The soundtrack to The Sting changed my musical life. It became the crossover between classical and jazz, the marvelous and mysterious world that lay ahead. The following is from an essay I wrote about the experience, called Why Not?
When I was seven I saw The Sting.
We lived in Manhattan -- in Yorkville. The movie was playing at the UA East, on the ground floor of our apartment building. I went with my parents, and, in my memory, it was the first film I saw that was not made for children. Before, there was A Charlie Brown Christmas, then The Sound of Music.
I loved everything about it -- the costumes, the setting (yes, I noticed them), Robert Redford and Paul Newman (who wouldn’t?) but, most of all I loved the music.
I had never heard Ragtime – originally written for the piano, the syncopated rhythms were completely new to me. I was transported, to another place, away from the four-lane highway that was First Avenue in the 1970s. Also, there was an uplifting spirit about Ragtime – which came from the march and evolved into dance music. If I was in a bad mood, listening to Ragtime snapped me out of it.
Ragtime seemed to bridge the classical music my parents listened to on WQXR and jazz, which I heard in old, black-and-white movies they watched. My parents were not professional musicians but, in what spare time they had, my father played piano while my mother sang opera. Perhaps, as a way of connecting with my newfound musical tastes, my father bought the soundtrack and score to The Sting and even learned to play Solace.
I was enamored. I especially loved The Entertainer and fantasized I could play it one day myself. I was a lazy piano student, however, and knew this would probably never happen. My father was the pianist and I would never play like him. Knowing how much was entailed in becoming a musician, he didn’t push me to become one.