CLOVIS, Calif. — Mac McIntosh started singing when he was 8 years old. He’s 77 now, but his glory days are far from over.
“Performing is everything when you’ve done it as long as I have,” McIntosh said.
McIntosh competed as part of a barbershop quartet for most of his life. A barbershop quartet is an acapella group of four singers. He won awards performing songs such as “If You Were the Only Girl in the World” by Clifford Grey and Nat Ayer, and he still performs today.
Singing isn’t McIntosh’s livelihood, but he said it keeps him feeling alive.
“You get that one person with one tear when you do that ballad that says, ‘I affected them,’” he said. “That’s what counts.”
McIntosh said he seems healthier than many people his age, and some studies seem to back up that observation. Researchers from University College in London found people who regularly do art, including music, age slower than those who don’t.
Older adults also often have trouble recognizing voices in crowded areas, however a neurological study from China and Canada found trained musicians had brains that resembled those of young people. Their brains also didn’t need to work as hard to make up for age-related declines, the study found.
Older adults in Fresno County, including McIntosh, say there are benefits to socializing with other performers, and the audience too.
“I feel sometimes it’s a lifeblood,” McIntosh said. “It keeps me moving. It keeps me aware…It makes me a better person.”
Training the brain
McIntosh’s enjoyment of singing developed as a youth coming up in Taft and later Fresno.
“I was the middle son of five,” he said. “My stepfather was a mechanic, and we had the worst running car on the block. Nine times out of 10, the radios did not work. So we’d go places like camping or the mountains, or whatever, and we’d sing most of the stuff.”
As a young man, McIntosh joined the glee club. Later in the U.S. Navy, he became part of a church choir and a trio of guys who would sing around their base on the Japanese island of Okinawa.
McIntosh even tried making a living out of his voice, but after marriage and the birth of his son, he transitioned to a job at the railroad and took up the barbershop quartet as a hobby. He calls singing an “avocation,” and it also helps with his wellbeing.
Performers like McIntosh and Julie Saldana, 69, say being on stage does wonders for their social and emotional health. Saldana has framed photos of many of her performances around her home in Madera. She performs with McIntosh in a senior musical variety show in Fresno called New Wrinkles.
Saldana is a self-described ham — “a person who has an innate part of them that has to get out there and perform.”
“There’s something in their soul that says, ‘I have to get out there,’” Saldana said. “It’s part of my DNA!”
For many years, Saldana worked as a consultant for California’s Department of Fair Employment and Housing. Most of her career jobs, she said, didn’t have “a lot of opportunity for creativity.”
But singing was always in her, she said. Before starting her career, she sang at weddings and in choirs starting in fourth grade. Later in life, she sang for a blues band.
Saldana has performed in New Wrinkles for eight seasons, and she told KVPR she’s not surprised about the research that points to longevity in musicians. She sees people in their 90s on stage with her, learning the music and the choreography.
“You’re forcing yourself to use maybe part of your brain that you haven’t used in a long time, if at all,” she said.
The variety show is offered through Fresno City College, and anyone age 55 and older is eligible to take song and dance classes and practice practically the whole academic year-long. All the hours culminate into several showcases.
Saldana says the preparation and the show end up defying stereotypes, and even her own preconceived notions about her age.
“That spark in you all of a sudden gets ignited once again, and you go, ‘Holy cripes, I can sing, and I can dance,’” she exclaimed. “It doesn’t matter if I’m in my 60s, 70s, or 80s, 50s. I can do this, and how fun is this?”
No time like the present
When McIntosh isn’t singing, he hits the road in a U.S. Navy leather jacket — on his motorcycle, which has “about 38,000 miles on her,” and he’s even part of a couple “biker groups.”
“I used to ride two wheels, and then I turned 70,” he said. “I said. ‘It’s just time to go to three wheels,’ so now I [ride] what they call a reverse trike.”
He recently rode his bike to Peace Lutheran Church in Fresno to meet his friend and duet partner, Jane Parsons. They were rehearsing for a musical comedy act – named “Mac ‘n’ Jane,” — like mac ‘n’ cheese – performed at local retirement homes.
The show features solos and duets with a bit of comedy mixed in. Parsons’ spunky personality jives with McIntosh’s everlasting end notes.
Many of their audiences are made up of people their age or younger.
“We’re so blessed that we are able to do this,” Parsons, 70, said. “That we can get up in the morning, and we can sing and move.”
Parsons said her friendship with McIntosh is like having a sibling, and that’s something she enjoys in her life.
She believes it’s also the thrill of the audience that drives her at 70 years old — so much so, it’s like time doesn’t exist.
“They do more for me than I think I ever do for them, and that’s just the power of music. Even if we end up in a rest home someday…” she said.
“We’ll sing for each other,” McIntosh said, finishing Parsons’ sentence.
Rachel Livinal reports on higher education for KVPR and Merced FOCUS through a partnership with the Central Valley Journalism Collaborative.
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