Music Series

Origins

I can’t remember exactly when I became interested in music, but it happened very early in my life, because my parents always liked and listened to music, and of course I heard the music when they listened to it. Mom had taken piano lessons as a young girl, meaning that she had some exposure to what is commonly, though incorrectly, referred to as “classical” music. Dad said he had a brief encounter with the violin, and I guess that in that short time he must have come in contact with “classical” music, too. But what they listened to was big band swing music—Benny Goodman, Tommy Dorsey, Jimmy Dorsey, Glen Miller, Stan Kenton and other bands of the 30s, 40s and 50s—and they listened to The Grand Ol’ Opry on the radio every Saturday night to hear people like Hank Williams, Little Jimmy Dickens, Ernest Tubb, The Sons of the Pioneers, Minnie Pearl, Grandpa Jones and all the others. Yes, that’s right: My parents liked swing and country. An odd combination? Well, yes, it was.

In those early days there wasn’t nearly as much entertainment available in homes as there is today. AM radio was king, hardly anyone had even heard of FM radio, and almost nobody had a TV until well into the 50s. I was eight years old in 1952 when the first experience I remember with television occurred. Someone brought a TV set to my house so that my parents and some friends could watch the Republicans nominate General Dwight Eisenhower for President of the United States. We used “rabbit ears” to pick up a station a long way away to watch the Republican Convention.

The main entertainment medium, other than AM radio, was the phonograph, which, for those too young to remember, played plastic discs called “records.” Mom and Dad had quite a few 78s and 33s (45s weren’t “invented” yet). We listened mostly to swing and country music records, and less “classical.”

One of my Dad’s favorite musicians was Gene Krupa, a drummer who played with the Benny Goodman band. Dad had a few Benny Goodman albums, and he would sometimes play them over and over, and just raved about Gene Krupa, who is credited as the first drummer to play an extended jazz drum solo, which he did on a tune called Sing, Sing, Sing with the Goodman band at Carnegie Hall in 1938. Before Krupa, the drums were just part of the rhythm section, and rarely played more than a few beats by themselves, filling in open spots in the music, but he brought the drums to the forefront. My Dad’s enthusiasm for Krupa inspired me to learn to play the drums.

You could start band in our school system in the sixth grade, but I was able to start during the summer before sixth grade when Larry Everson and I took lessons. After school started, we drummers spent a lot of time standing around with our sticks under our arms while the instructor worked with the wind instruments. I got bored with that, and switched to the trumpet in the seventh grade. But even though I was a trumpet player in the band, I continued playing drums and other percussion instruments some outside of band. I became a pretty good trumpet player in junior high.

In high school I had the opportunity to play in a school band that played swing and jazz—a stage band, a “big band” like Benny Goodman’s, with 16 pieces. Also in high school, a bunch of us band guys, some who had taught ourselves to play, piano, guitar and bass, formed a rock group called “The Lancers” (I think that was the name. That was a long time ago, and the band wasn’t together very long). I was the bass player in that group, but after a few months The Lancers fizzled out and the horn players and I joined another band called “The Jades,” a group of self-taught guys who were pretty good. I played trumpet in that group. Needless to say, adding two trumpets and an alto sax, played by “trained musicians,” really propelled The Jades to bigger and better things. The Jades was a group of white guys that played soul music, and it lasted about a year after the horns joined before three guys left for college and The Jades took a 35-year hiatus. Our claim to fame, aside from widespread local fame, was backing up a black chick group called The Chantels, whose big tune at the time was “Maybe.” They liked us. They said we were “the most soulful white band” they had ever heard. We were pretty pleased by that.

Meanwhile, the school stage band went to the state stage band festival in my junior year and won first place. The judges were two professional jazz musicians, clarinetist Buddy DeFranco and Chubby Jackson, who played a 5-string upright bass, a specially made instrument that was years ahead of its time. It was a real thrill for all of us, but especially for me, because one of the tunes we played was Moonlight In Vermont, with a trumpet solo played by, who else, yours truly! Playing in the stage band and The Jades, along with the school concert band and marching band, convinced me to study music in college.

Obviously, I was hooked on music. I still am.

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