Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay
“So, tell me this, Mr. Trent – how do you get these ideas for these great beats that you are putting out at such a high rate under your Team No-Sleep imprint?”
“The people I live around are a constant inspiration to me – my family, my neighbors – I mean, as a musician, it just couldn't be better.”
The interviewer on the other end of Zoom could not fully understand what Melvin Trent was smiling at on a Monday afternoon … but Melvin had just walked in from eight-year-old Edwina Ludlow and his grandfather taking two very old folk songs and just doing what they needed to do.
Edwina would in adulthood develop a contralto that was the female analog of her basso profundo grandfather, and she was already plenty loud but tuneful when singing, although what she did with “I've Been Working on the Railroad” had certain adults in stitches...
“I've been working in my garden, all the live-long day!
I've been working in my garden, just to pass the time away!
I feel like I have good space here; no need to break bad!
I had better not be bothered, because I make fools feel sad!”
“Edwina 'Breaking Bad' Ludlow strikes again, even when trying to be a sweet little girl,” Mrs. Maggie Lee said as her husband, Col. H.F. Lee, fell out laughing.
Col. Lee had just gotten himself together when nine-year-old Milton Trent next door, still in bad odor with Edwina because of him accidentally washing out the Lego city she and her six-year-old brother Grayson had built in their garden, had his next great idea, only to be recalled in the nick of time by his Stepforth grandfather's powerful baritone, making a life-saving update of the Negro Spiritual “Plenty Good Room”:
“Plenty good room! Plenty good room!
Plenty room in your own yard's garden!
Plenty good room! Plenty good room!
You best choose your seat and sit down!
“For you would not be a backslider,
And I'll tell you the reason why:
Edwina's looking for fertilizer,
And you are not ready to die...”
Mrs. Lee just shook her head as Mrs. Velma Stepforth just came out in her pretty alto and started harmonizing Mr. Thomas Stepforth's baritone as Col. Lee hit the floor, laughing.
“There's a lot of love and a lot of humor and a lot of improvising with music around me,” Melvin said to the interviewer as he smiled, “so, there's no way to run out of ideas here.”