Mr. Tanner

Mister Tanner was a cleaner from a town in the Midwest.
And of all the cleaning shops around he'd made his the 
best.
But he also was a baritone who sang while hanging clothes.
He practiced scales while pressing tails and sang at local 
shows.
His friends and neighbors praised the voice that poured out
 from his throat.
They said that he should use his gift instead of cleaning 
coats.

But music was his life, it was not his livelihood,
and it made him feel so happy and it made him feel so good.
And he sang from his heart and he sang from his soul.
He did not know how well he sang; It just made him whole.

His friends kept working on him to try music out full time.
A big debut and rave reviews, a great career to climb.
Finally they got to him, he would take the fling.
A concert agent in New York agreed to have him sing.
And there were plane tickets, phone calls, money spent to 
rent the hall.
It took most of his savings but he gladly used them all.

But music was his life, it was not his livelihood,
and it made him feel so happy and it made him feel so good.
And he sang from his heart and he sang from his soul.
He did not know how well he sang; It just made him whole.

The evening came, he took the stage, his face set in a 
smile.
And in the half filled hall the critics sat watching on the
 aisle.
But the concert was a blur to him, spatters of applause.
He did not know how well he sang, he only heard the flaws.
But the critics were concise, it only took four lines.

But no one could accuse them of being over kind.

(spoken) Mr. Martin Tanner, Baritone, of Dayton, Ohio made 
his
Town Hall debut last night. He came well prepared, but 
unfortunately
his presentation was not up to contemporary professional 
standards.
His voic