Choir Jokes

THE YOUNG PERSON'S GUIDE TO THE SATB CHOIR In any chorus, there are four voice parts: soprano, alto, tenor, and bass. Sometimes these are divided into first and second within each part, prompting endless jokes about first and second basses. There are also various other parts such as baritone, countertenor, contralto, mezzo soprano, etc., but these are mostly used by people who are either soloists, or belong to some excessively hotshot classical a cappella group (this applies especially to countertenors), or are trying to make excuses for not really fitting into any of the regular voice parts, so we will ignore them for now.

Each voice part sings in a different range, and each one has a very different personality. You may ask, "Why should singing different notes make people act differently?", and indeed this is a mysterious question and has not been adequately studied, especially since scientists who study musicians tend to be musicians themselves and have all the peculiar complexes that go with being tenors, french horn players, timpanists, or whatever. However, this is beside the point; the fact remains that the four voice parts can be easily distinguished, and I will now explain how.

THE SOPRANOS are the ones who sing the highest, and because of this they think they rule the world. They have longer hair, fancier jewelry, and swishier skirts than anyone else, and they consider themselves insulted if they are not allowed to go at least to a high F in every movement of any given piece. When they reach the high notes, they hold them for at least half again as long as the composer and/or conductor requires, and then complain that their throats are killing them and that the composer and conductor are sadists. Sopranos have varied attitudes toward the other sections of the chorus, though they consider all of them inferior. Altos are to sopranos rather like second violins to first violins - nice to harmonize with, but not really necessary. All sopranos have a secret feeling that the altos could drop out and the piece would sound essentially the same, and they don't understand why anybody would sing in that range in the first place - it's so boring. Tenors, on the other hand, can be very nice to have around; besides their flirtation possibilities (it is a well-known fact that sopranos never flirt with basses), sopranos like to sing duets with tenors because all the tenors are doing is working very hard to sing in a low-to-medium soprano range, while the sopranos are up there in the stratosphere showing off. To sopranos, basses are the scum of the earth - they sing too damn loud, are useless to tune to because they're down in that low, low range - and there has to be something wrong with anyone who sings in the F clef, anyway.

THE ALTOS are the salt of the earth - in their opinion, at least. Altos are unassuming people, who would wear jeans to concerts if they were allowed to. Altos are in a unique position in the chorus in that they are unable to complain about having to sing either very high or very low, and they know that all the other sections think their parts are pitifully easy. But the altos know otherwise. They know that while the sopranos are screeching away on a high A, they are being forced to sing elaborate passages full of sharps and flats and tricks of rhythm, and nobody is noticing because the sopranos are singing too loud (and the basses usually are too). Altos get a deep, secret pleasure out of conspiring together to tune the sopranos flat. Altos have an innate distrust of tenors, because the tenors sing in almost the same range and think they sound better. They like the basses, and enjoy singing duets with them - the basses just sound like a rumble anyway, and it's the only time the altos can really be heard. Altos' other complaint is that there are always too many of them and so they never get to sing really loud.

THE TENORS are spoiled. That's all there is to it. For one thing, there are never enough of them, and choir directors would rather sell their souls than let a halfway decent tenor quit, while they're always ready to unload a few altos at half price. And then, for some reason, the few tenors there are are always really good - it's one of those annoying facts of life.. So it's no wonder that tenors always get swollen heads - after all, who else can make sopranos swoon? The one thing that can make tenors insecure is the accusation (usually by the basses) that anyone singing that high couldn't possibly be a real man.. In their usual perverse fashion, the tenors never acknowledge this, but just complain louder about the composer being a sadist and making them sing so damn high. Tenors have a love-hate relationship with the conductor, too, because the conductor is always telling them to sing louder because there are so few of them. No conductor in recorded history has ever asked for less tenor in a forte passage. Tenors feel threatened in some way by all the other sections - the sopranos because they can hit those incredibly high notes; the altos because they have no trouble singing the notes the tenors kill themselves for; and the basses because, although they can't sing anything above an E, they sing it loud enough to drown the tenors out. Of course, the tenors would rather die than admit any of this. It is a little-known fact that tenors move their eyebrows more than anyone else while singing.

THE BASSES sing the lowest of anybody. This basically explains everything. They are stolid, dependable people, and have more facial hair than anybody else. The basses feel perpetually unappreciated, but they have a deep conviction that they are actually the most important part (a view endorsed by musicologists, but certainly not by sopranos or tenors), despite the fact that they have the most boring part of anybody and often sing the same note (or in endless fifths) for an entire page. They compensate for this by singing as loudly as they can get away with - most basses are tuba players at heart. Basses are the only section that can regularly complain about how low their part is, and they make horrible faces when trying to hit very low notes. Basses are charitable people, but their charity does not extend so far as tenors, whom they consider effete poseurs. Basses hate tuning the tenors more than almost anything else. Basses like altos - except when they have duets and the altos get the good part. As for the sopranos, they are simply in an alternate universe which the basses don't understand at all. They can't imagine why anybody would ever want to sing that high and sound that bad when they make mistakes. When a bass makes a mistake, the other three parts will cover him, and he can continue on his merry way, knowing that sometime, somehow, he will end up at the root of the chord.

Johnny Cash: The Maniac in Black

Their love affair was immortalised in the film Walk The Line. But a new book about music legend Johnny Cash and his wife - by their own son - reveals the dark reality of life with...

Was this one of the most romantic proposals of all time?

Johnny Cash, with his rough-hewn outlaw image, was performing one of his legendary ballads before 7,000 people on stage in Ontario, Canada, when suddenly he stopped in his tracks and asked his petite co-star June Carter to marry him.

It was the union of two great musical legends - a union documented in the 2005 film Walk The Line, starring Joaquin Phoenix and Reese Witherspoon - and the start of a marriage that would last 35 years.

Cash, who with his deep brown voice invented rockabilly, and June, who wrote one of his greatest hits, Ring Of Fire, had performed together for many years on America's country music circuit.

Yet all the time they had battled against their growing love because both were married to other people and held deep religious convictions.

The story of how Cash finally left his first wife and four daughters in the Sixties just as June obtained her second divorce is part of music history.

June and Johnny moved in together to his idyllic lakeside house near Nashville, Tennessee, and were so happy there they christened the place Camelot.

Their idyll was complete when, in 1970, their only son was born. They called him John Carter Cash and doted on him - as he later did on them, growing up faithful to his musical heritage by becoming an award-winning record producer.

Now, just four years after his parents died within four months of each other, John Carter has written a poignant new book which offers a unique insight into the reality of living with these musical legends.

As John Carter reveals, there was a tragic downside to their enduring love story - the drugs, the infidelities and the slanging matches - a side which the public never saw.

While June threw her energies into retail therapy and prayers, her husband popped enough pills to fell anyone with a lesser frame, sometimes sleeping so deeply the family feared he was dead.

Fabulous wealth, fine homes, celebrity friends, nothing could deter the brooding Cash from his self-destructive urges.

For little John Carter, it was a see-saw existence.

On the one hand, his parents' money brought him a fairytale life; on the other, he was witness to his father's distressing binges.

Cash's musician friends claimed that, when they all took drugs together, Johnny was the life and soul of the party.

But John Carter says that at home Cash would either stare into space or sink into depression, yelling abuse.

Throughout it all June Carter remained astonishingly supportive. Yet as her son now reveals, even she was unable to escape the family curse in the end.

One by one, she watched her daughters by her first two marriages and then her beloved son with Johnny all descend into addiction alongside her husband.

She, too, succumbed to drug abuse in her final years, which hastened her death.

Yet throughout, the music continued. Cash was one of the best-loved country singers of all time and his wife was a star in her own right when they met.

Born in a remote country valley in Virginia, June Carter became a child radio performer, singing alongside her sisters and her mother Maybelle, who was known as the Queen of Country Music.

At the age of 14, she claimed she saw tongues of fire on the day of Pentecost and believed the Holy Spirit entered her body.

June's faith was one of the most important elements in her life and Cash, with his gospel singing background and his habit of dressing in black, resembled a country preacher. It was inevitable she would be attracted to The Man In Black.

They first performed together in 1956 - she was already married to Grand Ole Opry star Carl Smith and had a young daughter - and from the start June was in awe of bad boy Cash, even though he was so drunk the day after their first concert that he refused to carry on the tour.

When her marriage fell apart, she first went to New York to study acting. But she was soon drawn back to Nashville.

Before long she was making frequent stage appearances with Johnny Cash, who was now so famous he had his own television show. And in 1961 she made her own first appearance on the show.

Yet June was wary of getting personally involved.

Not only was she married again - this time to a stock car driver, with whom she had had a second daughter - but so was Johnny, albeit unhappily.

In 1954 Cash had tied the knot with his Catholic childhood sweetheart Vivian Liberto, who lived in California with their four daughters. They led almost separate lives and Cash rarely visited as he and his band performed on the road.

They were the original rock rebels, setting the record for wanton destruction on tours. They liked to trash hotel rooms with a chainsaw which Johnny carried in his car. He was also taking drugs.

Life on tour was so disorientating that he travelled with a bag full of magic potions to wake him up or send him to sleep.

And Cash consumed vast quantities. He was once arrested crossing the border into Mexico with 668 amphetamine tablets and 475 tranquillisers.

He finally became such a hopeless junkie that one evening on stage he smashed 60 footlights with his microphone, showering glass over his audience.

But if audiences were willing to forgive him, June wasn't. Whenever she caught Cash popping pills she would wait for him to fall asleep and then flush his stash down the toilet. Johnny would promise again and again to kick his habit but he always went back on the stuff.

Even when he bought an apartment in Nashville in order to be closer to her, he shared it with legendary hellraiser, bassist Waylon Jennings, and the two egged each other on in their drug-taking.

Cash divorced his wife in 1966 and finally bought the lakeside house he wanted to share with June. But still she wouldn't marry him unless he got free of drugs. The breakthrough came when she told him she would not work with him again unless he kicked his habit.

Cash used to tell a story of how, after that ultimatum, he went into a vast warren of caves intending to lie down and die.

With him he took his guitar, but when he put it down in the dark he couldn't find it again. Lost in the caves, he finally got down on his knees and prayed to God to show him the way out. And when his prayers were answered, he found the strength to throw off the drugs. He then asked June to marry him in 1968 on stage.

Life for June from now on would be very different. She moved both her daughters into Cash's house and her stepdaughters and parents were always welcome.

When Cash lived there alone, it had been sparsely furnished. June, who had a mania for collecting furniture, filled it with period pieces and with staff, who attended the couple's every whim.

She loved being Johnny's wife, even though their life held many surprises. Once he told her that 24 people would be coming for lunch. Instead 76 showed up.

And to begin with, Cash made it easy for her. Having adopted her Christian values, there was a brake on his wild behaviour, though as his son points out, his father was not above going to church and coming home to take drugs.

In public Cash wasted no opportunity to preach the gospel. He and June made a movie, Gospel Road, and their friends included TV evangelist Billy Graham.

The Cashes were at the high point of their fame when in the 1970 their son was born.

But they did not let the addition to the family slow them down. Little John travelled all over the world with his parents, who took him on stage even before he could walk.

By now the celebrity couple had homes all over the U.S.

They also bought a legendary old estate, Cinnamon Hill in Jamaica, built by an ancestor of the poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning. Cash romantically copied out the Browning poem 'How do I love thee' and gave it to his wife.

But by the time John was seven his magical youth was at an end. Cash was heavily back on drugs and his eye was wandering.

He was fighting with June and she considered leaving him for good, running away to London to stay with her daughter, who was married to British rocker Nick Lowe.

Then just as it seemed they were set to divorce, they decided instead to reaffirm their love by renewing their marriage vows.

From now on the couple would never be apart, although Cash's drug-taking continued. At home the great man would sit for hours in a trance, barely functioning.

John Carter often shared his father's room when they travelled and he would listen to Cash's laboured breathing as he slept off an overdose. Once Cash stopped breathing for so long that John, aged 12, had to help his mother haul him into a cold bath to bring him round.

June bore the brunt of it all. No matter how much she tore the home apart trying to find where Cash had put his pills, there would always be another hiding place she could not find. By now her daughters were also consuming quantities of hard drugs.

In 1983 Cash had become so ill he required surgery for digestive problems in Nashville's Baptist hospital.

Then he overdosed on the pills he had smuggled into the hospital.

Finally, he agreed to treatment - and went into the Betty Ford clinic in California along with the whole family.

But this was not the end of the Cash family's troubles. By the age of 14, John Carter had started drinking himself into oblivion and was soon popping pills just like his father.

And Cash's own resolve did not last long. Within two years he was back on drugs and a victim of diabetes and a chronic nerve complaint.

Still, June was a tower of strength - until one day in 1993 she, too, succumbed to a drug habit. Just before she was due to go on stage in Missouri, John Carter found her collapsed in her dressing room.

The years of holding everything together had become too much.

From now on, she and Johnny often took drugs together.

Cash would spend hours just sitting silently with his wife. And though they were no longer the beautiful couple, their records were still popular.

For the son who was in thrall to both of them, there were still blissful moments.

One of his most treasured memories was the sight of his parents singing the Far Side Banks Of Jordan together, looking deep into each other's eyes, their heads almost touching.

Though Cash was now confined to a wheelchair, each morning he hauled himself over to his studio to record some of the best music of his career.

June still sang in public, often with her daughters and granddaughters, but time was taking its toll on her music-making, as arthritis and heart disease made it impossible for her to play the instruments she loved.

By now the Cashes were both so ill they kept their own suite on the top floor of the Nashville Baptist hospital.

It was there that June Carter Cash died unexpectedly at the age of 73 in 2003 after an operation for a heart valve replacement.

Two thousand people turned up to the funeral lovingly arranged by Cash, who afterwards steeped himself in work to obliterate the pain of his wife's death.

But it became obvious he could not go on for long without June. Tough man Cash was inconsolable. He refused to sleep in their bed and gave away all the furniture she had bought.

Fulfilling a pact with June, he made a couple of surprise performances at her home town in Virginia.

But it was almost too painful to watch as he read a tribute to his wife before singing their hit Ring Of Fire. Cash barely made it to the end of the song.

And, less than four months after June's death, his body finally gave up in the same hospital suite where she had died.

The love affair was over.

• Adapted from Anchored In Love by John Carter Cash, published by Thomas Nelson on September 10 and distributed by New Holland Publishers at £8.99. To order a copy (p&p free), call 0845 606 4213.