Rhapsody In Blue

Priscilla Sue Wood, 1967

The title of this blog is “Memoirs of the Brain Damaged” and is based on the title of a 1965 book by Oscar Levant called “Memoirs of an Amnesiac,” which I thought was a very funny and appropriate title for my posts. I had seen Levant on Jack Paar’s Tonight Show, which he had taken over after Steve Allen had created NBC’s late night talk show. Actually, at that time I only got to watch the late night shows during the summer, or whenever I had no school the next day, because I usually had to be in bed by ten. But when I was in the 7th grade Jack Paar left the Tonight Show because of its grueling schedule – at that time it was on 105 minutes (1 3/4 hours), five nights each week – for a weekly Friday prime-time hour at 9pm (Central time). There I got to see him with guests like Levant, Jonathan Winters, Bill Cospy, Woody Allen, Cliff Arquette (Charlie Weaver), and many other.

What I wanted to write today is about my first girlfriend Priscilla Sue Wood. We met just before my junior year in school, where we were both in the band at South Garland High School. She was a sophomore who played flute and she had an older sister, Winifred, who played piano. A year and a half earlier, spring of 1964, Winifred had performed at a band concert in our school playing George Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue. One of the records I had played and loved as a child was Gershwin’s Rhapsody, that my parents owned that was on three sides of two 78rpm records – it is a 15 minute song that had to be split onto three sides. I had purchased a copy of that music and tried to learn how to play it every day for many years from the time I had taken piano lessons in the fourth grade.

I had dated a few times before 1966, but that was before I could drive and my parents had to take us wherever my “date” and I wanted to go, so that had only happened two or three times. By the time I met Prissy I had my drivers license and we could do what we wanted. I was even allowed to drive our 1959 Chevy Impala (the family’s first automobile to come with air-conditioning!). We dated throughout my junior year and then I got the opportunity to attend a summer seminar st SMU called the John Von Neumann Mathematics Seminar for Secondary Students, sponsored by the National Science Foundation. It was a six week long program that required us to live on campus, so Prissy and I drifted apart. We had pretty much started breaking up even before that, but being gone through all of June and half of July put the end to our relationship.

A year later I went to college at SMU, but left after just one semester to go to East Texas State University in Commerce. Like her sister, she probably went to SMU – their mother worked there and so they got much reduced tuition. I never saw her again or even spoke to her. I did hear a few things, mostly from my mother who would tell me about her being mentioned in the newspaper. Prissy married someone who shared her musical skills and they worked with Fred Waring’s Philadelphians and at Burt Reynolds’ dinner theatre in Jupiter, Florida. Her husband died young, but I have no way now of finding Prissy – I don’t even know what her late husband’s name was.

I am hoping someone who reads this blog may know how I can get in touch with her, or can suggest how I might find her.

My life as a musician

I grew up surrounded by music. My parents bought a piano before I was born. My mother was a very accomplished singer. When I was about five my father bought us a Wurlitzer 1015 jukebox so that my sister and I could play their records – extremely fragile 78 rpm disks at that time – without destroying them all. We had all of the pop hits of that time, from Elvis to Ricky Nelson to Rosemary Clooney (George Clooney’s aunt). We played that juke box constantly until there came a time when we could no longer find 78 rpm records in the early 1960s.

When I was in the fourth grade my mother arranged for me to take piano lessons from a neighbor.  Mom payed for the lessons by making draperies for her. At the end of the fourth grade we went to a program at Memorial Junior High where I would be attending in a couple of years to try out for band. It wasn’t really a tryout because they took everyone who wanted to join, but they did give us some kind of test meant to see if we had any musical talent. I had my heart set on playing the trumpet because I was a fan of Louis Armstrong, Harry James and Al Hirt. But the band director told us I did not have enough talent to play an instrument with only three valves and suggested I play the clarinet, which had dozens of keys. Then I asked about maybe playing the tenor saxophone, and he said I would need to wait until I got to junior high, where they had a tenor sax for that purpose, and my parents should buy me a clarinet where I would learn the same fingering skills and could easily move to the sax at that time.

So all the plans were in place for my future as a sax man and after the sixth grade I took saxophone lessons from Mr Moore, who would be my band director at Memorial. Then, just a couple of weeks before I started the seventh grade, Mr Moore told me that a new 7th-grade student had just moved into Garland who not only played tenor sax, but he also owned his own sax. The band did not need two tenor saxes, but they did need another bass clarinet and I should play that. So I did.

For four years I played bass clarinet in the band, but I continued to use the school’s tenor sax, so that if I got the chance I could step in and be the sax man. When I got to high school, I found that in addition to the marching band and the concert band, they had a “stage” band, a smaller group that played jazz band music from the 40’s. The stage band was made up of trumpets, trombones, an upright bass, a drum set and five saxophones – two altos, two tenors and a baritone! I tried out to play tenor and actually qualified for lead tenor, ahead of the student who played tenor all year round in the concert band. Jon Reed, normally a clarinet player, played lead alto, Arnie Burke played second alto, I played lead tenor, Mike Tomlinson played second tenor and John Meppen played baritone clarinet. I played lead tenor in the jazz band for three years, all through high school. After my sophomore year on bass clarinet, all of our tuba players graduated, and so our band director Mel Barto drafted several of us, including me, to play tuba, which I did during my final two years at South Garland High School.

I must also mention that for Christmas of 1962, I got a guitar. It took me a couple of years to get started with that, but I eventually did and learned most of the chords necessary to play it somewhat. I have already posted here about my experience playing guitar with Los Caballeros de Canción, but I also played with classmates at South Garland, where we did mostly folk and pop songs, like If I Had a Hammer and Greenback Dollar.

I never played in the band after high school, gut I did play guitar and Fender bass for many years. For a few years I also owned a string bass, that Jean bought for me for Christmas one year, but we sold that during a time when I was out of work and needed money to pay bills.

Truth is, I was never really very good as a musician. That music director who told me not to play the trumpet when I was in the fourth grade was correct. But I love playing, and only stopped when my shoulders got so painful from arthritis that I could no longer play guitar. But that’s okay. I can still play the radio and play a lot of music on my tablet and cellphone, and I am thrilled to play that, especially when I go out to walk.

I would certainly recommend that every child join the band in school. Most of the friends I still have from my school years are the ones I got to know in the band.

Los Caballeros de Canción

Dwight, Don, Paul, Ronnie, Jens, Ed, Jim and me

In the mid 1960s Herb Alpert created a hit song The Lonely Bull and built a band called The Tijuana Brass for live performances. This became very popular, especially with school band members because the music did not feature any singers – just musicians. My high school band director Mel Barto purchased a music book by A&M Records made up of several dozen songs recorded by Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass. Mr Barto’s intention was to use this TJB cover band as part of the full band’s recruitment tours at elementary and junior high schools in Garland.

There were a number of South Garland High School’s band members who made up the cover band over the years but the beginning included Trumpet players Dwight Riley and Ronnie England, Trombonists Don Rawls and Ed Woods, Jens Stubblefield on bass – both stand-up and electric, me on guitar and piano, Paul Bond on marimba and vibraphone, and drummers Richard Rasominski, Jim Struve and Steve Brown – Steve was the only member of the group who was not in the band. The first thing we needed was a name. At home I had a Spanish/English dictionary which I used to create a name for the group. Looking through the dictionary I liked the phrase “the gentlemen of song” so I looked that up and came up with Los Caballeros de Canción. Some years later I was told that the correct translation of what I had used was actually Los Señores de la Canción, but by then the name I had created was established so there was no need to make any changes.

Dwight and Ronnie started looking for places we could play beyond the band appearances, so they got us gigs at our high school football team’s victory rallies and private parties at country clubs like the Dallas Country Club. We also got hired by El Chico Cafe at Medallion Center on Northwest Highway, between Abrams Rd and Skillman St., playing two nights a week and getting “paid” with dinner and all the tips we could gather in the sombrero we placed in front of us on the floor. We also played at a high school prom at L. D. Bell in the Hurst-Euless-Bedford Independent School District.

At one of our rehearsals Dwight and Ronnie told us about having gone to see the Dallas Tornado Soccer team and mentioned that the team had two “half times” with nothing happening and that we should find out if we could provide that entertainment. I told them that Lamar Hunt, who owned the Tornado, was listed in the Dallas telephone directory (I used to spend a lot of my spare time doing things like reading phone books and yellow pages). Lamar Hunt was the man who helped create the American Football League (AFL) after he had applied for a National Football League (NFL) expansion franchise for Dallas but was turned down. So right then, on a Saturday afternoon, Dwight picked up the phone and called Lamar Hunt, who actually answered! After Dwight explained who he was and why he was calling, Mr Hunt asked Dwight to call an associate to arrange an audition. A few weeks later we all drive out to Bronco Bowl in Oak Cliff to audition, and were told that having us play at Tornado games was a good idea.

We played for the Tornado at least a dozen times at Arlington Stadium, the Cotton Bowl, P C Cobb Stadium and Franklin Stadium (in north Dallas). We also played several time as a result of those appearances, including at parties at H L Hunt’s mansion, Bronco Bowl and several other places.

In 1968 and again in 1969 the Caballeros were able to attend and perform at the annual Spanish Club conventions in Austin, Texas. Getting to make a road trip to Austin was a highlight of our activities. We also did a couple of concerts in South Garland’s auditorium, one of which was to raise contributions for Danny Gray, a classmate of ours who was killed in a car wreck May 11, 1968.

Overall we made a little bit of money playing several times each month for about four years. Most of the money we made was spent on equipment we needed for the Caballeros. When Richard was our drummer he used his own drums, but when he was replaced by Jim, we needed to purchase a trap set. We also needed to purchase an electric bass guitar for Jens because we would not always be able to use the schools string bass. Even with so many members in LCDC, we could still clear several hundred dollars a year, each. But for most of us, that was not the point. We enjoyed the playing and the experience so much that money was never an issue.

I have a Facebook group page about Los Caballeros de Cansión where you can find more photos and comments by fans and members of LCDC.