions. I can see her
handwriting in my mind to this day. I think I believed growing up that we would perform like the
Von Trapp family someday.

LL: I understand your mother was an influence on you musically. How so?

PT: My mother was a big influence on me musically, as she encouraged the entire family to sing and
perform. She wrote an introductory song for the Lions Club Annual Show and my siblings, and I
performed it for years with my brothers and sister in four-part harmony. Thinking back on it, she
had high standards for us musically, but it seemed to fall in place naturally. Because she played
piano, I took classical lessons from first to fourth grades. It was a great for understanding music
theory and reading music as well as chord structure.

All of us kids played instruments and sang. My mom kept a piano in her classroom and whenever

the students got restless, she would go play songs on it. My sister followed in my mother’s
footsteps and became a teacher, and she plays flute for her students. My brothers can play drums
and my oldest brother is still active in a drum circle.

LL: What kind of music were you exposed to in your home?

PT: We watched musicals growing up at my house, so I heard a lot of jazz standards as well as the
Beatles, the Allman Brothers, Led Zeppelin, Rolling Stones, Traffic, CSNY, Eric Clapton, Yes, Moody
Blues and Elton John. I gravitated to guitar rock bands, although I didn’t pick up guitar until my