DUKES FANS:
The Early Days pt 1
Over the last couple of weeks I have had
several wonderful conversations about the joys, wonders and sometimes pain of
playing music with a couple of friends. I have known some of them for years,
and we spent time talking about the early days of our musical endeavors. We
talked about people we had met and played with, places we had traveled to,
exhilarating experiences that we had, embarrassing experiences we endured,
hilarious events, and more. We also had lively reminiscences about
some of the amazing places where we got to hear incredible music, and some great places
we were fortunate enough to play. I enjoyed these conversations, and they got
me thinking about my early playing days and the times. If it is alright, I
would like to take the next couple of newsletters to reflect a bit on the early
days of my love affair with music and how I got into playing.
I come from a working class African-American
family that lived in West Philadelphia. I was the youngest of three children,
and I was born in 1950. Our first musical experiences were church-borne
experiences; we were in the young peoples’ choir from early on, and we, of
course, sang wonderful hymns during church services.
There
was music in the house as well-we had a record player and mom played albums by
Johnny Mathis, Nat King Cole, Louis Armstrong, and Duke Ellington among others.
We all had to take piano lessons from Mrs. Bush at 52nd and Girard
when we got older. I was not good at all, and I hated practice. But my brother was
quite good, and he still plays both the piano and the organ. We also sang
regularly and had music lessons via the Thomas Dunlap public elementary school
at 50th and Race Street. I took trumpet lessons for a year through
that school, bringing no end of pain and suffering to my neighbors, siblings,
and parents. I tried mightily, but it was clear I was not going to be the
next Louis Armstrong.
We had a radio in the kitchen, and I
listened to WHAT and WDAS, the local black music stations. Through them I heard
a mix of Motown music, doo-wop, Stax records, New Orleans rhythms from the South, and even the
occasional Slim Harpo, B.B. King, Bobby Bland, and Roscoe Gordon blues song.
These were AM stations; FM music radio stations had not yet happened. But after
9 PM at night some AM signals would drift in from other cities and states, and
if you were in the kitchen after dinner you could catch those stations. I did a
hell of a lot of after-dinner dishes to stay in the kitchen and hear those
other stations. The popular music scene in the late 50’s and early to
mid-sixties was changing in amazing ways, and it was carrying me right along
with it.
Music was all around us, then, and it was
changing in some major and dramatic ways. Rock 'n' Roll hit hard in the late 50’s,
and it’s combination of blues, country music and more threw commercial radio into
a mess. They were not sure what to do with it as it became more and more
popular, more wild, and brought some people together the larger society wanted
to keep separate. Folk music and protest music also hit the airwaves in the
wake of the Civil Rights and anti-Vietnam war movements, and some of this was
going mainstream as well. The Beatles and the Stones heralded the English
invasion in the mid-60’s, and we all know what that did to popular music and
commercial radio. There seemed to be something new coming along every week, and
eventually FM stations started appearing. I was a young kid through most of
this, but I could follow all of these changes from our kitchen radio. There was
not much in the way of programing, focus groups, or “data collection” then; disk
jockeys would play pretty much what they wanted, and a number of them had
widely eclectic tastes. I could hear, say, Ray Charles, the Beatles, Peter,
Paul and Mary, the Four Seasons, and The Supremes and Temptations all within one hour and on
the same show. By my high school years I was still listening to WHAT AND WDAS,
but also to WMMR FM, WKBW AM from Buffalo, NY late at night, WNYC FM in NYC, Temple
University’s WRTI jazz station, and more. It was a wonderful, exciting, and free-flowing
mess. And, I went to a high school that had a bunch of hippies, young
political activists, and even a folk music club. All of these sounds were all jumbled
together and they affected me mightily. By the time I was 15, I was eagerly devouring
all types of music and all types of sounds. And then this happened:
Seeing
the Wolf on that episode of Shindig in 1965 launched me into playing the harmonica
seriously and pursuing the blues wherever I could and however I could. I
couldn’t afford to buy a lot of records, but the main branch of the
Philadelphia Free Library was there and it was my first blues feeding ground. The
Best of Muddy Waters; the multi-volume Alan Lomax Southern Folk
Heritage Series with blues, country music, gospel, string bands, and
more; Leadbelly records, Bukka White: all of these and a lot more were there
for me to listen to for free in the library's music room. Also at the library I found
the book Blues Harp, by Tony Glover of the folk blues trio
Koerner, Ray and Glover. That book explained positions, taught me how to bend
notes, and more. The Central High Folk Music Club had concerts at that time, including ones that featured
blues guitarists/singers such as Mississippi John Hurt, Skip James, and Son House. Through
that club I got to actually meet many of the musicians and Dick Waterman, who
managed them along with Buddy Guy, and Junior Wells. It was an incredibly magical time for
me, and my path was just being set out before me. All I had to do was follow.
So from my church, my radio at home, the
public library, and those wonderful high school experiences I was
steadily learning and absorbing
a ton of great music. And best of all, I was also in the right place for
all of
this and at just the right time. For the Philly folk and rock music
scene of the
mid and late 1960’s was booming, and I was spending a lot of time at its
epicenter-downtown Philadelphia in the neighborhood of good old
Rittenhouse Square. (to be
continued…)
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