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Show DM The Daily Herald Tuesday, October 15, 1996 Secretary loves to sing on the side, has just released album with 9 songs By LAURIE WILLIAMS SOWBY Special to The Daily Herald Joyce Erickson Duke has been a secretary for 25 years 19 at the juvenile court and the last nine at Provo City's fire station. But she's been singing all her life. The grandmother of 15 and of one who considers her music "just a hobby" has recently recorded "Musical Potpourri," a tape with nine original songs. Marvin Payne provided the synthesizer and piano accompaniments and recorded the songs at Babymoon Studio in Alpine. The tunes range from sentimental country waltzes to a fun yodeling song and an amusing song about Karl Maiden's nose. While the tapes are available at Timp Bookstore on Orem's State Street, Duke insists the purpose wasn't to make money. She's simply doing what she enjoys. "I taught myself to play guitar at 45," she explained, "but as soon as I was able to play well enough, I realized that the songs already out there didn't say what I had on my mind. So I started writing my own." The result was seven songs on a tape, "Dreaming of Sunnyside," er with the title song about the Utah coal mining community where Duke was born and raised. "A lot of people have identified with that song," said Duke. Another song on the earlier tape recalled her elderly people in a rest home. Even though they're in different surroundings and may have poor memory, she said, often they remember their spouses and how they met. She wrote the song love-fille- d "Golden childhood to Anniversary visits to her "I honor some only sing for friends on their I feel with, 50th wedding really home on Sundays. who have anniversary, and Similarrealized that the in any ly, her persong was about their pockets." sonal her own parents favorite on Joyce Erickson too. Two teenaged "Musical Potpourri" is Duke, granddaughters autobio-graphica- l. who live with "I Duke provided Never Sang the inspiration With Grandpa" came about as "I for a Vaudeville-style- d "I'm the wondered w hat Grandpa Erickson Star of My Show," a song with a would' ve thought of my singing." subtle message about that evokes images of Ethel Duke's grandfather was a hat in hand, and made his living singing Merman "when that was the way news got across the stage. "I thought of around." But he died before she Ethel Merman too when I was got the chance to sing with him, recording it," said Duke. A and as the song says, she looks angst at turning forward to the day when they can 40 was the inspiration for the Like Me." sing together. amusing 'Thirty-nin- e The tender "She Remembers (It's been 20 years since Duke Him" was written as she observed actually was 39. and in the song her own invalid mother and other she compares how good 39 will people safe don't people rotten eggs secretary singer er step-kickin- g, L By CLIFFORD A. RIDLEY i Knight-Ridd- Newspapers If you were a theater buff back in those heady days when New York had seven theater critics filing newspaper reviews of every remj! Photo courtesy , of the Springville Art Museum Salt Lake City artist Jeronimo Lozano combines Ancient Incan and Colonial Spanish art traditions to make Peruvian Retablos. His work will continue to be on display at the Springville Museum of Art until Oct. 31. Peruvian Retablos on display in Springville of Peruvian Retab- Lozano is on Jeronimo by Jis at the Springville Museum of Art until Oct. 31. A retablo is a 4ombination of Ancient Incan and (Colonial Spanish art tradition in which a series of pictorial scenes are arranged in a single work to relate a mythical or historical dra-ifiThe scenes consist primarily handmade figurines, modeled qf and painted to convey the appropriate sense of action, drama or humor. J The artist, Lozano, lives in Salt Lake City. He came to Utah more than a year ago as part of a performing arts group from Peru. His parents and many friends were killed by the "Shining Past" terrorist group and Lozano has been warned not to return to his vilAn exhibit the Statewide Art Partnership Evening for Educators program which spotlights "Utah Multicultural Traditional Crafts," Wednesday at 7 p.m. Teachers, docents and the public are invited at no charge. rouopening, your morning-afte- r tine was always the same. First, you read six of the critics to see what they said. Then you read Walter Kerr to see what he said to and this w as the good part savor how he said it. No other American critic w rote about the theater with the grace, panache, wit. and painter exuberance of Walter Kerr, who died Wednesday in a New York nursing home at the age of 83. From 1951 until his retirement in 1983, first at the New York Herald Tribune and later at the New York Times. Kerr transformed the craft of criticism into something very like an art. He was a choreographer among critics, setting words to dancing down a newspaper column in the service of the higher art he so evidently worshiped. And the astonishing thing is that for much of his career (his entire tenure at the Rib and some of it at the Times, where he served as both daily and Sunday critic), he worked this magic on a rigorous deadline, returning to his desk on opening night and pounding out a thousand or so of those shimmying words in about 90 minutes. It was a ridiculous way to work, seemingly designed to thwart measured judgment and coherent description. (In New York today, critics attend previews and write their review s for publication after a show's official opening.) The critic who merely assembled conclusions with some cogency was doing well: it was unreasonable to expect sparkling prose in the bargain. But that was what Kerr delivered, night after night. Some critics just tell you what they think; Kerr, first off. told you what he "saw." With his uncanny eye for physical detail, he could evoke the spirit of an entire performance by describing how an actor a. ii t- -i a Daily Herald PhotoMatthew R Smith Joyce Erickson Duke, a secretary for 25 years, recently recorded "Musical Potpourri" which has nine original songs. Walter Kerr remembered for witty writing 4 f look when she's 73.) While Duke regrets having no forma! musical education and admits she still can't read music, she plays and sings well enough to do what she wants to do. As for the songs, "Things just sort of came to me, and I'd write them down." Over the years. Payne has helped her with accompaniments and recorded the songs separately. "Every time I'd think I'd finished," said Duke. "I'd get an idea for another song." "I Never Sang Willi Grandpa" was recorded in 1988; "She Remembers Him" and "I'm the Star of My Show" were done within the past year. She was glad for the tape to finally come together just in time for a family reunion in August. Duke doesn't consider herself a performer. "I don't have the time or confidence to do live performances." she says. "I only sing for people I feel really safe w ith, people who don't have any rotten eggs in their pockets." She just hopes others will enjoy her songs as much as she enjoys writing and singing them. "My music's been a hobby." Duke reiterates. "And I believe it has messages others may benefit from." "-'- lage. Since coming to Utah, Lozano has been using the retablo to depict cultural scenes from the western United States as well as continuing traditional subjects of Peru. Lozano says, "I see myself as a cultural ambassador of the culture of my native Peru. I also hope to express the cultural diversity of in life. mu This exmbit is in tandem with the Springville Museum of Art and PROVO DIALYSIS CENTER held a cigarette, or made an entrance, or spoke a line. In this he was aided by an extraordinary gilt for simile and metaphor, which flowed from him seemingly w ithout effort. His similes were homely and "I've missed Carol Canning. I sensuous; in an essay titled (if hadn't even realized I was missing memory serves) "The Hungry Mr. her until she came on at the Eugene Kerr." someone once surveyed a O'Neill last night, a towering corncouple of months of his reviews and stalk in a husk of slinky red. ... amusingly chronicled their many There's some sort of embarrassed an air of being caught references to food. At times, it innocence seemed Kerr simply couldn't fix his where she shouldn't by the principal eyes on "any. about this thing" without being reminded girl, in spite of all that effusive of something "I always knew Mary else, as the most Martin could fly. energy." samrandom ("Show Girl)" along As these pling of his work always if were confirms: sugexcerpts "(Carol) gest, Kerr had a of inner made spring soft spot for the Haney kxks like and d theater's great a and he Her gosling. niDinq. rollickmq voice actresses, was constantly smeem of hers would carry on the lookout to been designed as aloft, wires or for new conanyone tenders. When partial illustra no wires, any old he found one lions for "Huek the leberry Finn.' time." young Dennis in And she makes Sandy Walter Kerr, 'Steam Heat' hot"Any Wedneswriter day." to take one ter than even its his example doting enthusiasm could have hoped." ("The Pajama Game") could make her career on the spot. It could make whole productions, "With his festoon-typ- e face, his several sets of teeth, and his eyes too. The second sentence of his that manage to come together to review of "Gypsy" read, "The only form a triangle, Adolph Green is thing I'm sure of is that it's the best almost constantly gnawing at damn musical I've seen in years," something: his colleague's ear thus providing the producers with lobes, J.. Hubert, art houses that what may be the most famous criti'take a faint pleasure in presenting cal quote ever to saturate an ad cama badly faded print of "Madame paign. Kerr was a passionate critic; Curie." ("A Party With Betty when a show really clicked with Camden and Adolph Green)" him, he pulled out all the stops. But his passion could work in "I always knew Mary Martin could fly. She's always bounced reverse as well, and shoddy work high-scho- Dr. Robinson is a as bounced the earth that mattresses, bow-legge- K com-pose- rs HP Wi Ui CHJBBATI ALL MONTH got the treatment it deserved. "Nor' will I say," he concluded one! review in 1958. "that "Portofino"!: is the worst musical ever pro-'- ; duced, because I've only been see-- ', ing musicals since 1919." Kerr's verbal wizardry was so commanding that it sometimes' threatened to upstage his powers of discrimination, but he was a keefT analyst of playwriting and stage-- " craft who wrote plays himself (b4h' solo and with his wife, Jean) arid, before becoming a critic, taught speech and drama at Catholic in Washington. He could dissect a play and locate just w hera its architecture collapsed, examine a musical and pinpoint where and X why its tone began to falter. As a firm believer in the weJ-carpentered play, he was some- times called conservative, and perhaps in a certain sense he was. He wanted plays to have structure and internal consistency, qualities that weren't always considered para-- r mount by writers in the second half of his career. But he remained" open to work of all kinds, even if he didn't necessarily like it. while" holding fast to his own aesthetic. In 1978. Kerr received the Pulitzer Prize in criticism for "the," whole body of his critical work,"' and in 1990. the restored Ritz The- atre on Broadway was renamed the " Walter Kerr. (Its most recent tenants have been August Wilson's'' "Seven Guitars" and Tony Kushn- er's "Angels in America;" it's fun. to guess what Kerr would have" thought of them.) But these honors . " are eclipsed by his real legacy the work of the writers, performers" and directors he championed and of the many critics, this one included, who aspired to write with even an approximation of his felicity, discrimination and flair. y S ' Pf XfBBi lorjftu NOW UNTIL THE END OF THE MONTH RECIEVE AN ADDITIONAL C. 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