Happy Birthday to the Woman Responsible for Me Being a Musician

[Peter DeLegge]

Today would have been my late mother’s birthday.

There are a bunch of reasons that led to my creating this site. But I wouldn’t have been a musician without the woman who taught me piano starting at age 3 1/2, guitar, and music theory, my mother (she sent me to other teachers for organ and drums). Even when we were struggling financially, I still had private and public music instruction. Music was our family’s second language.

I’m the smallest one in the photo, the small kid with glasses on the far left. This was taken just after my first piano recital, at age 4 1/2. I still have the printed program for the event, as it was the music studio’s annual recital. After we all did our solo recitals, our family band played featuring my brother on guitar, my youngest sister on piano and Wurly, and my eldest sister on organ. Unfortunately, tragedy struck twice and I lost both sisters young. I’m all that remains of the family band, or the family of my childhood. My two teenage kids never had a chance to meet any of them.

When I now attempt to play music again, of course, they’re always on my mind.  I’ll share that a bunch of my covers are related to our childhood favorites. My sisters loved ELO. I recorded the vocals on “Can’t Get It Out of My Head” on what would have been my eldest sister’s birthday. She handed me her ELO album with that song on there and told me I needed to listen to the entire album (along with Stevie Wonder albums, but I didn’t have the guts to try to cover that yet!). My primary motivation to create this community was the terrible unethical practices by one forum owner obsessed with destroying competitors and demeaning others, turning his community into a toxic mess. I wanted something that celebrates the joy and beauty of music — that might take a small group of very kind people I’d gotten to know (at Cakewalk Forums) and give us all an environment to share more of our love of music, ourselves, without it being diminished by the profit motives, greed and bad decision making of those who own the forum. This wasn’t about profit. This is my love letter to music, to what it has meant to my life and to my family.

My overshare of the decade. But I thought I should share this.

LinkedMusicians Founder. Your friend who keeps the beat.

Check out my music. 

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