TIM BELFORD

Hey, song and dance man, play a tune for me

My old music teacher died last week. Wally Laughton was eighty-eight and he taught me an important lesson.

I've always liked music, not just listening, although I enjoy that too, but playing and singing.

The only problem is I lack two basic talents. This I have on good authority.

I tend to sing flat and I can't keep a beat.

It started in our kindergarten band. I really wanted to play the triangle, or maybe the cymbals. But the teacher took me aside and told me in her most confidential manner that she wanted me to play the blocks.

She explained that she was entrusting me with this very important task because I was the only one in the class who had hands large enough to handle the task.

I, of course, was thrilled, and went about my task with the kind of gusto befitting a musical prodigy.

It wasn't until forty years later that my mother, in what I can only imagine was a fit of pique over some slight, blurted out the truth.

The teacher had confided to her that she had given me the blocks because I couldn't for the life of me keep time -- the blocks being the least damaging element of an otherwise coordinated class ensemble.

It continued through grade school.

Influenced by my screen heroes, the Wizard of Oz's Tin Man -- Ray Bolger -- and Davey Crockett's sidekick, Buddy Ebsen, I was determined to both sing and dance.

Now, the dancing part is another story entirely. As for the singing, it soon became very clear I was considerably more adept at carrying a football than I was a tune.

It didn't stop me. In high school I moved on to the saxophone.

I really wanted to play the trumpet but the music teacher, Mr. Laughton, took one look at my preternaturally thin lips and shook his head.

I was banished to the reed section.

Throughout high school, from grades nine to thirteen, I blew and fingered to my heart's content.

At the end of five years my repertoire consisted of "Cherry pink in apple blossom time", a piece from "Amahl and the night visitor" and the theme from the TV show "Peter Gunn."

Throughout that time, Mr. Laughton had suffered and harangued and cajoled but he never gave up on me.

And when I finally came to realize I would never play with Guy Lombardo he said it didn't matter.

Music, he told me, is its own reward. And being flat? That only mattered to others.

So when I graduated, I left A.N. Myer High School and my saxophone behind.

It was at this point fate stepped in. While teaching in the West Indies I came upon the ideal instrument - the ukulele.

Not the little uke favored by the likes of Tiny Tim but the baritone uke.

Smaller than a guitar, with only four strings to master, and capable of playing anything from 1920s ballads to Bobby Dylan, it was a match made in heaven.

To this day I strum and sing to my hearts content. And I'm still flat and I still sometimes play with a beat Gordie Lightfoot wouldn't recognize.

But Wally Laughton, who spent his life teaching others to make music, was right.

It doesn't matter.