Music

One day on 4^th avenue some men were going house to house testing children to see if they had any musical talent. They represented the Hawaiian Conservatory of Music. They offered musical instruction on several instruments including the accordion, various guitars, and other string instruments including the violin. The salesmen gave a little test to determine if the child had musical ability. Of course each child was proven to be almost a child prodigy. The test was used to sell the lessons. I and my brother fell into that category and our mother was willing to have both of us learn an instrument. Several instruments were laid out and I liked the guitar because I wanted to play one like the cowboys I saw in the movies. My mother says I always wanted to play the violin and picked it when the choice was presented to me, but as I remember I wanted the guitar and not the violin. Mom played the violin and I think she wanted me to play the violin and remembers it differently than I.

The violin was selected then and I went to my first class downtown. The instructors name was Wallace Kerr. He had been the director of the marine band and was a person of German ancestry. He was very strict to say the least. At first the classes were in groups. We were assigned to memorize the whole lessen and play it the next week in front of the class. I was real shy and part of the reason my mom wanted me to take music lessons was to try to over come this problem. I would be so scared when I had to stand and play my lesson each week. We were instructed to keep our finger nails very short. If we did anything wrong in the class Mr. Kerr would swat us with his bow. I never got swatted, but lived in fear I would. I started chewing my nails at that time and continue to this day. I think I am still afraid I will get a swat.

I did very well and somehow had an aptitude for playing the violin. I could play very complicated pieces and would play them from memory at concerts I was selected to play at. I don’t know how I could do it, because years later I realized that I really could not read music. I think I was mostly playing by ear, but somehow I played a lot of real difficult classical violin concertos with little difficulty. In fact by the time I was 10 years old many people thought I should enroll in musical schools like Jouliard in New York. I auditioned for them in Tacoma and was accepted, but my parents did not want to pick up stakes and move that far across the country. I played all the way through school and received invitations to go to several colleges when I graduated high school. Several offered scholarships. I selected Washington State University and received a full tuition scholarship there. I never really got much better than I was when I was 10 years old. There is a condition that some kids have where they appear to be geniuses at something when they are young but they never really go much beyond that level no matter how much they practice. I was told I was one of these kids. I did enjoy playing the violin and had many great times playing in orchestras in the area and in bands my brother and I formed. I was selected for “All Northwest” twice, and “All State” once.

My brother Denny selected the accordion and was good at it as well. He also played the clarinet and sousaphone in marching bands. He did not distinguish himself in band music while he was in high school, but in college he blossomed and ended up playing just about anything he wanted. He was the closest person I ever knew who could hear a note and tell you what it was. He just had a lot of fun playing and we both used our musical skills to have a lot of adventures.

We wanted to play in a band. I was in high school orchestra and had several friends who played in professional bands. I got some sheet music from them and wanted to have my own band, but they were really meant for horns and dance bands. All we had was me on violin and Denny on accordion or piano, which he could play as well. A boy across the street played the trumpet and we practiced with him a little, but the combination of instruments was not very good. Fred Keller had played a little accordion and would set in with us sometimes but still the mix was not right. One day dad told us that he had a friend who had two daughters who played and maybe we could hook up with them to form a band. The girls turned out to be Joanne Sorenson and her sister. Her sister played the piano and Joanne played the violin and was very good. We latter played in the same high school orchestra and in fact went to the same college on scholarship. We competed against each other all through school as to who was the best, but we were really good friends and liked each other very much. Joanne was a real smart gal who got straight A’s in college as well as high school. She would confide in me like a brother, and would cry on my shoulder that there were no boys who would like her. I never knew why she could not get a date as she was pretty with a great figure. I think some guys were intimidated by how smart she was. I always told her not to worry and there would be someone for her. She ended up being a Pharmacist and married a Doctor. She had no reason to worry. Last I heard about her she was staying home, enjoying being a mommy.

Anyway, we started playing Scandinavian music. Joanne’s father had found some sheet music and we adapted it for our use. There was another boy in Joanne’s neighborhood who played the drums. His name was Dave Robinson. Now we were starting to have a real band. We found another boy who played the tuba and we got to be a pretty good “umpa” band. We played at a lot of Scandinavian events, mostly just for gas money and eats. Those people can really cook and we liked going and playing just for the food. We had a lot of fun doing this kind of thing and met a lot of nice people who enjoyed our music. For some reason we stopped playing with the girls. I never really knew why we didn't play with the girls, but Dave Robinson and I got interested in Amateur Radio (Ham) and were friends and did that more than music for awhile. We did practice some and started to convert ourselves from a Scandinavian group to a Country Western group. The three of us boys Dave, and my brother and me kept playing, but for a time we did not play for anyone just practiced.

One day a guy in Puyallup who was really into the old Minstrel band (black face) thing had heard about us boys and came to our home to see if our little group wanted to be part of a touring Minstrel review. We accepted the offer and did tour around the area in the group. That is a group that probably could not be on stage today as we all dressed up in black face and performed old southern minstrel songs. I don’t think black people would put up with it today. We did not mean it to be making fun of back people and this never entered our minds that it would be degrading at all. We thought we were making fun of white people who used to do this stuff in shows. During this time I met a gal who was to become my first real girl friend. Her name was Judy and she sang in the shows in black face with her friend Carol. Judy could really sing. She sang and played the guitar. She had taught herself everything with no lessons at all. She sounded just like a gal who was famous during this time by the name of Connie Francis. Judy later joined our band and was our girl singer. She ended up making her living in music and played on stage for many years. She sang with most of the famous country bands of the day. We added another guitar player who could sing by the name of Dale. He was a great big guy over six foot five and 300 pounds. He had been a bouncer for local rock bands. He knew ever song ever did by the Kingston Trio. We also found a guy who was quite a bit older than us who played the piano. He was real great at playing rinky-tinky style but usually just corded for us in the type of piano used in country western. This is the band that we had most of the time.

We had the chance to play at several talent shows in the area. We used to win most contests we entered. This was before Star Search or anything like that. There were other national talent shows on radio and TV but we would have had to travel to California or New York to be on those shows and we never had the money to go there. One of the shows we were in had as the grand prize a chance to appear on local radio and have our own show. We won the talent contest and appeared on radio for the first time. Apparently there were enough call ins and interest from the community that the station gave us an open time slot on Saturdays at 1:00 PM each week. We had set up a dance at a hall we had rented in the South hill of Puyallup called the Old Mill. We advertised our dances each week on our radio show and this was the main reason we spent so much time playing on the radio. The dances were very successful. We could make $80 dollars each night. This was in the days that our dad made about $100 per week himself. We added some other guitar players, slide and western. These guys were from Fort Lewis and were professional players who normally played at bars in the area. They made more money with us because we had the connections via the radio show. Dad ran the bar. Just bear, wine, popcorn and other snack stuff. He was making more doing this than he was on his regular job. We had to hire a couple of off duty cops to work security and pay for the hall, but even with that cost we were making real good money.

We were real proud of our dance, and we were getting very well known and people were coming from all around the area to dance to our music. We felt sure that it would not be long before we got famous. There were other well-known local musicians who set in with us form time to time. We set in with them in their gigs as well on occasion. We had the normal disturbances that you would expect in a dance with a large group of people. Some guys and gals would get too much to drink and raise a little cane, but the cops did a great job of keeping order and protecting the band members. There were always people hanging around the stage who were musicians or fans. We were actually being asked for autographs ever so often. There was however a couple of men who just hang around who never danced. They just stood at the front of the stage and listened and looked at us. Then during a break one of them came up to me and started to talk to me as I was the leader of the band and did all the talking between numbers and introduced people who were on stage. It turned out that these guys were from the musicians union. They wanted us to join the union. My dad was a union man and we had a good feeling about being in a union, so we listened to what they had to say and even accepted that we would have to each pay $100 to join the union. They then told us that not only did we have to join, but that we had to give our dance we had built up over to another union band and go inactive in the union hall until another dance came open we could do. Well to say the least this did not set well with me or any of the other band members. We told them we would join but not turn our dance over to anyone else. They said we would have no choice and if we did not do as they said they would disrupt our dance and make it hard on us. We told the cops and they told us that they could not through them out unless they bothered us or did anything other than just stand there. The next week they were there again and started to make remarks that the cops heard. The cops tossed them out and told them not to come back, but they did the next week. The cops kept throwing them out, but then they did something that made it impossible for us to go on. My dad and Dave the drummer were active members of their own unions. Dave’s dad was a union barber and had his own shop. My dad was a shop steward in the metal workers union. These union guys found out that our fathers were union members and told their unions about us. The other unions told our fathers that they had to do what the musicians union requested if they wanted to remain in their own unions. To not do as told would have meant that Dave and my dad would not be able to work anymore. We decided to just pull out of the dance and radio show rather than turn it over to someone else. The union tried to put another band in the hall, but it failed in a little time.

We played on several TV shows and at most of the dance halls around the area. During our radio show, we had a engineer by the name of Buck Owens. He had a dance in a hall in Sumner. My girl friend Judy was the singer in his band and I would go over to see her after our dance was over. Because we were minors, we could not play as long as his band so we normally got done in time for me to go see his dance and be with Judy. Sometimes when his fiddle player got to drunk to play anymore, Judy would ask if I could set in with the band. I did this a few times but did not think it was any big deal. We had more people at our dance and I think we played better music. Judy would set in with us when she could, but had committed to sing with Buck when he needed her. Most of his band were drunks including him. I never thought he would amount to anything. He and most of his band were just GI’s from Fort Lewis and did not seem to have that much going for them. Little did I know that some of them would become the BUCKAROOS of HEE HAA fame on TV and get rich and famous.

Judy went on to become a professional musician. That is to say she made her living playing and singing around the area. She played or performed with most of the famous country western bands that came through the area. She had a many year gig at a place in Seattle where she sang and played each week. The rest of us guys got regular jobs or went off to college. As I said before I went to WSU and my brother went to the U of W in Seattle and was a band teacher in Seattle for a time. He went into banking after he discovered that he would probably kill one of the kids if he continued in teaching. He realized that teaching music was not for him at all. Even with his first job at the bank he repossessed cars like a car thief was better than being a band teacher. I played a few times after college at church and a little orchestra that started in town. Denny just played at home for his enjoyment. I think seeing how people who are in the music or entertainment industry live made us sure that we did not want to end up like that. It is not that our parents wasted their money on music lessons on us, we always loved music and I feel it added so much to my life. I did so many things as a kid with my music, performing before small and large groups that has really enriched my life and Denny’s life as well. The skills and poise we learned performing served us very well in our chosen professions and I bless my parents for giving me the opportunity to play and love music. I remember going downtown to the cannery to see my mom working long hard hours to pay for lessons for her boys. She did it for love of us and the hope we would use it in our lives. I am sure she hoped we would be famous someday.