Adolescence
Monterey Jazz Festival Poster-1962
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Having moved to Modesto, CA, I decided after my freshman year in high school that I didn’t have the discipline to continue classical lessons. Several of my friends and I would listen to records by Dave Brubeck, Miles Davis, and others that developed into a life-long engagement with jazz. The parents of one of my fellow jazz aficiandos, John Trimbur, took us to the Monterey Jazz Festival each year during high school, where we saw the likes of Duke Ellington, Miles Davis, Louis Armstrong, Dizzy Gillespie, Thelonious Monk, Lambert, Hendricks & Ross, Carmen McRae, Jimmy Witherspoon, Jerry Mulligan, Lou Rawls and many more. I have vivid memories of those Festival trips and the mystical Monterey Fairgrounds setting where the festival was held. I was hooked!
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Rock and Roll! The Del Phis and The Continentals
Having given up classical, I started to figure out blues and related rock-and-roll songs. My life-long friend, Ken Zeff, who played tenor sax, got me involved in a rock-and-roll band called the Del - Phis. I remember playing everything in the keys of either E or A since that’s what was easiest for the guitar player. I recall playing for a party sponsored by a club called The Pharaohs that turned into a drunken brawl. We were “directed” to play louder as punches flew on the dance floor. The Pharaohs were not known for restraint.
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We then were led by another life-long friend, Mike Durr, into a new high school rock-and-roll group – The Continentals. We played for school dances and in area clubs. One of our steady gigs was to drive from Modesto to Merced on Saturday nights and play at Castle Air Force Base, where they bused in girls for the military guys. The photo of us at one of these gigs shows me on the far right, Mike to my right on lead guitar, Ken on the far left on tenor saxophone, to his left Pat Durr (Mike’s younger brother) on bass guitar, and in the center our drummer, Jimmy Carlson. Jimmy was 21 years old and married. We were in awe of someone that old and experienced in life.
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The group got together again in 2016 for a celebration of our 70th birthdays. Frank Denny, a life-long friend and my next door neighbor during high school in Modesto, hosted the event at his party-friendly home. From left to right are Frank, Pat Durr, me, Mike Durr, and Ken Zeff.
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Pianists had it rough in those days trying to compete with electric guitars and over-zealous drummers. At best we had primitive contact mikes that were placed on the piano sound board and plugged into an amp. Even with that, it was still pretty hopeless to be heard. I purchased an amplified instrument called a Solovox that had a two-three octave range for single note playing. It was the early version of a synthesizer (with tubes!), but it was still hopeless to be heard over guitar amps and drums. Eventually, I grew bored with the limited harmonic aspects of rock-and-roll and decided to learn more about jazz.
Learning to Improvise
During my junior year in high school, I took lessons from a Modesto cocktail club pianist, Tommy Golindo. I had figured out on my own how to play simple chord structures but was still in the dark about how to improvise more broadly. Tommy taught me how to build chords from all the scales I had practiced over the years. The first tune I learned to play that way was the George Gershwin classic, Our Love Is Here to Stay. He showed me a “fake book” with charts for an endless list of songs with each one showing a series of progressions of the chords underlying the melodic structure. It was eye opening! After that, I bought versions of fake books over the years and began to learn a wide range of tunes from old standards to jazz. I recall that in the old days the jazz fake books (e.g., The Real Book shown here) were technically illegal and often were stored behind the counter.
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Singing
In addition to piano and a short stint on clarinet, I enjoyed chorus in high school and eventually got on stage to perform the song “Gee Officer Krupke” from West Side Story. I’m not too sure that very many of my student friends paid the $.50 admission fee to get in.