Part 1
It all started in the late 1960s when I looked to my left during my first day of High School band rehearsal. There was a girl playing the large kettle drums. “She is very good” I thought to myself as she made acrobatic maneuvers with those long pedals. I don’t think I even knew what those large drums were really called. The most exotic thing I had ever seen in the band room was an authentic Chinese tom-tom complete with animal skins that were tacked on to this bright red wooden shell; interesting sound, but not really cool to a kid in the 60s. If it wasn’t Ludwig or Slingerland, it just wasn’t any good. Ludwig was the brand to have because that is what Ringo Starr played. Slingerland perhaps. Gretch was third inline; they made good guitars, but drums?
Turns out those large kettle drums were your stock Slingerland post and clutch model timpani, just in case you were wondering. I clearly remember seeing her (the girl) put her ear down close to the head a few times, sometimes even during a piece. It was certainly curious, but I figured there must be a reason. Never thought too much about it. I later came to find out that she was chosen to play in the McDonald’s All-American Marching Band, a great accolade at that time that you had to earn. I think that was my first cognizant moment moment of understanding that there could be some kind of “reward” for playing this kind of music.
Being a teen in the 1960s, my head was into rock-n-roll, and any dreams of being a musician certainly didn’t follow this style of music. I was simply in the Concert Band because I had always participated in the band program. Ever since that day when they came to my classroom in 5th grade and auditioned us for instruments, I have followed where the music takes me. It just wasn’t necessarily that music, but playing music was something that I enjoyed and was really pretty good at. I do remember all of the “battle field promotions” we had regularly where, in concert band sectionals, our Band Director Larry Romiser would hand us music that we hadn’t ever seen and ask us play it to test us for which chair we would sit. You didn’t have to, but it was kind of unspoken that if you didn’t, you would always sit last chair; a place I didn’t want to be. Romiser made it clear that there was work to be done in this class, and initially, there were a lot of chairs. I think he did that to cull the herd. Usually after a few weeks there were only a few of us left each year.
My first real instrumental audition was in the 8th grade during an active battle field promotions when Tony Criss what butchering the snare part to a piece called Citadel. Tony was the no. 1 drummer in the band, but it was at that time in our young lives where the social scene becomes a powerful force in your life. Tony was spending more time socializing than practicing. The band was falling apart. Romiser stops the band and asks to hear the part. Tony is all over the place. Romiser says, “Jones, let’s hear you play it.” I really don’t know what transpired after that, but I do remember looking at that long group of 8ths and 16ths as they repeated over and over again, and so I just started laying it down. All of a sudden I’m hearing the music of the band in playing my head. When I stopped playing, Romiser said “Good, you’re first chair,” and that was that. I had made it to the top my my section. The other musicians made sounds of approval, which pleased me. Tony was actually cool about it and I earned some musician respect that day. It felt kind of good. Lesson Learned: Challenges come your way whether you want them or not. Face them if you want to move ahead in life.
From then on, I pretty much just played batterie percussion, snare drum mostly, and then drum-set once the senior who held that position graduated. I never touched mallets or timpani. I occasionally was conscripted to play in the local area orchestra and the local summer concert band, but only snare drum. I remember one summer we played an arrangement of the Waltz from Eugene Onegin by Tchaikovsky. I think that was the first time I had ever experienced playing any music with so much hemiola. I had no idea what it was called, but it was fun. It was quite an enjoyable experience that has remained with me to this day. Remember that girl that played timpani, she was also a very fine mallet player and piano player. She played in the summer band as well. She always got all of the hard timpani and mallet parts. Even though she was a very nice girl, I found her to be a bit intimidating because she was so good. She also played snare well, but since she was so good at timpani and mallets, she always took those parts. I couldn’t hold a candle to her playing. I was offered multiple opportunities to expand my horizons in the rest of the percussion world, but I never warmed up to anything else in the section. Instead, my experience with melody and harmony came in the form of a guitar.
About the same time as I started playing drums, I also started playing the guitar. The older neighbor boy Dave Creswell (a somewhat naughty PK) taught me the chords to House of the Rising Sun, Gloria, the riff and what we thought were the dirty lyrics to Louie Louie. I was hooked on guitar. Drums/drum set was just something that I would play in band, and in various rock-n-roll situations. My heart and soul were owned by the pop music of the 60s. It just made more sense to me than did all of that stuff we played in Concert Band. Interesting music?….maybe, maybe not. At that time, I truly hated the Bach chorales that Romiser made the band play for warmups. Not much fun for a drummer. I also did not care too much for Marching Band, which was unusual for a drummer. That disinterest actually created opportunities once in college; more on that later.
During those years there were numerous basement bands, garage bands (the real thing) and some dance gigs here and there where I made a few bucks. No real serious study of music though, in fact, there was no real serious study of anything in school. Just working to make some money, hanging out and existing was good enough for me. However, this was the middle and late 1960s and there was a controversial war going. Eventually I had to face reality (as we used to say), but not now. Just too much good music to listen to. On the positive side, I did learn some basic musicianship skills along the way from experiencing various styles of music, including Country and Western music, so the 60s weren’t a complete waste.
It was 1971 all of a sudden and I was in my senior year of high school. Time to pay the piper, but whose was it going to be? The draft was still active and my number was 222. I felt pretty safe that I wouldn’t be drafted, but I was encouraged by my Mother to enroll in college and get a college deferment, just in case. Something I was not ever planning on doing. However, boys were going over there and not coming back, so it seemed like the safest option. It certainly wasn’t a war that I supported.
During the summer after graduation, I was able to get into college at the University of Nebraska. Still don’t know how. College prep courses were not my thing so I mostly avoided them. This was certainly going to be a new experience. One for which I was not ready, nor prepared. A high achieving academic student I was not. However, I did have a strong work ethic. As a way to make some money, I always had jobs in the hotel/restaurant business, which taught me the hierarchical nature of things, and how to work under pressure.
By the end of high school, I was prepping for Chef Lalanne and his wife Annie at a local hotel restaurant. The Lalannes were well known “regional” chefs that had had a well established restaurant in my town for many years. They were past retirement age, but continued to work because they enjoyed it. They just didn’t want to run a business anymore. The restaurant was lucky to have them. It was an experience that at the time I considered to be very hard work, but excellent training that I am now grateful. Needless to say, I always ate well, and learned my way around a professional kitchen. Cullinary Arts was not in vogue at that time, at least in my part of the world, but I knew that I always could find work if I needed it. Chef Lalanne and Annie always encouraged me to consider “food” as a career option, probably because they had spent so much time training me. Annie was a real sweetheart (much like Julia Child) who took me under her wing, but Chef Lalanne, well, he was quite a, stern, authoritative figure who had spent many years perfecting his art. It was his way or the highway, not unlike some Maestros I have known. They were both quite old and at the end of their careers at that time, but they were still able to model both passion, and discipline for their art, which was preparing fine food and a fine dinning experience. My work them was very much like an old-world apprenticeship. Lesson Learned: True love for your art moves a person beyond just working for a living. It feeds your soul.
anecdote: While working in the hotel restaurant one summer, we had a hotel General Manager probably in his late 20s early 30s who had little respect for the restaurant staff, other than the Lalannes. We were thought of as non-essential support staff to him. The live music in the lounge that summer was a country western band called Yvonne Jones and Her Country Escorts (no relationship). Well it just so happened that one of Yvonne’s country escorts was called away to National Guard Duty for a weekend. It was her drummer. Somehow they contacted the local band director Larry Romiser (who was an accomplished dance musician-there was no such thing a Musician’s Union in my town) and he referred me for the gig. You should have seen the look on that manager’s face when he spotted me playing drum set in the band. He never seemed to be able to figure out how that happened, but he treated me much better after that. The gig was pretty easy except when they tested me with Orange Blossom Special. The fiddle player was very good and I couldn’t keep up with him the first night as he continued to increase the tempo. I practiced that silly 2 beat pattern all the next day, and that didn’t happen again. Lesson learned: Musicians like to challenge one another; be prepared to prove yourself.
As that summer ended it was off to college. More lessons to be learned.
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