The Born Loser by Art and Chip Sansom for September 20, 2019

Barney Fife and the Mayberry Choir

At that age I didn’t even know singing in a “key”

I was singing flat, the others were sing round.

I used to multi-key long before multitasking was a thing… no one seemed to appreciate it

I can sing in two keys, bullfrog or Neil Young, but not that middle range where everyone else is.

That wasn’t the problem, it was a different song.

Well to paraphrase Twain, “anyone who sings in only one key obviously lacks imagination”.

When I was in training for the school choir our choir director told us about a time when he had a student who was always off key when she sang, but he noticed she was always off by the same amount and started to suspect that there was a physical problem instead of a musical problem. He talked to her parents and found out that she’d been in an accident as a child and he suggested that they take her to a hearing specialist and tell him about the accident. The doctor found took a very close look at the girl’s inner ear and discovered that she had a pinprick hole in her eardrum as a result of her childhood accident, he was able to correct the damage and she was able to sing on key after that.

I been in the right place but it must have been the wrong song…

It’s going to be interesting to see Bradley Whitford as a choir master on a NBC.