OK, the lasts two Posts on religions and gods and ultimate realities should keep your head swirling in that department for awhile. So let’s shift gears with a story about how I got into music. I was born in Gainesville, Florida, and grew up in Pensacola in the 50’s and 60’s. This is the last city of any size in the Florida Panhandle before you head west on I-10 into Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, and East Texas. This part of the South is thick with music blended from a variety of cultures.
Ironically, I was the only one of four kids who wasn’t forced to learn music. I have no idea why my parents did that. I just remember watching my siblings agonize through piano lessons as I darted outside to play Frisbee with the neighborhood dogs. On the other hand, I was fascinated listening to our domestic help, Gracie Smith and Frances Watkins, who sang gospel music as they mopped floors, ironed clothes, and fried chicken in our middle class home. (Everyone had black maids in the South back then--even other black folks).
The sweet stylings of Gracie and Frances must have unconsciously seeped into my mind, because I found myself suddenly wanting to join the church choir. I actually made the cut at age eight...that was 1963. Of course these were segregated times, but amidst the racism there must have been an unspoken respect for the black culture. I know this because one day the choir director in our all-white church decided the children's choir was going to learn an old Negro spiritual, “Let My People Go.” As The Fates would have it, she picked me to sing the lead. So at age nine I was learning to sing “field holler” musical scales, that is, the pentatonic scale of both the black gospel church and the devilish roadhouse music of Ray Charles. It definitely lit a fire.
I got an acoustic guitar for Christmas at age twelve, an $18 thing from Sears with fake curly maple spray-painted on the front and strings so massive I could barely push them down hard enough to form a chord. But I loved my axe and learned tunes by The Monkees and The Association. In 1969, at age fourteen, I got an electric guitar and an 8-watt amp for Christmas— also from Sears—and soon formed my own band that tried in vain to play Cream and Johnny Winter tunes.
By age sixteen I was playing guitar in the stage band at my unusual high school, Pensacola School of Liberal Arts. Now this was quite a band: two drummers, an electric rhythm section (guitar, bass, keys), lots of horns, and featured singers. My fabulous girlfriend Beth was a singer and keyboardist in the band, which played popular rock and jazz tunes.
Occasionally, Mr. Holston, the bandleader who played trumpet and sax, would let the horns take a break and feature the rhythm section. That was my first experience at fronting a band to “big” audiences. We did tours of other schools in the surrounding small towns of the Panhandle, performing at student assemblies. It seemed like we were always getting excused from class to go play somewhere in the middle of the day.
There was a reason why music was a big deal at my school. Mr. Holston was not only the bandleader but the school principal. He had been bandleader at another high school a decade earlier, and that band was good enough to be chosen to perform at John F. Kennedy’s presidential inauguration. Apparently being a bandleader was not enough for Mr. Holston, so he started his own liberal arts high school so he could carry on education the way he envisioned it.
I remember he used to hire local rock and jazz bands to play for the student body right in the middle of a school day. The school was housed in a hundred-year-old nursing hospital that looked like an old stone castle, five stories high. The fledgling K-12 student body couldn’t possibly fill it, so there were all these empty rooms that Mr. Holston would allow kids use to rehearse their own bands. One band rehearsed in the old hospital’s morgue...music, music, music everywhere at Liberal Arts.
Not only did the stage band play concerts for other schools. Mr. Holston built a flatbed trailer with a generator that became our rolling stage. At football games all the kids in band would push that thing out to the fifty yard-line at halftime, climb up on it, crank up the gasoline-fired generator, and entertain the crowd with everything from Three Dog Night, Carole King, and Louis Armstrong to The Allman Brothers, Johnny Rivers, and Dr. John.
The Liberal Arts stage band played all the time, everywhere. We did Mardi Gras parades in Pensacola and Mobile, Alabama, which most people do not realize was the birthplace of Mardi Gras in the late 1600’s before it moved to New Orleans. We always decorated our utilitarian flatbed trailer as best we could, and I’ll never forget cruising down Dauphine Street in Mobile and Palafox Street in Pensacola, playing swing and funk and pop tunes to dancing crowds in the streets.
The musical Camelot of the Deep South was about two and a half hours west of Pensacola—if you hauled ass in your dad’s muscle car...I’m talking about New Orleans of course, where I later lived for a time. In high school we would ditch after homeroom, pile into a car, and fly down Highway 90, leaving Florida behind to pass through Alabama and Mississippi, crossing the border into hallowed Louisiana, finally pulling into the French Quarter at about 10:00 am.
By this time in the morning the streets had been hosed down and the bars were being restocked for yet another 24-hour day of partying and live music of all kinds. We would first check out the local music and record stores (which were full of obscure local labels and bands by the way). Around noon, we would then sneak into whichever early-opening clubs we could. (Underage drinking was pretty loose back then). We would raise a little hell and be back in Pensacola for after-school band practice, always a little late.
Even at age seventeen, I think some part of me actually realized what an important musical culture dish I was percolating in. It even managed to bleed through the haze induced by the Colt 45 Malt Liquor or Red Dagger wine I was drinking at the time. To me New Orleans was another world, far from the strict Southern conservatism of my parents and hometown, which actually had pretty damn good music too, especially at the black spots on the AM radio dial.
I dug New Orleans so much that I talked my folks into letting me attend college there. I got accepted at Loyola University, and promised Dad I would major in business and take all the required classes. Well, that promise lasted less than a semester.
Continued in the next POST...
Here's a sample of my music, a feel-good shuffle inspired by the Stax Records/Memphis School of Groove : Cold Women With Warm Hearts
Ironically, I was the only one of four kids who wasn’t forced to learn music. I have no idea why my parents did that. I just remember watching my siblings agonize through piano lessons as I darted outside to play Frisbee with the neighborhood dogs. On the other hand, I was fascinated listening to our domestic help, Gracie Smith and Frances Watkins, who sang gospel music as they mopped floors, ironed clothes, and fried chicken in our middle class home. (Everyone had black maids in the South back then--even other black folks).
The sweet stylings of Gracie and Frances must have unconsciously seeped into my mind, because I found myself suddenly wanting to join the church choir. I actually made the cut at age eight...that was 1963. Of course these were segregated times, but amidst the racism there must have been an unspoken respect for the black culture. I know this because one day the choir director in our all-white church decided the children's choir was going to learn an old Negro spiritual, “Let My People Go.” As The Fates would have it, she picked me to sing the lead. So at age nine I was learning to sing “field holler” musical scales, that is, the pentatonic scale of both the black gospel church and the devilish roadhouse music of Ray Charles. It definitely lit a fire.
I got an acoustic guitar for Christmas at age twelve, an $18 thing from Sears with fake curly maple spray-painted on the front and strings so massive I could barely push them down hard enough to form a chord. But I loved my axe and learned tunes by The Monkees and The Association. In 1969, at age fourteen, I got an electric guitar and an 8-watt amp for Christmas— also from Sears—and soon formed my own band that tried in vain to play Cream and Johnny Winter tunes.
By age sixteen I was playing guitar in the stage band at my unusual high school, Pensacola School of Liberal Arts. Now this was quite a band: two drummers, an electric rhythm section (guitar, bass, keys), lots of horns, and featured singers. My fabulous girlfriend Beth was a singer and keyboardist in the band, which played popular rock and jazz tunes.
Occasionally, Mr. Holston, the bandleader who played trumpet and sax, would let the horns take a break and feature the rhythm section. That was my first experience at fronting a band to “big” audiences. We did tours of other schools in the surrounding small towns of the Panhandle, performing at student assemblies. It seemed like we were always getting excused from class to go play somewhere in the middle of the day.
There was a reason why music was a big deal at my school. Mr. Holston was not only the bandleader but the school principal. He had been bandleader at another high school a decade earlier, and that band was good enough to be chosen to perform at John F. Kennedy’s presidential inauguration. Apparently being a bandleader was not enough for Mr. Holston, so he started his own liberal arts high school so he could carry on education the way he envisioned it.
Not only did the stage band play concerts for other schools. Mr. Holston built a flatbed trailer with a generator that became our rolling stage. At football games all the kids in band would push that thing out to the fifty yard-line at halftime, climb up on it, crank up the gasoline-fired generator, and entertain the crowd with everything from Three Dog Night, Carole King, and Louis Armstrong to The Allman Brothers, Johnny Rivers, and Dr. John.
The Liberal Arts stage band played all the time, everywhere. We did Mardi Gras parades in Pensacola and Mobile, Alabama, which most people do not realize was the birthplace of Mardi Gras in the late 1600’s before it moved to New Orleans. We always decorated our utilitarian flatbed trailer as best we could, and I’ll never forget cruising down Dauphine Street in Mobile and Palafox Street in Pensacola, playing swing and funk and pop tunes to dancing crowds in the streets.
The musical Camelot of the Deep South was about two and a half hours west of Pensacola—if you hauled ass in your dad’s muscle car...I’m talking about New Orleans of course, where I later lived for a time. In high school we would ditch after homeroom, pile into a car, and fly down Highway 90, leaving Florida behind to pass through Alabama and Mississippi, crossing the border into hallowed Louisiana, finally pulling into the French Quarter at about 10:00 am.
By this time in the morning the streets had been hosed down and the bars were being restocked for yet another 24-hour day of partying and live music of all kinds. We would first check out the local music and record stores (which were full of obscure local labels and bands by the way). Around noon, we would then sneak into whichever early-opening clubs we could. (Underage drinking was pretty loose back then). We would raise a little hell and be back in Pensacola for after-school band practice, always a little late.
Even at age seventeen, I think some part of me actually realized what an important musical culture dish I was percolating in. It even managed to bleed through the haze induced by the Colt 45 Malt Liquor or Red Dagger wine I was drinking at the time. To me New Orleans was another world, far from the strict Southern conservatism of my parents and hometown, which actually had pretty damn good music too, especially at the black spots on the AM radio dial.
I dug New Orleans so much that I talked my folks into letting me attend college there. I got accepted at Loyola University, and promised Dad I would major in business and take all the required classes. Well, that promise lasted less than a semester.
Continued in the next POST...
Here's a sample of my music, a feel-good shuffle inspired by the Stax Records/Memphis School of Groove : Cold Women With Warm Hearts
Posts
I love looking back in life and seeing how everything leads to something else...it's all connected whether or now we see it.
ReplyDeleteCool stuff...wish I was closer to hear you play!
This historic commentary of Richard "Crawdady" Dance is proof positive on why people in general should document their life. Had he neglected doing this, the interesting facets of his initiation into music would be lost. It also highlights the interactions between black&white music in the southern USA. Ray Charles spoke fondly of his mother introducing him to white country music, as a child and its impact on him. This is a true piece of Americana that shows music crosses all racial lines and lays to rest any notion that it is not a shared history. Bravo!
ReplyDelete