My Mom and the Glen Rose Connection

GLEN ROSE with PIANO & UKE

After Glen gave his Irving Berlin performance and Jazz Ukulele Class in Santa Cruz we've had a few e-mail conversations pertaining to his jazz chord ideas on the ukulele. I bought his Irving Berlin disk from him in SC and enjoyed the nostalgia and knowledge. He told me about three other shows he was giving. One happened to be in Sun City Roseville which is just a few exits from Sun City Lincoln Hills were my mother has lived for 7 years. (Both are humongous Dell Webb over-55-communities for retiring adults.)

I thought it would be great to visit my mom, Solveig Lindroos, take her to dinner, a fun show, and a MickeyDees softee ice cream afterwards on a 100 degree day near Sacramento, CA. Glen is a fantastic jazz pianist, historian, and he also incorporates a guitar, ukulele, and tap shoes into the act. He also dons different hats to set the mood for different Genre's. The theme for this night was Hit Parade Songs of 1956 (which is the year my mother moved from Northern Sweden to Tacoma, Washington). Since I was born in 1961 I didn't know all of the songs but the crowd of about 150-200 were singing along to many tunes with very little encouragement.

After the show and a line of people talking to Glen we spoke for a while, I introduced him to my mom from Sweden and walked to the parking lot to see a jazz music book that he had written. He told us that he had lived in Sundsvall, Sweden for two years and spoke a little Swedish too.

(Click the title above to go directly to his website for book info.)

I spent the evening hanging out with my mom. Spent the night, slept like a rock except for her solid-black one-year-old cat missy (the cat is an Ikeeleeku = phoenetic spelling for a Finnish word meaning something that never stops moving) walking around my pillow sometime in the middle of the night.

In the morning we were perusing TouTube videos of Swedish singers. Then Susan Boyle's first video from Britian's got talent and then a 10-year-old girl from Sweden that can really B-E-L-T out a tune, named Zara Larsson, on Sweden's Got Talent...

As I hear this little one sing I wonder if singing so strong at such a young age is anything like a little leaguer throwing curveballs? Can you hurt a voice? What a confident young girl!