Linda Lavin: The First Time I Sang in New York. (It Was a Bar Mitzvah.)
'So here’s the story. My mother, Lucille Potter Lavin, was a singer, an opera singer, with a very beautiful lyric coloratura and a brief but dazzling career in New York. She sang on the radio and early TV with George Gershwin, Risë Stevens and Paul Whiteman, until she and my father moved back to Portland, Me., to give birth to me.
That was the good news for me; not sure about my mother. I think not so much. She gave up her dream. She was very musical, petite, pretty, beguiling, very funny, a spirited adorable woman. You would have loved her.
My mother wanted me to be a concert pianist. I didn’t care for practicing one damn bit but it was her dream for me, so, to be a good girl, I worked very hard at it. But I hated every minute. What I really loved was playing by ear, for myself or for my mother or for anyone who wanted to sing.
I sang from the time I was a baby. The story about me is that I stood up in my crib before I spoke and sang “God Bless America.” This may be apocryphal but my mother dined out on it plenty. “Come,” she’d say to the company, “she’s singing.”
That’s pretty much who I have always been — a light goes on and I’ll sing.'>>>
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/26/arts/linda-lavin-the-first-time-i-sang-in-new-york.html?
