Does the phrase “Mississippi hotdog” mean anything to you? If not, count yourself – and your ears – lucky.

Although the name might suggest otherwise, “Mississippi hotdog” is not a Southern take on the classic American dish. It’s a beginner violin exercise – and an annoying one at that.

For many violin students, it is the first “piece” they learn. Struggling to hold their bows correctly, folks of all ages awkwardly saw away at their instruments, producing a scratchy sound vaguely reminiscent of someone rhythmically chanting “Mississippi hotdog” in a robotic and atonal twang.

If you think this doesn’t sound too bad, then you, dear reader, have obviously never been to a child’s violin recital.

While you may be expecting to hear beautiful renditions of Bach and Beethoven, you’ll spend much of your time listening to “Mississippi hotdog” or “I’m a little monkey.” The latter is a bit more complicated. Rather than simply following the rhythm of a single phrase, players hammer out an actual melody with a rhythm that goes “I’m a little monkey/ Climbing up a ladder/ To pick a big banana.”

It’s a timeless tune that’ll stay in your head for days – no matter what you do.

It was also my first violin solo, and performing it in public remains one of my cherished childhood memories.

Having only started the violin three weeks prior to the recital, I was a nervous wreck. Worked up to tears, I nearly refused to perform – until my violin teacher, Ms. Daniela Pardo, comforted me and gave me a much needed pep talk. In fact, I continued to take violin lessons for the next six years largely for Ms. Daniela’s impromptu life advice, lessons and willingness to help me grow as a person  – rather than to improve my lackluster and uninspired violin playing.

Not only did I make it through the “I’m a little monkey” song, I bet it was the best rendition of the piece that my Southern Mississippi Suzuki group ever heard, which admittedly isn’t saying a lot.

More than anything, the recital – and the dozens that followed over the next seven years – gave me a welcome confidence boost. As an anxious and shy child, I feared making mistakes so much that I refused to sing in elementary choir concerts. Concerned I’d forget the lyrics, I merely lip-synced along – so obviously and poorly, in fact, that my overly observant father continues to bring it up at family gatherings.

While I never took a particular liking to the violin, my lessons were valuable for the life skills they taught me, the relationships they helped forge and the countless anecdotes they left behind – memories that’ll long outlast my brief stunt as a talentless and tone-deaf violin student.

Although you’ll find legions of scientific studies about how childhood music lessons can do anything from improve academic performance to fight crime, I’ve noticed one constant in my conversations with folks from all stripes of life who learned an instrument. Whether they became globetrotting musicians or continue to resent their villainous music teacher, all have a story to tell. Some are heartwarming. Others are humorous. And, a few are down-right sad. Above all, each speaks to why we continue lovingly to coerce children into music lessons and how music – and, more importantly, learning – transform us into the adults we are today. Here are a few of those stories from local readers.

AUBURN NATIVE MARTHA FEELEY: FROM TEARFUL STUDENT TO MASTERFUL TEACHER

For piano and violin students in Lewiston-Auburn, the Feeley name is legendary. Feeley and her mother, Rachel, have been teaching both instruments for decades. Feeley estimates that the pair have taught over 700 students to play the piano alone.

Surprisingly for a music teacher, Feeley does not have the fondest memories of her own childhood piano lessons.

“My grandmother was a piano teacher, so I didn’t really have a choice,” explained Feeley. “I had to learn to play the piano.”

“I didn’t like my lessons,” she admitted.

Like many budding musicians, Feeley almost “never practiced” her pieces.

Her piano teacher’s response to this all-too-common malady was shouting at and berating Feeley.

“I used to walk to my lesson . . . and I’d be in tears before I got (there) knowing that she’d yell at me,” Feeley said.

Fortunately, her piano teacher’s quick temper did not sway Feeley from the piano. If anything, it sharpened her resolve to make learning music fun for others.

When asked about her favorite memories from her decades-long career as a music instructor, Feeley did not respond with anecdotes about young virtuosi who always practiced and performed flawlessly. Instead, she talked about helping her students find joy through music.

Feeley recalled a student whose mother said that he would play the piano “over and over and over.”

One day this mother, perplexed by her young son’s desire, stamina and focus, asked her son “What are you doing?”

The boy, who was “5 or 6” at the time, replied “I’m getting rid of my sad.”

Reflecting on why that memory holds such importance to her, Feeley said “That’s what it (playing music) is all about”: getting rid of your sad.

Helping students find solace, self-expression and happiness through music is about more than giving them access to a musical instrument and lessons, Feeley explained.

She encourages parents to find a teacher who is the right fit for their child. “As long as you like your teacher, that makes a huge difference in whether you love to go to lessons.”

She said her goal is to create a fun and safe learning environment. “I had one little student that (during) her first piano lesson was afraid to come into my house.” Rather than cancel the lesson,”I went out on the porch and we had our music lesson out there without the piano” until she became comfortable enough “to come inside.”

Among her approaches to make lessons fun are to incorporate board games that involve playing musical instruments, and holding off on teaching the technical aspects of music such as sight reading, time signatures or keys until students gain experience and confidence just playing the instrument.

And instead of choosing their songs, she “asks them what they would like to learn, and mostly it’s folk songs like ‘Mary had a Little Lamb’ and ‘London Bridge is Falling Down.'”

One of her students, a 5-year-old, begged Feeley to teach them how to play Beethoven’s “Fur Elise” at their first meeting.

“I taught them just enough to satisfy them,” said Feeley. “And they felt like a hero.”

AUBURN NATIVE ARIEL EPSTEIN POLLACK: LOVE OF MUSIC STARTED WITH DAD

Ariel Epstein Pollack has been making music since she was 3. Her first “teacher” was her father, Elliot Epstein, a local lawyer, columnist for the Sun Journal and an avid musician.

When she was little, Epstein Pollack recalled that “he was constantly singing Jewish hymns and playing his piano,”

Surrounded by her father’s singing voice and love of music, Epstein Pollack was quick to catch on and soon became a budding vocalist herself. The first piece she learned, at least according to her parents, was George Gershwin’s “Summertime.” Although Epstein Pollack has no memory of it, her parents fondly recall her running around the house and singing Gershwin’s iconic aria from “Porgy and Bess.”

Epstein was also committed to teaching his daughter how to play his beloved instrument.

When she was 5 or 6, her father placed blue tape over the keys of the family’s piano. The purpose was to help her learn the notes that certain keys produced. All she had to do was look at the blue tape, which had the note written on it.

Although it all started with her father, Epstein Pollack’s path to becoming a professional flute player has involved the help of numerous childhood music teachers. Not only did these instructors help her get into the University of Southern Maine’s fine arts program, they also helped her achieve her lifelong dream of graduating with a music degree. Martha Feeley was among them. 

Epstein Pollack recalls coming home from college one year and being “very frustrated with group piano class.” Struggling, Epstein Pollack turned to Feeley. She recalls that Feeley helped her with everything from mastering pieces to learning certain Suzuki piano techniques and even practicing scales — “which I hated,” explained Pollack.

Another important influence was her first flute instructor, Chris Lansley.

As a music student at USM, Epstein Pollack had to play a series of challenging scales on the flute. To make matters worse, her college flute instructor would accept nothing short of perfection. Faced with what seemed like an insurmountable challenge, Epstein Pollack reached out to Lansley for help. The two worked tirelessly on the scales until Epstein Pollack got them just right.

“Without Chris, I don’t know how I would have gotten through college,” she said earnestly.

Now, Epstein Pollack is a professional musician in Chattanooga, Tennessee, where she plays the flute in the Chattanooga Community Orchestra and occasionally sings the national anthem at local sporting events. Recently, she received a scholarship to further her music education at Chattanooga State. She explained that getting the scholarship “means the world to me” and that she hopes to use her education to one day teach music professionally.

Although she lives in Tennessee, Epstein Pollack still continues to play with her former flute instructor. On her yearly visit back home, the two carve out time to play a duet together.

“That’s kind of our thing,” she said with a laugh.

Despite a career that has allowed her to perform across the globe in countries including Mexico and Thailand, Epstein Pollack says the musical memories she cherishes the most are of her time playing with her father – whether it was for the Androscoggin Valley Community Orchestra from 2008 to 2012 or playing the piano with him as a young girl.

AUBURN RESIDENT REV. STEPHEN CARNAHAN: EVIL PIANO TEACHER (OR NAZI MAJOR) STILL HAUNTS

Unlike Epstein Pollack, the Rev. Stephen Carnahan’s first piano teacher was not his father, nor was he nice.

After his parents signed him up for piano lessons at a local school, the 7-year-old Carnahan, now of Auburn, came face to face with a cartoonishly evil teacher: a man he remembers as Mr. Hochstetter.

He was “a mean little man,” explained Carnahan, “with short, curly black hair and a pencil-thin mustache.”

According to Carnahan, “He didn’t seem to like children, teaching or teaching children.”

Mr. Hochstetter reigned over his class like a tyrant, rather than a mentor.

“He ridiculed students who made mistakes,” remembered Carnahan. “Most classes, he would berate students for playing poorly or not knowing the music. He attributed all that to laziness, stupidity and the failure to practice.”

Carnahan was saved from Mr. Hochstetter’s harch teaching methods by his parents and placed in private lessons, but he acknowledges he “never got very good at piano playing.”

Years later, the memory of Mr. Hochstetter is still fresh. During a conversation with his brother, Carnahan mentioned Mr. Hochstetter and made a shocking discovery.

“That wasn’t his name,” his brother said.

“No?” asked a bewildered Carnahan.

“No,” replied his brother, before revealing the piano teacher’s real name and then asking, “Where did you come up with Hochstetter?”

“I didn’t know,” explained Carnahan.

After giving it some thought, he said, apparently “years later I happened on a rerun of the show ‘Hogan’s Heroes.'”

An American television sitcom that aired from the mid-1960s to early-1970s, “Hogan’s Heroes” followed a group of Allied POWs who carried out covert sabotage and espionage campaigns from a Nazi prisoner-of-war-camp. Hochstetter was one of the Nazi officers on the show.

“The officious, cruel little mustachioed character who played the Gestapo officer was named ‘Hochstetter.’ Somewhere in my mind I turned my piano teacher into this character from ‘Hogan’s Heroes,'” explained Carnahan.

“I’m not even sure now of my memory of my piano teacher,” mused Carnahan. “Perhaps, he has fully merged into Officer Hochstetter in my head.”

Whatever the accuracy of Carnahan’s memories of his piano instructor, he has one piece of advice for music teachers.

“Don’t be mean to your students,” he warned. “Who knows what they’ll turn you into.”

LITCHFIELD NATIVE PATRICIA JILLSON: CHILDHOOD LESSONS WERE ‘BEST MONEY MY PARENTS EVER SPENT’

For others, including Patricia Jillson, her parents’ decision to enroll her in piano lessons was life changing.

She recalls her strong desire at the age of 11. “I wanted to play the piano really bad.”

Her urge to become a pianist was inspired by a cousin in Scarborough who owned and played a piano. While her cousin “taught her a few things” on the piano, Jillson faced a serious dilemma: She couldn’t practice any of the new skills she learned because her family in Litchfield didn’t have a piano.

Until her mother told her one day, “I’ve got a surprise for you.”

That surprise was Jillson’s very own upright piano, which her mother purchased by saving the money she earned working at a local shoe shop.

“I was on cloud nine,” Jillson recalled.

Not only did she love that piano, she also adored her piano teacher, Louise Gamage.

Remembering her lessons with Gamage, Jillson said, “She always made it fun and we always did classical music.”

“She had a beautiful voice,” Jillson recalled. “We would play through a piece and she would sing along with the music.”

Jillson also said they would often play duets, which were her favorite part of their lessons.

Those sessions introduced her to classical music for the first time.

“To this day, I love classical music,” she said.

Costing 50 cents for a half-hour session, those lessons, Jillson stressed, were “the best money my parents ever spent.”

Not only did the lessons ignite the now-84-year-old’s lifelong love for the piano and classical music, they also allowed Jillson to pass on her passion to her daughter, Katie.

Katie is a voice and piano teacher in Boston and has “50 students,” according to Jillson. She attributes her daughter’s early interest in music “to hearing me on the piano all the time.”

Soon, Katie herself was anxious to play. Jillson said her husband encouraged Katie to become a pianist when she was  5 years old. She remembers him telling Katie that he was going out to the garden. By the time he came back he wanted her “to learn to play ‘Jingle Bells.'”

Jillson enrolled Katie in piano lessons when she was 7 and “she went through the books real fast and did very well. It changed her life.

Before long, Katie’s talent had surpassed Jillson’s own. That didn’t stop the mom from sharing her passion with Katie. To this day, Jillson cherishes the rare moments when the pair play duets together.

“If I know she’s coming up . . . I have to polish up and practice a little bit more (because) she’s way beyond me (in technical ability).”

Reflecting on the value of her childhood piano lessons, Jillson said, “Music is important. It’s important to me and my family.”

“It changed our lives,” she added. “And it all started due to those little 50-cent (lessons).”

LISBON RESIDENT GARY DAVID: A TOUGH TEACHER AND A LINGERING DESIRE

While piano lessons helped Jillson grow a musically gifted family, Gary David’s short and disastrous foray into music made him feel like a misfit in his own town.

“Growing up in my hometown in Massachusetts, we had a lot of families that came down from Nova Scotia, all French. They all seemed to be able to play an instrument,” David recalled.

His own father, in fact, was musically talented.

“My father could play (the piano) by ear,” David said. “And I felt kind of bad because I couldn’t play, but then here I am taking lessons.”

“I took lessons for years,” he explained. “I went to three recitals and I was given songs that were horrible.” One of the pieces was the “Donkey Waltz,” he recalled

“It’s for kids. It’s a simple tune.” But it didn’t go well, and his recital performances didn’t get much better.

David recalls that “I graduated to another level and they gave me the “Tennessee Waltz” to play,” but his strongest memory of that recital was the suit his mother bought him for the event. “It was prickly and it wasn’t very comfortable.”

The recitals — and the scratchy suits — weren’t the worst of it. David’s struggle to learn the piano came to an end after a particularly confrontational lesson.

His piano teacher had assigned him the piece “Avalanche” by the 19th-century Hungarian composer Stephen Heller. “It’s one of those fiery pieces where you really get to slam on the keys,” David said.

“She was marking up the paper saying you got to play it better,” he recalled. “I looked at her and I just said ‘You know, I’m doing the best I can.'”

According to David, she looked at him and said “Gary, you know what? You’re tone deaf!”

The discouraged 11-year-old responded with a shocked, “Really?”

After that, he said, he “had no more instructions. I went out with my friends from then on.”

But he regretted the end of his lessons.

Some of those musically inclined French Canadians in David’s town formed a band and, sometimes, he would watch them perform.

He recalled that they’d ask “Gary, do you play?” He’d respond by jokingly telling them that he could play the spoons. Inside, however, he “felt so left out.”

“And I was thinking, if I only kept that up and, somehow, learned to play an instrument.”

Now living in Lisbon, David shared that he’s always wanted to try playing the guitar, but still feels discouraged over his former piano teacher’s comments.

“I’m 79 now, and it would be nice to play an instrument.”

TURNER RESIDENT LORRAINE JARDEN: INSPIRED BY A SPECIAL TEACHER AND HANDMADE VIOLIN

While David’s teacher stifled his desire to learn an instrument, Lorraine Jarden’s violin instructor, Frank Brown, went to extraordinary lengths to make sure she could.

Jarden met Brown in the “early spring of 1957.”

“I took a ride with Al Garcelon to the home of Frank Brown, Garcelon’s violin instructor, in Westbrook, Maine,” she said. Brown was “retired and I didn’t know what his life’s work had been.”

She did know “that his wife was a viola teacher and made the best doughnuts on the planet.”

Jarden soon became a mainstay at Garcelon’s violin lessons. “I was a young girl of 18 and would sit watching Al practicing. He liked the old classics and country tunes. To me, it was beautiful.”

“After about three months of traveling to Westbrook every Monday evening, Mr. Brown noticed how I sat in awe listening to them practice.”

According to Jarden, Brown asked her why she didn’t take violin lessons of her own.

“I told him I didn’t own a violin and that I couldn’t afford lessons,” said Jarden.

Then Brown did something remarkable.

“If you come to practice every Monday for one year, I will make you a violin out of that tree stump in the backyard,” he promised.

“My mouth dropped because I had no idea a violin could be made out of a tree stump,” said Jarden. “He said that it was a very special stump and that he was waiting for the right person to come along before he attempted to work on that particular stump.”

That special person was Jarden.

For a year, Jarden diligently attended every Monday practice with a violin Brown loaned her.

“It was the most wonderful experience I ever had,” she remembered fondly.

“Mind you, It wasn’t easy,” she said. “He was a very disciplined teacher . . . and many times when I made a mistake he would hit my knuckles with his bow and say ‘Pay attention.'”

While he was strict, Brown also had a soft side. “He always had a parakeet on his shoulder while teaching. He loved that bird.”

Above all, Brown had “high hopes” for Jarden.

“His goal was to train me to play in a symphony orchestra,” she said.

When it came to her future music career, however, Jarden and Brown didn’t see eye to eye. “My goal was to play for dances in the local Grange hall and barn dances in the country.”

Regardless of their differences over Jarden’s future, “Summer turned to fall and after that winter, and the old stump outside came into the workshop and began to change shape,” said Jarden. “Pieces of wood became pieces of art and I actually saw my violin begin to take shape before my very eyes.”

“He would take me to his workshop and show me all the tools he used,” recalled Jarden. “It was miraculous to see this stump become a thing of beauty.”

“I don’t remember the exact date. But one beautiful spring day, in 1958, we arrived from our lesson, and there on the kitchen table was a beautiful work of art,” said Jarden.

It was her violin.

Since Jarden never thought she would own her own musical instrument, she was overcome with emotion.

“I cried and held it up to my chin,” she said. “It fit just perfectly and it was all mine.”

While Jarden never became the orchestral musician of Brown’s dreams, his lessons instilled in her a lifelong passion for the violin. When she moved out West, Jarden even got the chance to play the country tunes she so admired as a teeanger. Although she describes her music career as “small potatoes,” Jarden played with a local group in Arizona for 14 years and even recorded 4 CDs of her singing and violin playing.

Reflecting on an adult life shaped by a love of music, Jarden said “that’s how it all started” with Frank Brown and his gift of a handmade violin. Today, the 85-year-old still has Brown’s violin and endless gratitude for how her former teacher’s generosity transformed her life.

Copy the Story Link