Grandpa Remembers: Name That Tune

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From Grandpa K, 10/10/2005

Anthony had a special love for music -- of most any kind! We saw this already almost as soon as he started to walk.

We would often play kids' classics, including the "Lone Ranger" theme song. It's a song which strongly suggests galloping horses perhaps chasing some bank robbers trying to escape. By the time he was four years old, this was one of Anthony's favorite songs, and he would have Grandma K play this over and over. One day he happened to hear this song on the radio when he was visiting someone else, pointed to the radio and told everyone, "That's the 'William Tell Overture!'"

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I also remember riding in the car with Anthony, listening to music--sometimes classical, sometimes jazz, sometimes blue grass, sometimes blues. So often I would be listening and all of a sudden would hear Anthony picking up the melody of a song I know he had never heard before, humming along in rhythm and in harmony. I know I asked him several times when this would happen, "Anthony, how do you do that? How can you hear a song for the first time, a song you don't know, and figure it out so quickly?"

"Grandpa," Anthony would answer with a little dismissive shrug of the shoulders and holding both hands to the radio, "it's just there!"