From January 25, 1998 to April 11, 1990, I went to a little studio at 5554 Mammoth Ave. in Sherman Oaks, CA once every 2 weeks or so to have a voice lesson. I couldn’t really afford it, but it seemed important in many ways. The teacher, who came highly recommended, was Robert Edwards. He asked me to bring a blank cassette tape to every lesson so I could practice until the next session.
I was a working musician; my boyfriend (now-husband) Ken Berry and I had a duo – Whooz Who. We played anywhere from 3 to 6 nights a week in the bars and hotels around Southern California. Our format was this: Kenny played guitar, I played keyboards and we both sang to backing cassette tapes that we made of bass, drums, background vocals, etc. Since I was singing with a “whole band,” I was singing full out on all the pop/rock tunes we did. And I needed help with my elusive problem of taking chest voice up so high that it came off a shouting. How did Streisand and Mariah and Whitney DO it???
Well, Robert knew how. And he showed me how, lesson after lesson. Only thing is, I was too stuck in my ways and too in the middle of having to perform, to really “get” what he was teaching me at the time. I was probably too stubborn, too.
Anyway, fast-forward to last year. During the pandemic, I figured it was a good time to finally tackle all the junk in the garage. One of those pieces of junk was a bin of cassette tapes. There were so many memories on all those tapes that I couldn’t just toss them out. So I decided to digitize them.
I set up a desk with a cassette player and a zoom recorder. It was a long process, and I didn’t listen to every single one as they were being transferred; I just wanted to know that they were being preserved in some way. As you can see, there were quite a few and it felt good to be finished (I thought).
Then I came across a separate cassette case containing all my Robert tapes. Might as well digitize them, too. Little did I realize what a treasure trove of vocal training was on all those tapes. Robert’s expert exercises precisely targeted the areas I needed to work on. I sang along with the patterns he played on the piano, all the while talking, cajoling me into finding the perfect resonance.
I started singing along with the tapes as I digitized them. In fall of 2021, I found myself really wanting to contact Robert; not only to reconnect, but to thank him for helping me then AND now. I googled his name to see where he was living, and found a telephone number in northern CA. I texted a message to him, waited a few days, but I got no reply and assumed it was a landline. I did further googling, and this time I saw an obituary; he had died October 30, 2021.
A deep sadness came over me; I couldn’t listen to the tapes. It was just too painful.
After a few months, I started singing again with some friends and I needed some vocal help. I was really out of shape. So I began listening to my lessons with Robert once again. I have almost 50 voice lessons, all tailored to my voice. I have been singing along with those lessons every morning, and I think I am “getting” it now. And I get to sing, and laugh, and remember what a wonderful, nurturing, special person Robert Edwards was.
Thank you, Robert.
Articles about Robert:
Monterey County Now | 65° Magazine