My singer-pianist-guitarist-songwriter-granddaughter Riley

In 1956, when I was attending Richard Henry Dana, Jr., Junior High School in Arcadia, California, my friend Einar and I organized a rhythm-and-blues quartet for our eighth-grade graduation assembly, which took place in the school’s cafetorium  in the mid-morning before the mid-afternoon graduation ceremony.  Our quartet included a singer-guitarist who did an impressive (to us) cover of Carl Perkins’ “Blue Suede Shoes” (with appropriate footwear and gyrations), and then Einar and I vocally harmonized on “Hey, Mrs. Jones” and “Cherry Pie.”

“Blue Suede Shoes”:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TZwZSjLzNUU

“Hey, Mrs. Jones”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=msuCH6ISodc

“Cherry Pie”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-tPjZOXNEXo

The last of these finally broke into the consciousness of the lunching school administrators, who were of course officially shocked, and there was briefly hell to pay, including a threat to keep us from going through the graduation ceremony.  Their perfervid reaction may seem mystifying today, given the open salaciousness of current rap lyrics, but the smirking slyness and insinuating double-entendre of “Cherry Pie” seemed like a big deal at a junior high in 1956—as of course we hoped it would.  Luckily for society, or at least for Einar and me, cooler heads eventually prevailed, and in the afternoon we were reluctantly but officially allowed to graduate.

Later in 1956, during the first semester of our freshman year at Arcadia High School, Einar and I created a “modern jazz” group, with him on piano and me on clarinet.   We actually scored a gig at his sister’s sorority house at the University of Southern California, and we felt we needed a bass player.   To help us out, our junior high band teacher, Mr. Jacoby, set us up with a kid who lived way over on the west side of Los Angeles.  This kid turned out to be the little brother of Carson Smith.  Carson was a famous bassist with the Gerry Mulligan Quartet, the Chico Hamilton Quintet, and several other great West Coast bands.  His little brother’s name was (or later became) Putter, and he too had a long, very successful career as a jazz bassist on the West Coast.

At the time of the sorority event, however, we were 14 or 15 years old, so we had to be driven to the gig at USC, and along the way we picked up young Putter.  Why is this significant, you ask?  Patience, Grasshopper, patience.

At the sorority house, we were supposed to play for two hours.  We played about 10 minutes, 15 at most, and then they asked us to take a break while they made announcements.  When the announcements were over, everyone (including our band) was invited outside to eat fresh pineapple dipped in honey while watching a full eclipse of the moon.  One thing led to another, and we never did  play again that night.  In terms of compensation per minute of playing, I think this was the biggest payoff of my whole career.  Yes, I call it a career.

Many, many years after the sorority gig, around 1995, I saw Putter Smith in Mendocino, California, playing at a small jazz concert produced by local pianist and jazz guru Kent Glenn.  After the group finished playing and stood around chatting, I went up to Smith and mentioned that we’d once played a gig together.  Not surprisingly, he said he couldn’t recall that, and pretty clearly he doubted whether we had.

“When we came to pick you up,” I told him, “an old lady who lived next door to you started yelling and screaming at us, accusing us of projecting pornographic movies onto the side of her house.”

“Hey,” he said, “I guess we did play a gig.  Nice to see you again, man.”

I love jazz musicians.  So flexible.

 

The word “cafetorium” is not used nearly enough.

And it was definitely 1956.  I looked up “lunar eclipses” on the Mount Wilson Observatory webpage.

With Hal Clark (lead singer, lead guitarist) and Jim Deuvendeck (banjo) at the Heritage of America Festival in Wichita, Kansas, sometime in the mid-1970s.  Photo by Marsh Galloway, then a student at Wichita State U.

When I was around 13 or 14 (long before the picture above was taken), I bought an upright piano for $5 from the Gibbons, who lived a couple of houses down and across the street from us on Daines Drive in Temple City, California.  I walked over there with my dad’s handle-less handcart (called a “dolly,” but I doubt whether anyone else alive now would know the word in that sense).  Somebody must have helped me lift up the old upright piano while someone else kicked the dolly underneath it.  But once it was balanced precariously on the tiny dolly, I carefully shoved and guided it back home over the bumpy asphalt street and long driveway to our detached garage, where my dad had built in a small room—originally my brother’s bedroom when he was a teen, and then my music room after my brother moved out.

This was the best $5 I ever spent in my life.  The sturdy old full upright was a gift from the musical spheres humming through the universe.  Its bass was a rumbling, mellow, resonant thunder, and the upper register was clear, ringing, and bright, but not tinny or obnoxious.  It was a hell of a piano.

About this time, I heard the Weavers’ 1955 Carnegie Hall album (recorded on Christmas Eve, but blessedly devoid of Christmas music).  I don’t know how or why I found that album.  But, inspired by it, I bought a pocket-sized “Burl Ives Songbook” (which had just been published in 1953), a wonderful collection that ranged from the Revolutionary Period (“Heart of oak are our ships”) through the dust bowl days.  At the back of this book, I think, there may have been diagrams on how to construct the chords that decorated the collection’s lead sheets, and that’s how I learned what chords were, how to form them on a piano keyboard, and how they supported a melody.  I worked my way through the Ives book, banging out newly-learned chords on the piano, and singing out with the abandon that comes from knowing you’re alone in a garage.

Eventually I moved on to John Lomax’s epic “Our Singing Country,” which in turn led to the discovery of Smithsonian Institution recordings and especially Folkways Records—Jelly Roll Morton, Sven Bertil Taube (traditional Swedish songs with guitar accompaniment), Cisco Houston, Woody Guthrie, and the gritty union songs of Pete Seeger.

After a while, I picked up a big collection of the songs of Rodgers and Hart at the Arcadia Public Library, and by playing (and “singing”) through it, I learned the mysteries of the more complicated chords characteristic of the great American songbook–i.e., Broadway show tunes and, to a lesser extent, Tin Pan Alley pop music.  That library also had an LP recording of “The Boys from Syracuse,” which remains my favorite Rodgers and Hart musical comedy.

Back to folk music.  Because of my bookish explorations of the folk genre, I could sniff dismissively at the Kingston Trio’s slick adaptations of traditional songs—though I did enjoy their modern comic songs, like “The MTA” and “Merry Minuet” (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bp6dsKleGpU).

Later, when I went to Los Angeles State College, I met two fellow students named Larry Rich (whose wedding several years later I described in another blog essay) and Pat Pelfrey.  Both of them grew up just a few blocks from my house, but in a different school district, so that we had never met until we got to college.

As it turned out, Pat Pelfrey’s family taught me quite a bit more about American folk song.  Here’s why.

The Pelfreys, or at least the Pelfrey parents, originally hailed from Four Mile, Kentucky, which is located in Hazard County, the site of much strife in the mills and coal mines of the 1930s and 1940s.  As one of the union songs from that time and place puts it,

They say in Hazard County

There are no neutrals there.

You either are a union man

Or a scab for J. H. Blair.

Which side are you on?

Which side are you on?

Out of this desperate milieu, Pat’s father, Paul, became a union organizer.  I’m not sure now which union he worked for, but I seem to remember it involved ceramic and/or brick makers.  He was a member of both the B’nai B’rith and the NAACP, which made him unique in my limited experience of the world.  Later, after I had moved to northern California for graduate school and gradually lost contact with the Pelfrey family (but not Pat), he and Mrs. Pelfrey moved to Mississippi to organize laborers, and I remember Pat telling me that the KKK had burned crosses in their front yard, and they had also suffered in other ways for their politics and cultural values.

Even so, I regret to say that I was most impressed by the fact that Mr. Pelfrey called everybody—man, woman, boy, or girl—by the name “Jerry.”  I suppose females thought he was saying “Gerry.”  Incredibly, it worked.  In a room crowded with Jerry after Jerry, and/or Gerry after Gerry, we always knew which Jerry/Gerry he was talking to or about.

From time to time, the Pelfreys were visited by family members still living in Kentucky.  These included Uncle Red (a lean, silver-haired, patrician lawyer) and Uncle Harold (a short, bald, rotund school teacher), along with wives and cousins.  Inevitably, they’d gather for a night-time party, and to one of these they invited me, along with their pal Mr. I. W. Harper.

The first time I went to one of these gatherings, I didn’t know a soul except Pat, who was chatting with inquisitive kin, so I sat at the piano and started playing Broadway tunes.  This was early in my life, so I pretty quickly ran out of musical-comedy numbers and started to sing (and bang out on the piano) my pretty sizable repertoire of folk songs.  The first of these that I ever did for them was called “The Longest Train”:

The longest train I ever saw

Ran around Joe Brown’s coal mine.

The headlight passed at six o’clock,

The cab come by at nine.

The prettiest girl I ever saw

Was on that train and gone.

Her skin was fair and her eyes were blue

And her hair, it hung way down.

That long steel rail and that short cross-tie,

They carried her away.

‘Twas transportation brought me here,

I’ll be coming home some day.

Well, that’s what I would have sung.  But as soon as I got through the first verse, everybody in the room—and I mean everybody in the room—started to sing with a startling, softly nasal twang:

In the pines, in the pines, where the sun never shines,

I shivered the whole night through.

You caused me to weep, you caused me to mourn,

You caused me to leave my home.

Little girl, little girl, don’t lie to me,

Tell me where did you stay last night?

In the pines, in the pines, where the sun never shines

And I shivered the whole night through.

I no longer recall the exact words they sang, since there are dozens and dozens of version of this song—some African-American (as by Leadbelly), some Bluegrass (by everybody from Bill Monroe to Dolly Parton).  But it was the first time in my life in which a whole roomful of adults knew one of the songs that I had learned from the Ives and Lomax books, and could sing it straight through.

Encouraged by the response to “In the Pines,” I started to play and sing dozens of others, and the Pelfrey clan frequently would sing along with me, urge me on with appreciative shouts, or take time from family conversations to politely applaud when I’d finished a ditty.  Best of all, I got invited to more family gathers.

On one subsequent night, Mr. Pelfrey (Paul) came up to me while I sat at the piano, put a hand on my shoulder (a common Pelfrey conversational move), and said, “Glenn, play us a song with the sound of marchin’ feet.”

I did “The Banks Are Made of Marble,” and several of the Pelfreys sang the chorus with me:

I’ve seen my brothers working

Throughout this mighty land,

And I’ve prayed we’d get together

And together make a stand.

That we might own those banks of marble

With a guard at every door.

And we might share those vaults of silver

That we all have sweated for.

That was a crowd favorite in a union family (although Uncle Red, the lawyer, always seemed a bit subdued with them, or perhaps amused and tolerant), and they also enjoyed some protest songs about mill owners and such:

Old man Sargeant,

Sittin’ at his desk,

The damned old fool

Won’t give us no rest.

He’d take the nickles

Off a dead man’s eyes

To buy a Coca-Cola

And an Eskimo pie.

—from  “The Winsboro Cotton Mill Blues”

One evening, after I’d finally run out of songs and drunk a bit too much of Mr. Harper’s bourbon to continue without swearing at missed chords and forgotten lyrics, rotund Uncle Harold came up to me, put his hand on my shoulder, and said solemnly, “Glenn. . .if you wake up ever’ morning with a bluebird on your shoulder. . .,” and then sat down on the sofa and fell asleep.  Eventually, I decided that this old adage must end “. . .then you’ll have birdshit on your pajamas.”

But I would never have used such language among the Pelfreys.  They were far too polite for such talk, and in particular, Pat’s mom “Aunt Lacey” would surely give me what for.  One Saturday morning, while Pat and I sat in their house’s darkened living room watching a broadcast of a basketball game on their black-and-white TV (east coast games were then shown as early as 9:00 a.m. on the Pacific Coast), Aunt Lacey came into the room, looked at us, and said “Hmmph.  You boys have straight your raisen.”  This linguistic puzzle stunned me, and even stumped Pat, who after all had grown up with her.  “Ma’am?” he said (being just as country courtly as the rest of that crowd).  She replied, with exaggerated slowness and stress, “You. . .boys. . .have. . .straight. . .your. . .raisen!”  And then she left the room.

Pat and I looked at each other blankly.  Eventually, after much speculation, we surmised that she was saying (probably) that we had departed from the manner in which we had been reared: we had strayed our raisin’.  Pat went into the kitchen to confirm this with her, and came back nodding his head.  We were amused but abashed.

But the most memorable exchange came with courtly Uncle Red, who was by far the least animated or whimsical of Pelfrey conversers.  “Uncle Red,” I asked him one night as the party happily babbled on around us, “exactly where is Four Mile, Kentucky?”  “Oh,” he replied languidly, “about five miles out of Hazard.”

This was a wonderful family, and I’m grateful to have had the chance to sing with them, and listen to their stories, and hear the sound of a diverse family who enjoyed each other’s company.  And, of course, to learn that folk music could actually be folk music.

* * * * * * * * * * * ** * * * * ** * * * * ** * * * * ** * * * * ** * * * * *

Added factoids: 

(1) I have since learned that one of the original cast members of the witty Rodgers and Hart musical “The Boys from Syracuse” was Burl Ives.

(2) Pat Pelfrey himself became a successful lawyer, based in Louisville, and even argued a case before the Supreme Court of the United States.

(3)  The trio pictured at the top of this post played country/folk music, with a bluegrass accent thanks to the banjo.  I never learned how to spell “Deuvendeck.”  Quite possibly I’m not even close.  But he was an incredible banjo player, and when we played at festivals, other bands would get him to sit in with them.  He later moved to San Francisco, I think.  If you know him, please ask him to drop me a line.

Okay, the title is absurd.  People who have had utterly no impact on the world of music do not—or at least should not—presume to write about “their life in music.”  Still, here I am.  Even an unknown wannabe can be in love with music for a lifetime.  For what it’s worth, this is part of mine.

San Gabriel Civic Auditorium

Through the years, I’ve been fortunate to play in pit orchestras for a number of community theater presentations, including Guys and Dolls, Applause, and several others, and also for quite a few locally-produced revues.

Of the latter, my perverse favorite was a slap-dash assemblage of songs and blather far out in the Chicago suburbs, with a band consisting of piano, bass, drums, trumpet, and clarinet.  The producers provided no music.  They’d tell us the name of the song, and we’d work out the key with the performer, and then find a fake book with a lead sheet for any unfamiliar songs.  Though my clarinet was not miked, I was often asked to play more softly.

This revue was probably the most morally objectionable musical project I’ve ever been involved in, including several for which I wrote, produced, directed, emceed, and/or performed.  Its premise was that a priest was trying to raise funds for repairs to his Catholic church.  He’d ask assorted town-folk for donations, and they’d all turn him down—musically.  My favorite was a rabbi who declined by singing “If I Were a Rich Man.”  Classy.  A black guy sang “Old Man River”—not that that had anything to do with the plot, but. . .you know, what else would a black guy sing?  Ultimately, the church was saved by funding from a mafia don.  So every base was covered.  Far and away the best part of the show was that, throughout the opening night performance, the obnoxious writer-producer-director-lead actor’s fly was obviously unzipped.

I would gladly pay to be in another pit orchestra for Guys and Dolls, one of the greatest musicals ever.  I was in the band for a production in the Davis community theater in California, and the actor-singers were just incredibly talented.  We players in the reed section would take turns sitting out musical numbers so we could turn around and watch the actors on stage.

Applause is another matter.  It really has only one good song, and everything sung by the lead was composed with Lauren Bacall in mind.  She’s an attractive actor, of course, but she apparently had a vocal range of about three tones.  So while she essentially spoke her “music,” the orchestra did backflips going rapidly in and out of a hundred keys per song, each generally in 5 sharps or 6 flats, so it would sound like she was “singing.”

When I was a senior in high school, I appeared as an on-stage musician in an Arcadia Community Theater production of Jean Anouilh’s Thieves’ Carnival, which the handbill called “a callithump in one act.”  It was directed by young guy named Stan Cornyn—and I believe this was the same Stan Cornyn who went on to became a Grammy-winning recording industry executive.  A graduate of Monrovia High School (near Arcadia), he was then working on a masters degree in theater at UCLA.  It was a very innovative production, and Cornyn would get the actors into the mood by playing records by Anita O’Day, and once showed a Charlie Chaplin short.  During breaks, the veteran actors (probably in their 20s or 30s) taught me how to play blackjack, or 21 (which they called “casino”).

My role in this play (performed in the round) was to appear onstage in white shoes, white duck trousers, frilly shirt, ice-cream-vendor-style coat with vertical stripes, bright bow tie, and a boater or straw hat.  My cheeks were highly rouged.  I stood around on stage or sat on a high stool and tootled on clarinet from time to time.  Cornyn had me devise theme music for each of the main actors, and I’d play the appropriate ditty as each character entered or left the stage.  I was also directed to provide wry musical comments on the action or on characters’ remarks.  Yes, I was cast because of my ability to play the clarinet sarcastically.  Ahem.

Toward the end of Thieves’ Carnival, I’d go off-stage and change into an Edwardian suit, bowler hat or derby, and obvious fake beard.  When I re-entered, the central character would accuse me of being a fraud and pulled on the beard to prove it.  The false whiskers were drawn away from my face, but quickly flew back into place because of the elastic bands that held it on.  This obviously fraudulent “proof” of authenticity was meekly accepted as convincing by all of the astonished characters.  I resist comparisons to present-day political races.

But the on-stage performance that lives brightest in my memory was in a production at the San Gabriel Civic Auditorium (then called the Mission Playhouse, I think), a very large venue right across the street from the old San Gabriel mission.  This production, aimed at an audience of kids, was called Woodland Fantasy, and was loosely modeled on Peter and the Wolf.  It was written (music, words, and book) by the mother of an Arcadia High School classmate, who recruited us.   Alas, this play seems not to have outlived its initial production, and now survives only in my vivid but sometimes unreliable memory.

My memory is this.  In the play, some kids are lost in a forest.  As they stumble about, they encounter a number of animals who are at first frightening but turn out to be friendly and helpful.  Each animal plays a different music instrument.

For example, my friend Bob Winn, a gifted oboist, played a wise owl.  Dressed (I seem to recall) in some sort of feathered coat with a feathery hat, and wearing over-sized, round-lens horn-rimmed spectacles, he’d speak a few lines and then play a song on his oboe to the delighted kids on stage (and possibly to the hundreds of kids whose parents had brought them to the auditorium).

I, however, played a clarinet-wielding squirrel, and I had an actual costume that the show’s producer had made up.  In other words, and there seems to be no other way to put it, I was dressed in a squirrel suit.  Small openings permitted access of my mouth and hands to the musical instrument.

The squirrel suit was made of an unattractive, ratty brown, but very sturdy fabric.  From my perspective, however, that was not its most salient feature.  Rather, it had been designed and stitched together with a much shorter actor/clarinetist in mind.  So getting into it was very difficult.  Even so, if I crouched over while garbed in this costume, things went tolerably well, and I could totter about the stage and even speak my lines if I tilted my head to one side.  But when I stood up straight in order to play clarinet, the unforgiving suit exerted considerable pressure on what must be referred to as my crotch.  Not really my crotch, exactly, but. . .you know.  Thus, besides producing tones on the clarinet, in front of several hundred young spectators I would simultaneous produce eerie yowls of pain.  Three agonizing performances, as I recall.

As I have said countless times, a life in music is no bed of roses.

The interior of the old San Gabriel Civic Auditorium

(not pictured: the slouching squirrel)