Yesterday there was a delightful article in the Louisville Courier-Journal about a cleaning lady in a courtroom who sings as she goes about her work. According to the story, one of the circuit court clerks heard someone singing in an empty courtroom. She couldn’t understand the words but could clearly feel the mood of the music. It was the blues. She could feel the message: beautiful, soothing and soulful; a great calm offering balance and light.
Bob Hill continues that say that:
She walked into the courtroom to find Flossie Charlton, 77, a maintenance worker — the cleaning lady — filling the air with sweet, professional song.
“Singing,” Charlton would later explain, “just soothes me.”
She was born in Chautauqua, N.Y., where her father worked in a laundry. He brought his family to Louisville in 1937 to study for the ministry at what is now Simmons College of Kentucky. Flossie — who was 6 at the time — well remembers the 1937 flood.
“Daddy was way out there somewhere, so Mother just piled our furniture on top of the piano, and we stayed. … The water got up to the porch. We dangled our feet in it.”
She was born to sing and dance and play the piano. She had a fine contralto voice; there was some comparison to Marion Anderson. As a teenager she sang with a dozen other girls as the Jordanettes. A year after graduating from Central High School, she won a regional singing contest in a Louisville church.
Her selection was “My Hero” from the Oscar Straus operetta “The Chocolate Soldier,” itself based on a George Bernard Shaw play. She won a watch and an opportunity to apply to the Juilliard School in New York — if she had the money.
“There was no money,” she said. “You just can’t go to New York City. … You have to know somebody there. You just can’t jump up and go.”
She began to perform locally.
She preferred singing the old standards, the classical songs, some gospel such as “You Never Walk Alone.” Her audience wanted to hear the blues.
She learned dance, creating pictures with her hands.
She would wear a lovely blue dress and sing “Alice Blue Gown”: “I once had a gown, it was almost new, Oh, the daintiest thing, it was sweet Alice blue, With little forget-me-nots placed here and there, When I had it on, Oh, I walked on the air.”
She traveled the country for eight beautiful years. One of her stage names was “Chautauqua.”
She joined a traveling circus train show, performed in Toronto and finally got to New York City — for three days.
“I was doing what I wanted to do,” she said.
She came back to Louisville, got married and raised five children. They have given her five grandchildren and “about 22 great-grandchildren.”
About 12 years ago she began working for temp agencies cleaning offices for extra income. She would sing “My Hero,” “Alice Blue Gown” and “You’ll Never Walk Alone” as she dusted, because she had to sing.
Her voice would rise and fall through the empty rooms — or occasionally be heard by someone working late.
When her temp firm lost its cleaning contract, she went to work for Mini-Versity West day care on South 28th Street caring for — and singing to — babies.
They’ve been a tougher than expected audience: “I sing ‘Sleep, Baby, Sleep’ and they don’t go to sleep. … Babies don’t sleep anymore.”
She’s had better success making up songs or humming lullabies. The dreams come easier that way.
