STOW: If music could physically transport the listener back in time, the community room at Stow-Glen Retirement Village would have been empty.
But the 25 seniors swaying in their seats seemed content to settle for some mental time-traveling instead.
One woman closed her eyes and nodded in rhythm with the melody. Another smiled broadly, her hands cupping her face. And if anyone had cared to trace it, the soft rumble of a baritone would have led to two men in the back row who were moving their lips.
Standing before them, microphone in hand, Judy Brown sang the soundtrack of their lives. The ballads, anthems and toe-tapping numbers that framed their childhoods and courtships, their milestones and memories.
Brown, who returned to Northeast Ohio 15 years ago after leaving an acting and music career in Los Angeles, has been collecting new fans in these circles.
For three years, she’s been lugging her speaker and sheet music to area retirement complexes, assisted living centers and nursing homes, motivated by the reactions she gets when singing the standards that once filled her parents’ home.
Embraceable You. Come Fly With Me. Amazing Grace. Someone Who’ll Watch Over Me. Happy Days Are Here Again.
“I realized I had the power to lift spirits through song,” she said. “...Just the thought that I could make someone happy.”
Brown, who lives in Hudson with husband Greg Krizman, never knows exactly what kind of crowd will receive her.
At one event, two people showed up. No matter. She sang her entire set for them, she said, “and when I was done, a few people arrived late, so I did it all over again just for them.”
At Stow-Glen one recent afternoon, 25 people trickled in over the course of a 45-minute performance that featured classics from Frank Sinatra to Patsy Cline.
Some of her audiences are active independent-living retirees who clap to the beat or join the experience by shaking percussion eggs. Some audiences are so advanced in age, they barely move.
But Brown said even in the latter case, music’s magical qualities won’t be denied: “The people who seem tuned out, they’re the ones who really come alive when the music starts.”
Brown has spent a lifetime entertaining people.
She studied voice at the Cleveland Institute of Music, paid for with a Miss America scholarship. She toured with the Cleveland-based Kenley Players in various musical productions, performed with Johnny Singer’s Orchestra, did radio and TV jingles, and was the voice of Sea World for four years.
She settled in Los Angeles for 20 years, where she landed recurring roles on the NBC daytime dramas Santa Barbara and Days of Our Lives, collected a couple of motion picture credits, and joined national comedy talent on Hollywood improv stages.
But by 2001, personal circumstances were making life in Southern California less appealing.
“L.A. wasn’t the best place to raise kids and my parents [in South Euclid] were getting older and my mom was ill,” Brown said.
Brown, her husband and their two children put down new roots in Hudson.
Both of her parents are gone now, but in her dad’s final years at a nursing facility, she was inspired by time she spent with other seniors.
“I would try to stay for lunch and walk around talking to different people,” she said.
She continued her professional work, producing and hosting Only Ohio, a series on interesting people and places that aired on PBS stations.
But she couldn’t shake the feeling that she had something more to give — and a different audience waiting to receive it.
She created her “Music for the Young at Heart” program, put together several musical set lists that would suit any season, theme or holiday, and started marketing herself to senior centers in Summit and surrounding counties. The centers pay for her performances.
“You want to get them in a room and share with them. I want to bring them the music they know and ask them what the song means to them,” she said.
Brown loves to toss out little-known facts about the songs in her repertoire.
“Bye Bye Birdie is probably the most-often done musical in high schools. And why? Because the music is so much fun!” Brown told her Stow-Glen crowd before encouraging the group to join her in Put On a Happy Face.
And who could have guessed The Girl from Ipanema is the second most-recorded song in history, Brown said before adding that she was changing the subject to a boy because “I’m not that kind of girl,” eliciting giggles from her audience.
While a song occasionally brings someone to tears, Brown said she always ends with an upbeat number, something to frame their mood for the rest of the day.
“Happiness is catchy. If you feel it, you can become it,” she said, sending the Stow residents off with Happy Days Are Here Again.
The songs did indeed remind Carl Wolford, 89, of happy days. Wolford said he’s been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s, but music takes him back to a childhood spent singing with his dad and two sisters at church.
“It makes me feel good thinking about it,” he said after Brown’s performance.
Seated nearby, Betty Hoopes, 95, and Phyllis Paulus, 88, were still reminiscing after the room had emptied.
“It makes me think of when I used to do a lot of dancing. We had a lot of singles dances back then,” Hoopes said, then added with a wistful smile, “Not so much anymore.”
For more about Judy Brown, visit http://www.judybrownpresents.com.
Paula Schleis can be reached at 330-996-3741 or pschleis@thebeaconjournal.com. Follow her on Twitter at http://twitter.com/paulaschleis.