The Musical Life

BY SCOTT ANDERSON

[/vc_column_text][vc_column_text]Marilyn Pettiette is the 90-year-old matriarch of a modern-day von Trapp family, spreading a message of faith, hope and joy through song in cyberspace.

Pettiette and her family have a YouTube channel called Three Generations Singing. The channel features family members — actually from four generations — singing holiday favorites, popular tunes, jazz standards and more. In five years, the channel has grown to almost 100 videos and nearly 1,800 subscribers and more than 1 million views.

It all started with Pettiette singing Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah” with her daughter, Julia Pettiette Doolin, and her grandson, Sean Doolin. At first, the concept was simple — to create a special memory for the family. Sean wanted to sing with his grandmother. Julia already was working with videographer Brent Latin on a project, so she asked him to record the trio.

“People thought it was so beautiful,” Julia said. Soon after that, granddaughter Kelleen Doolin stepped up and wanted to do a number with her grandmother too. So they recorded “River.”

“That’s when we said, ‘Let’s get all the grandkids in a video,’” Julia said. “That Christmas, everyone comes in. There were probably about 30 of us. We did our first family group recording. Now, every Christmas we do one.”

Pettiette finds a great deal of satisfaction in the success of the channel. “It’s extremely gratifying,” she said. “My whole reason for being… I see it expressed when Sean starts singing. And now the little ones from the next generation (to include great grandson Howell) want to play the piano and sing.”

The family revels in their success. But by no means has it happened overnight for Pettiette. She began performing as a young child, about 4 or 5, on stages in Minnesota. “The church had programs going on constantly,” she said. “Music was a given.” As a child, she also performed as a Shirley Temple lookalike. Pettiette remembers a bit of controversy over a talent show she won when she was 7 or 8 years old. “This guy comes in and says, ‘She’s a professional. I’ve seen her sing before in Minneapolis,’” she recalled.

The Benedictine nuns at the Parish of Our Lady of Lourdes in Little Falls, Minnesota, gave Pettiette her first lessons on the piano. She received instruction in the organ from the Franciscan nuns at St. Francis High School. She continued her studies at the Minneapolis College of Music. She met entertainers there who introduced her to improvisation and jazz. Before long, she was performing in big bands throughout Minneapolis. That’s also where she met her husband, saxophone player Larry “Tex” Pettiette.

“Here is this guy who’s playing sax,” she said. “I didn’t know him well. But there was a band my friend and I wanted to hear playing at this club. Back then, women didn’t go to clubs unescorted. I approached him and asked if he’d escort us to this club. I guess you could say I asked him out for our first date.”

She and Larry got married. During her early days of marriage, Pettiette continued to perform in big band groups. Sometime later, a producer called her looking for someone to fill in on the “Phil Silvers Top Banana” stage show. “He said, ‘I’ve got to have somebody who is small enough to fit into the wardrobe,’” Pettiette said. “I said, ‘I’m sorry, I can’t. I am three months pregnant.’”

Pettiette also saw the music business changing at that time. The popularity of the big bands was waning. With her star no longer on the rise, she told her husband she wanted to move to Shreveport to check out a new musical sensation. “People went whippy over that Hank Williams,” she said. “That shut the big bands down. We came to Shreveport to see what it was all about and to be closer to Larry’s family in Texas.”

Pettiette began a 23-year career teaching music in the schools. “I found talent galore out there,” she said of her students. Even now the family occasionally reconnects with someone who learned music from Pettiette. “We will see someone in the grocery store, and they will recognize her and say, ‘Your mom had such an in impact on my life,’” Julia said. “Music really is what brings people together.”

David Pettiette, Jr., Julia Pettiette Doolin, Howell Pettiette, Marilyn Pettiette, Baby Theo Pettiette, Tim Doolin, Larry Pettiette, Jr.

That unifying power of music is what carried the family when they moved out to Dixie in northern Caddo Parish. “We moved under dire circumstances,” her daughter noted. “But they became some of the most wonderful times in our life because of the people and the music.”

Pettiette founded the Young Americans while in Dixie. The group included her own six children and children from that rural farming community. “Everybody in Dixie wanted their kids in it,” Pettiette said. “I was thinking, ‘What am I out here for?’ And then I find all this talent out there.”

Pettiette took those neighborhood kids to perform at nursing homes, the VA hospital, and for shut-ins across the area. They even made an appearance on Bob Griffin’s Saturday morning television show “Bob and His Buddies.” “It identified us as a musical family,” Pettiette said. “And it never left us.”

The family moved back to Shreveport. The children grew up and started families of their own. Now Pettiette’s clan spans four generations and the country. But the family that sings together, clings together. “It’s creating wonderful memories for our family,” Julia said. “We are so lucky to have these experiences with our mom.”

Three Generations Singing has grown momentum despite some challenges, including a fire that destroyed Pettiette’s home. While they were rebounding from that experience, they shot some of the videos for the channel at Pendley’s Piano Gallery. And the family searched high and low to find a 100-year-old piano they could borrow to get just the right honky-tonk sound for one of the numbers. Clearly, Pettiette is very particular about the pianos she uses for her videos.

Then there was the pandemic. “The channel really took off during COVID, especially when no one went anywhere for two weeks,” said Julia, who oversees the channel. “That’s when we made the most progress.”

The family is pursuing more opportunities to make progress and share their message of faith and family. “I dream of the day I open up the channel and see not just 1 million views on the channel, but 1 million views on the songs,” Julia said. “We are reaching a lot of people.”

The entire family encourages people to subscribe to the You- Tube channel and to follow Three Generations Singing on social media @ThreeGenerationsSinging. Pettiette said it’s a message of positivity that people need right now. “We want to pull this out of people,” she said. “To get them to feel what I feel.”

And even at 90, Pettiette has no plans to slow down. “I’m going to do this as long as I am able to do it,” she said.

The post MARILYN PETTIETTE: The Musical Life appeared first on SB Magazine.

Marching On

BY SCOTT ANDERSON

Monro Brown marches to the beat of her own drum. It’s a blues beat, but her outlook for Shreveport is not blue at all.

“This has been a journey,” Brown said of her life that has taken a few unexpected diversions. “But I try to keep a good attitude all the time. I’m learning that everyone is different. That’s what makes life interesting. It’s like a Louisiana gumbo.”

That is Brown’s approach to building a stronger community. Through her work with Community Renewal and her own non-profit organization, Seniors First, she seeks to span generation gaps by bringing seniors and young people together. “Seniors First is non-profit organization I founded to fill the gap between seniors and youth,” she said. “It reintegrates seniors into the community to sustain their cognitive ability. They become leaders in their own communities.”

Seniors First grew out of life-altering unexpected circumstances in Brown’s life. The Captain Shreve High School graduate earned a dual Associates degree in Accounting and Business Management from Southern University Shreveport in May 2017. She planned to move to Baton Rouge to continue her education, but her father, Lester “Knockout” Brown, died in February and her mother, Martha, eight months later, so she stayed in Shreveport.

“That’s when I started to realize there was a void in our community among our seniors,” she said. “I decided to do a case study, because I was really bamboozled by the fact that both my parents died in such a short time frame.” Her case study became the launching pad for Seniors First. Still, her initial goal was not to run a non-profit service organization.

“When I first started, I thought I was going to have a program every quarter,” Brown said. “Instead, it has turned into a developmental nonprofit. We react to things in the community. Whatever the community needs, we go out and get it.” “Shreveport is about families that have known each other for years. Seniors First taps into that for the benefit of community as a whole.” Brown is a case manager certified in trust-based relational intervention and crisis intervention.

Brown said her service as a Haven House leader for Community Renewal opened her eyes to a way both seniors and young people could find something they have been missing. “I saw a lack of authority in the community,” she said. “I see a lot of children who don’t identify the difference in themselves and adults. Instead of me trying to implement that connection, I decided to bring the seniors in. The youth are more comfortable with seniors giving guidance. “It helps seniors feel involved and combat loneliness and age- and death-related illnesses due to delayed access to transportation leading to isolation and depression. And there definitely needs to be some sort of pecking order today.”

“I would never disrespect my elders because that’s what I was taught. Today, we have other challenges. At Seniors First, we try to provide basic needs for the children.” And while Brown’s name is on the letterhead, she knows who’s in charge. “I am not the boss,” she said. “Those seniors will tell you, ‘No, you can’t do it that way.’”

Brown said the connections she helps foster through Seniors First meet needs on multiple levels.

“The seniors are a lot more patient after all they have gone through in life,” she said. “The children just need something that you can’t see — that’s love. And the seniors give it to them openly. Children and seniors have lots of common emotional needs. The seniors provide legacy to the children by teaching them things.”

Uniting the community is Brown’s passion, but Seniors First is not her only tool. She is equally passionate about bringing people together through her love of music, which started in childhood. Brown grew up singing in choirs and performing in Caddo Parish schools and at church. Her extensive formal training including competing in state festivals. Back then, Brown saw it as her road to the top.

“I thought I could make it right after high school, without a lot of college,” she said. Stage fright diverted her from the spotlight, at least for a while. But in 2010, she collaborated with Ron Johnson of the band Windstorm and his sons B.J. and Alex to produce an album titled “Reality Check, No Free Rides.” The album was nominated for three Just Blues awards, alongside Denise LaSalle and Millie Jackson. She was opening concerts for Latimore, Bobby Rush, Calvin Richardson, and others. She also got involved with the local arts community, performing at Christmas in the Sky and other local festivals, as well as fellowship and writing grants.

She hit another bump in the road when Vicky Marshall told her she should work on building her portfolio. “I was like, ‘Excuse me?,’” she said. “I was a little insulted. I had met B.B. King and opened for Bobby Blue Bland. I had been nominated for awards. While all those things counted, they really didn’t count in the ways I thought they did.”

Brown realized she did not speak the language of the business side of the music industry. That’s when she decided to pursue a college degree. And while life changed her plans, she eventually completed her education online in 2019 through Southern University in Baton Rouge, receiving a Bachelor of Science in Interdisciplinary Studies and Psychology. She also learned something else along the way. “Face-to-face classes aren’t always the best solution, because you don’t get a chance to become digitally advanced,” she said. “It was tough, because I felt like everybody expected me to fail after I lost both my parents. I was out to prove to myself I am not going to fail. College taught me patience with people. It taught me how to ask why and how to do research. It opened my eyes. I don’t point my finger as much anymore.”

Music and the arts remain integral in Brown’s life. She has some local projects in the pipeline and is working on a web-based program on the Houston Live TV Network, interviewing movers and shakers in the music industry, like producer Ronald “Slack” Jefferson and global songwriter Michael Garvin, who is a Bossier City native.

Brown believes music and the arts are integral to a strong community. “Music is the core of everything,” she said. “Everybody has a song. Music is a great way to express yourself. Music is therapy. Music is always going to be there. I think we need more arts here. It gives people an opportunity to redefine or find themselves.”

And building a strong community is essential to Brown. “A lot of the things happening here I am concerned about because I have children and grandchildren here. I do care about what goes on here, no matter where I may go. My support system is here. It’s important to me to try to make some changes here. Hopefully, as I follow the example of my leaders, others will follow my example.”

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