I have mentioned before that the family moved to Bellflower in the spring of 1948. I accepted the Lord and was baptized at First Baptist Church of Bellflower shortly before my 11th birthday in June of that year. I have also discussed that the church really became the center of my life during my teen years and that music played a large part of my life.
It wasn't long after my family began to attend the church than I was "discovered" and began to perform periodically on my violin. I learned to sing however outside the church. These were the days before TV, so once we obtained a piano, it was not unusual for the family to gather around the piano and sing. When we got together with our cousins we also got around the piano and sang. These were wonderful times!
In 1949, I began Jr. High School, Mrs. Burdick, the music teacher formed a Boy's Glee Club. I didn't really know what a Glee Club was but I knew it involved singing and I thought that would be fun. I still remember our first performance during the Christmas program; Gounod's "Ave Maria." In those days I was a boy soprano and I could do a pretty good High C (for the musically uninitiated -- a real high note.) It wasn't long in that same year the Dr. Charlotte Stevens was starting a boy's chorus for the entire district. Mrs. Burdick sent me over there. After a couple of rehearsals, Dr. Stevens told me that Dr. Whitney of the Whitney Boy's Choir was holding auditions and she had recommended Roger Whistler and me. During the late 20's and 30's this was a first class choir -- several tours to Europe as well as all over the US. This sounded exciting and I auditioned and became a part of the choir. We were active almost every weekend performing somewhere in the Los Angeles area.
The summer of 1950, the choir made a tour of California for about 6 weeks. This was exciting. We sang at service clubs and churches with two to three concerts per day. We stayed in people's homes for the night. I will relate one side story that actually affected me a lot later in life. I would estimate that about 50% of the churches were we performed were Pentecostal; some were very big churches. Almost all of these churches were pastored by flashy bombastic types. After a very very very long sermon, the invitation to come and tarry before the Lord was made. We soon learned that the service was never going to end unless we went forward, accepted the Lord (most of us were already baptized) and got filled with the Spirit. I can't tell you how many times I have faked it. I, along with the rest of the boys, were really turned off by these experiences. Later when I was contemplating joining the First Baptist Church of Chula Vista and I was told that the pastor and the church were involved in the Charismatic Movement and that they did things like speaking in tongues, I really didn't want to attend a church like that. It took a lot of thinking before Linda and I started to attend. We were very tentative in the beginning, but things changed. That is another story.
Doc Whitney was pretty old by the time I started to sing in the choir. He was prone to coughing fits during our performances. He would always tell the joke, "Heh, heh, heh. Sorry about my coughin', but remember, as long as you keep coughin' the can't put you in one." Shortly after our tour, he stopped coughin' and that ended the Whitney Boy's Choir. Singing was already important before I reached my teen years and went through my voice change. This laid the groundwork for what was to come in the music program at FBC Bellflower.
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