My Musical Journey – Rock-n-Roll, Sort Of....

 My Musical Journey – Rock-n-Roll, Sort Of....

Me and my sister sitting at my Grandmother's piano at her house in ~ 55/56

In 1960 I was 11 when I entered the 6^th grade. That year for Christmas I got a phonograph. Now I could play my music whenever I wanted and didn't have to hear my father complain about it. Less than 2 months after Christmas I turned 12. I continued to play the trombone in the 6^th grade in the school band but the trombone is not an instrument associated with Rock-n-Roll and also not one generally played by itself. As such, I was not planning to continue playing after 6^th.grade. I was asked to join the junior high school band when I started 7^th grade but I turned them down.

Sometime while I was in 6^th grade a piano arrived. It came from my grandparents (mom). It was the piano my mother learned to play on. We now had a piano sitting right in our living room. That drew my interest and I started to fool around on it doing things like “Chop Sticks”, and “Heart and Soul”. My mom signed me up for piano lessons. The piano turned out to be the final nail in the coffin for my trombone career. My piano teacher used the, typical at the time, Hammond Exercises and Thompson Books. She also gave me some basic music lessons. For instance, I had to tell her what key a song was in, name the relative minor or major. I then had to play the major and minor scales. After that I had to play the major, minor, and 7^th chords. For instance if the song was in the key of “C”, I had to know or figure out the relative minor for the key of “C” which is “A minor”. I had to do all that before I was allowed to attempt to play any song. At the time I wasn't thrilled about it but later I realized she had taught me some basic music that I was able to use later when I tried to teach myself the guitar. She was also a stickler for form. I tended to drop my wrists while playing. If I did that a couple of times she would have me play with pennies resting on my wrist and if they fell off I would have to stop and start over again. She was really a good teacher.

I initially practiced as instructed but after a year my practicing time became inconsistent. I still practiced some but not as much. By 14 I was mostly just fooling around often trying to figure out how to play other stuff. One song I taught myself to play was the surf song “Pipeline”. It became obvious to my teacher that I was not putting much time into practicing and so she had a talk with my mother. She explained that she was happy to continue teaching me but that unless I started practicing more my mom was throwing her money away. My mom asked me about it and I confessed that I was spending very little time practicing my lessons. My mom still wanted me to continue. She said that I really needed 3 full years of lessons, where I spent the necessary time practicing, to have a good enough foundation so that I could fairly easily pick up the piano later. I replied but I'm just not that interested in playing all those “old” songs. At my next lesson my teacher had me start learning a new song, “The Baby Elephant Walk”. It's a Henry Mancini song. OK, that was better, but it wasn't “At The Hop”, “Bird Dog”, “The Twist”, or even something like Ray Charles “Hit The Road Jack”.  The Elephant Walk song was certainly better but I guess it wasn't better enough. My practice time didn't improved much, if at all. I was pretty much only interested in playing music I liked (Rock-n-Roll) and my interest in my piano lessons waned. Soon after that I stopped taking lessons. Looking back it's interesting that Rock-n-Roll itself was waning at that time. The major record companies got interested in our baby-boomer allowances and hired a bunch of song writers to work out of the Brill Building in NYC. They started producing a toned-down Rock-n-Roll sound. They found teenage girls were the demographic that bought the most pop records so they focused more on songs about teenage love. While they did not actually completely kill off rock-n-roll they certainly put a squeeze on it. Us guys had to wait for the Beach Boys to show up for stuff for us. Well, I guess we also had “Surf” music from people like Dick Dale.

At 12 I was buying records (45s) whenever I could and listening to them up in my room. I now had a 2 year old brother who moved into my old room and I moved into the attic room that my dad and my grandfather finished. We lived in a split-level house and my new room was not only on top is was the largest bedroom in the house. I now also had a transistor radio where I could listen to different pop/rock “Top 40” stations. There was WABC with Cousin Brucie and WINS (1010 wins) with Murray the K. Then a new to top 40 station came on the air, WMCA with the “Good Guys”. I played all my music up in my room. When I used my parent's hi-fi system I was limited to listening to my parents' albums. When I did, I generally listened to a Steve and Eydie album (Sing Golden Hits), Harry Belafonte's “Calypso” album, and some Broadway musical cast albums, “My Fair Lady”, “Oklahoma”, “West Side Story”, “South Pacific”, and “Li'l Abner”. I could also play my Kingston Trio album “Here We Go Again” down there.

1961 was the year John F Kennedy became president and the USSR built the Berlin Wall. Eddie Murphy, Barack Obama, Wayne Gretzky, George Clooney, and Kris Chambers (who would become my wife 27 years later) were all born in that year. In music, a British group called the Beatles had there first gig at the Cavern Club in Liverpool but it would be two more years before we would hear anything from them here. Back in the USA The Beach Boys released their first single “Surfin'” but their larger national hit, “Surfin' Safari”, didn't come out until 1962 and that's when I discovered The Beach Boys. Motown was coming on the scene. In 1961 some guy named Barry Gordy signed the singing group The Primettes and changed their name to The Supremes. However, they did not have a hit until 1964. That year, 1961, was when I really started to buy a lot more music. This was also about the time when I discovered girls. OK, I didn't exactly discover them. I mean they were always there, but suddenly I started to notice them and they became a lot more interesting to me. Strangely, at the same time, they became a lot harder to talk to. I guess that was because I now cared about what they thought of me. The more interested I was in a girl the more dumb and tongue-tied I became when in their presence. I had always been a shy, reserved kid and any girl that interested me seemed to bring out that trait in me to the point of embarrassment. But I digress....

So, I'm in the 6^th grade. I have my own phonograph, which I got for Christmas. Here is some of the music I bought: “Donna/LaBamba” by Ritchie Valens, “Charlie Brown” by the Coasters, “Chain Gang” by Sam Cooke, “Walk Don't Run” by The Ventures, “Runaround Sue” by Dion, “Runaway” by Del Shannon, “The Lion Sleeps Tonight” by the Tokens, “Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow” by the Shirelles, “Please Mr Postman” by the Marvelettes, “Shop Around” by The Miracles, “Stand By Me” by Ben E King, “The Bristol Stomp” by The Dovells, “Apache” by Jorgen Ingmann, “Hello Mary Lou” by Ricky Nelson, “Calendar Girl” by Neil Sedaka, “Let's Twist Again” by Chubby Checker, “Rubber Ball” by Bobby Vee, and of course Bobby 'Boris' Pickett's “The Monster Mash”. I did buy some real Rock-n-Roll, stuff like “Maybellene”, “Johnny B. Goode”, “Sweet Little Sixteen”, and “Roll Over Beethoven” all by Chuck Berry. Of course some of these were not on the top 40 charts any more. Particularly Chuck Berry. He'd left the scene at this point, something about violating “The Mann Act”, but I loved his music. By this time Elvis had also disappeared, snagged by the Military. I bought the Elvis Presley Album (the one with him rockin' out with a guitar on the cover) but I had yet to buy any of his 45's.

My two closest friends were Joe and Jimmy and I don't remember spending time listening to music with either of them. Maybe I did but I don't remember doing it. However, Jimmy's older brother Steve (by 5 years) listened to music all the time when he was home and so I was introduced to a lot of stuff hearing what he was playing. I don't remember any of my other grade school friends being particularly into music and so I was mostly playing this music for just myself. That would change as I got into Junior High.....