Mr. 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      Mr. Martin Tanner, baritone of Dayton, Ohio   Made his town hall debut last night   Be came well prepared, but unfortunately his presentation   Was not up to contemporary professional standards   His voice lacks the range of tonal color   Necessary to make it consistently interesting      Full time consideration of another endeavor might be in order      He came home to Dayton and was questioned by his friends   Then he smiled and just said nothing and he never sang again   Excepting very late at night when the shop was dark and closed   He sang softly to himself as he sorted through the clothes      Music was his life, it was not his livelihood   And it made him feel so happy, it made him feel so good   And he sang from his heart and he sang from his soul   And he did not know how well he sang, it just made him whole