The microphone isn’t plugged in, but let’s pretend Joanne Spain is singing her hit song, “Elevator.”
Dear Vance: Whatever happened to the teacher at Colonial Junior High School who had several hit records in the 1960s? — M.A., Memphis.
Dear M.A.: We’re lucky whenever we meet somebody who brings joy to our lives. Perhaps they are brilliant, witty, talented, or kind — a ray of sunshine beaming on everyone they encounter.
No, I’m not talking about myself, though I certainly understand why you might think so. As a Lauderdale, I’ve always been blessed with those fine qualities. Here, though, I’m describing Joanne Spain, the music teacher at Colonial, who touched many lives in different endeavors. It’s a shame that I’ve never had the opportunity to share her story before.
Joanne Spain during her days at Lambuth College in Jackson, Tennessee.
Spain was born in 1938 in Jackson, Tennessee. I know little about her family, but she spent her early life in that city, graduating from Lambuth College, where she majored in English, with a minor in music. Judging by her 1960 senior-class yearbook, she certainly stayed busy. She was active in the Alpha Omicron Pi social sorority and Lambda Iota Tau honorary fraternity, named the Kappa Alpha Rose, and served as the college’s Panhellenic president. Classmates voted her “Class Favorite” and “Most Popular.” She was a cheerleader, captain of the basketball team, and a member of the “L” Club, music club, Lambuth theater, choir, student council, and sports committee.
After graduation, she moved to Memphis, where she met Carl Touchstone, a dental student at the University of Tennessee. They married in 1963 and settled into a nice home in Whitehaven. Spain — now Touchstone — began teaching vocal music, music history, and guitar at Colonial Junior High School a few years earlier. She also directed the school’s musical pageants, large-scale productions that not only involved the students but faculty members as well. Former students remember it was an honor to take part in these, which included Oliver and The King and I, along with annual holiday productions.
Teaching at Colonial.
“I taught with her at Colonial,” says Sue Head Jobe. “She was a hoot — larger than life and definitely doing her own thing. It was quite a feat to undertake a major Broadway production at a junior high school, but she pulled it off, with an orchestra and student, teacher, and parent participation. She really was the kind of teacher that everyone loved and respected.”
In 1964, while still teaching at Colonial, Touchstone began her professional singing and songwriting career. Under the guidance of Bill Justis, a producer in Nashville, she recorded several singles for small labels, such as Sound Stage 7 and Casino. A Commercial Appeal story from December 1964 headlined, “Music Teacher Can Rock or Sit It out with Bach,” noted that Touchstone was “running fast in the rock-and-roll song business with a top recording called ‘Walk Softly.’”
Described as a “swinging tune about teenage romance,” the single “has been running in the top 10 on one Memphis radio station and the top 20 on another,” with more than 3,000 records sold since its release just two months before. “It’s all going so fast I don’t know what I’m doing,” Touchstone told the reporter. “It’s been going well in Atlanta and other places, too. I think we’ve got a hit.”
Call me old-fashioned, but the song’s title, “Walk Softly,” brought visions of a young couple, strolling through a garden or someplace lovely and romantic. It’s not about that at all. Instead, the singer is warning her boyfriend — whom she has sneaked into her house late at night — to keep quiet to avoid waking her hot-tempered, overly protective father. The lyrics go like this:
You’ve got to walk softly,
I say, don’t stomp your feet.
You might wake him up,
And then we’d be in for a treat.
You’ve never seen my Dad mad,
And it’s lucky you ain’t.
Because I can guarantee you,
That he’s no saint.
But if you don’t watch out,
You might hear a shout.
From my father’s room,
And that means … DOOM.
“My students think it’s great,” she told the newspaper. “It’s getting into their world.” And as a rock-and-rolling teacher with a hit record, she certainly had their attention. “I have more control over them, and they’re more eager to listen to the Beethoven and Bach I try to teach them.”
More hits quickly followed, including easy-listening tunes like “Let the Sun Shine on My Street,” “Another Love Is Over,” “You Caught Me Off Guard,” and “I’m the Kind of Woman You Want.” These weren’t simple songs, with Touchstone singing solo and perhaps strumming a guitar. She was backed by rather complex orchestral arrangements, with lots of horns, and in one song, even a harmonica solo.
Touchstone made several public appearances during this period. She took part in the “Friday Night Shindig” at the Mid-South Coliseum, described by the local newspaper as “quite a show for just a dollar.”
By 1968, Touchstone was so well-known that Mid-South Magazine, the Sunday supplement to The Commercial Appeal, featured her on the cover, clad in a bikini and playing an acoustic guitar while reclining on a raft in a swimming pool. The story, “With a Song in Their Hearts,” featured local songwriters and their creative habits, with Touchstone saying, “I love teaching school, but when I get home, the phone goes off the hook, the door gets locked, and the drapes get drawn. And I write.” She estimated she had written some 30 songs, but acknowledged, “I’ve got four or five right now that I think are going to make it.”
Only two of them, “Walk Softly” and a dance tune called “Elevator,” really became the hits she hoped for. Then as now, the music business is a hard one, and in those pre-digital days, a musician’s agents mailed records to radio stations, with notes urging — sometimes begging — the DJs to play them.
Sometimes the responses could be cruel. One radio station responded to Touchstone’s agent with a hand-scribbled note on the back of the promo package: “Sorry to disappoint you. However, I found ‘Elevator’ very boring and so does my audience. I think it’s a year too late. That kind of orchestration, high bars, and high background vocals was hot one year ago — but now it’s played out, nothing new.” Ouch.
An online search of the discography for Joanne Touchstone or Joanne Spain (she resumed her maiden name after getting divorced in 1966) showed her songs were often repackaged. Polydor, for example, an international label for major acts like Cream and the Moody Blues, transformed “Elevator” into a disco version but still gave Spain writing credits. A year later, another company, Janus Records, released the same song as an instrumental. During this time, she also wrote songs for others, including “Another Neon Night,” recorded by Grand Ole Opry star Jean Shepard.
Sometime in the late 1970s, Spain retired from teaching after stints at Colonial, East, Whitehaven, and Messick. About this time, it seems, she also left the music business, but I certainly hope she continued to collect royalties for her songs. After all, in 1977, Polydor released “Elevator” again, transformed into a version described by the label as “electronic, funk/soul, pop,” and this time as the “B” side to a song called “Drowning in the Sea of Love” — performed by none other than Ringo Starr. In addition to countless American stations, “Elevator” was eventually distributed to stations in Germany, Italy, Australia, and Venezuela.
An avid golfer, in 2006 Joanne Spain was inducted into the Memphis Amateur Sports Hall of Fame.
Her retirement meant she could now devote more time to another passion — golf, which she had played since her college days. She was a regular competitor at regional tournaments. The Memphis Area Women’s Golf Association named her to their board of directors, and the Memphis Park Commission appointed her to their advisory board. She taught golf classes and spent hours working with young girls, helping to develop their enthusiasm for the sport. For these efforts, in 2006, Spain was inducted into the Memphis Amateur Sports Hall of Fame.
Friends — and she had many — remember her love for animals of all kinds. Snapshots taken in her later years rarely show her without pets, usually small dogs. “She once had raccoons in her attic,” longtime friend Patricia Toarmina told The Commercial Appeal. “Rather than call an exterminator or disturb them, she waited until the babies were old enough, then she lured them down with peanut-butter crackers and drove them to a wooded area and let them go.”
Joanne Spain passed away in 2009 at age 70. Throughout her life, she made an impact in just about everything she touched, whether it was education, music, or sports. An item in her lengthy obituary in The Commercial Appeal perhaps best sums up how many felt about her. One of her final teacher evaluations, it seems, included this remarkable observation: “Love bounced off the wall in her classroom.”
At her memorial service, friends and family compiled a nice tribute. Here are some of the images:
ALL IMAGES COURTESY PATRICIA TOARMINA / JOANNE SPAIN FAMILY
