My Turn: Songs make our hearts sing

My husband and I have CDs we treasure, and the music we listen to will never go out of style because every tune is a memory. We have been married for 63 years so there are many.

Each night while I set the table, he puts a CD on the stereo. Then when he comes up for dinner, I am supposed to guess what he has chosen. Of course, it’s a given because we have heard these songs so many times.

Many of our CDs are scores from Broadway shows or films we’ve seen. We’re partial to soundtracks from Woody Allen movies. Other music might have been given to us by our kids, or something sentimental we purchased for each other. We’ve brought music home from other countries: Swedish folk dances when we visited the family of our exchange student; Portuguese ballads from sailors who visited us from Brazil; songs played by a young guitarist in a Scottish hotel. “We fought a hundred battles,” he said, and only won one, but we have a hundred songs about it.” I had to buy that one. It still makes me smile.

Some of our collection is more personal: recordings by our own church choir, songs our kids played over and over, scores from shows our son-in-law directed. We have autographed CDs by Anton Del Forno, a guitarist whose work we really enjoy. My husband favors the songs of the war years, The Andrews Sisters, the big bands: Tommy Dorsey, Glenn Miller, Benny Goodman and Harry James. They still make us feel like dancing.

We have recordings of Crosby and Sinatra, Bob Hope, Doris Day, Peggy Lee, Perry Como, Mary Martin, Fred Astaire, Gene Kelly. Others by current performers: Billy Joel, Tony Bennett, Barbra Streisand, Mandy Patinkin, Bernadette Peters, Willie Nelson. There is satire and humor by Danny Kaye and Noel Coward. We have instrumentals by Duke Ellington and others. One find is of Jackson Pollack’s jazz favorites we bought at an exhibit at MoMA. When we listen to all those voices from the past (The Mills Brothers, The Ink Spots, Nat King Cole, Ella Fitzgerald, Patsy Cline) it’s like magic to be able to hear them still. When we play anything by Judy Garland, she is right there with us.

Recordings of the Boston Pops and Boston Symphony Orchestra remind us of trips to Tanglewood, the music of John Williams and a one-time surprise visit by James Taylor. There are too many more to count: classics, opera, Gilbert and Sullivan, the music of the American Songbook. If you’re from our era you know them all.

I remember a summer evening when we saw “Show Boat” at the Jones Beach Theater and then went into another area for an after-show. Louis Armstrong was setting up while the crowd watched. When he began to play, he had the whole audience in the palm of his hand with the first few notes. Hearing Rosemary Clooney one summer night at Heckscher Park was a special treat. Her personal life was difficult at the time and she talked as if we were close friends.

Our kids share some of our favorites. I like to think maybe they’ll play each tune we treasured at least once when we’re gone. Probably not. They have their own music and memories. How could they know that when we were falling in love, we danced to the music of Rosemary Clooney’s “Hey There” in a small roadhouse in Rochester, where the only light came from the Jukebox?

Maybe now they know. I think I just told them.