Today is Marian McPartland's 91st Birthday.
I listen to her show Piano Jazz every 9am Saturday morning on WRTI Temple University Jazz out of Philly, and enjoy how she banters and quietly duets with some old classic jazz cats or some new upstart.
Born in England, she married an American jazz musician Jimmy McPartland, came to America and was living and performing in New York when Art Kane was given the assignment of providing the photos for a special Esquire Magazine jazz edition.
Art Kane, (born Arthur Kanofsky), the art director at Seventeen Mazazine and photographer of numerous famous 33 1/3 LP album covers (ie. Duke Ellington's A Train, Dylan, The Rolling Stones, the Who, et. al.), decided not to take photos of the jazz musicians in the clubs while they were playing, but to try to get them all together for a group shot.
He put the word out on the street at all the clubs for the musicians to come to a certain street corner in Harlem, not far from some of the top clubs and near a subway station for others to come from downtown, and they all met there one morning after they had all played their regular gigs into the wee hours.
Somebody had a 8mm film camera going that was used to help create the documentary film A Great Day in Harlem, which the Somers Point Jazz Society recently screened for their premier jazz film series.
Kane can be seen in the film directing the jazz greats up the steps of a nearby brownstone row house, some still carrying their instruments.
Marian, I think is the only, or if not the only, one of only a few women in the photo, and is featured as a talking head in the documentary, explaining how her husband, after playing all night at some club, went to bed, while she went over to see what the photo shoot was all about. She made the picture and he didn't.
In any case, Art Kane got the photo, and Esquire published it (January 1959), posters were made of it, and it is now one of the most popular photos of all time, sparking the Academy Award nominated documentary that I don't think actually won the award, though it mgiht have.
I mention all this because Art Kane lived in Cape May near the end of his life, having started a photography school that was housed in the building that used to be Rev. Carl MacIntyre's Shelton college, behind the Christian Admiral, before they tore that down.
When I realized that Art Kane was in Cape May and he's the guy who took the famous photo, as well as dozens of other famous jazz picures, I went looking for him to get an interview and write a feature story.
I had also heard he was part of the "Ghost Army" during World War II, which engaged photographers, film makers and magicians to try to fool the Germans as to Allied intentions before D-Day.
Since I lived at Cape May Point at the time, I didn't have to look far for him, but I kept missing him, as he was always out of town when I went calling to his school or apartment.
Then he committed suicide, shooting himself on the front lawn of his ex-wife's home, which really put a dent in my story idea.
Although I had never met the man, I went up to New York to his funeral, and was one of a few hundred people who attended a service for him at the school he attended in the East Village, which was conviently near one of my favorite pubs of all time, McSorley's Ale House.
I tape recorded some of the eulogies people delivered, including one by a guy who said he wrote a book about the travels of the soul after death, and other such stories. Art Kane was an interesting guy, with a lot of interesting friends, and I'm sorry that we lived in the same small town and never met each other.
But his photos and the Great Day in Harlem photo survive him. When the documentary film came out (1994) a few years after Kane's death, I got a video tape of it and gave it to Carol Stone and Woody, who really appreciated it.
And I caught Marian McPartland when she performed at the Ocean City Music Pier a few summers later, and went out of my way to shake her hand, but didn't get to ask her any questions or talk to her.
But I listen to her show every Saturday morning with the hope that she will talk about Art Kane and the photo, but so far, after years of listening, she hasn't even mentioned it.
I'm sure that she's probably done an entire show about it, but I'll have to go back through her on line archives to find it, and just might do that.
And then there's that corney Steven Spielberg movie The Terminal with Tom Hanks, about a guy from Europe who is stranded at Kennedy airport in New York for years, and takes up residence there, originally coming to America to complete his dead father's collection of autographs of all the musicians in the jazz photo.
In the meantime, I'll continue to listen to her show, which has already featured a few people I know, including Carlton Drinkard's protege, John Coliani, a former Margate guy who plays once a week with legendary guitarist Les Paul. Maybe one day they'll talk about Art Kane and his photo, or repeat the show that they did talk about it.
God Bless Art Kane.
Happy Birthday Marian!
Friday, March 20, 2009
Monday, March 16, 2009
St. Patrick's Day 2009
St. Patrick's Day 2009
Ah, yes, here we are, St. Patrick's Day Two Thousand and nine, with the bust of the Celtic Tiger Bubble, the renewal of bombings and assassinations in the north, and the beginnings of the demise of Western Civilization, at least as Yeats knew it.
My plan is not too much different as last year, when I donned my father's white Donnegal cardigan sweater and head out to visit a few friends in Somers Point or Williamstown, where Brian O'Keeney has the Libary IV on the Black Horse Pike, and where they behave like its St. Patrick's Day all the time.
Last year Sean Fleming came in late and played, just as he has on many other fine occassions, and I reminicesed about Sean's interesting career in one of my first blogs one year ago.
One St. Paddy's Day a few yeras ago I stopped in at Brian's Library on my home from somewhere, and the place was really hoppin, with live music in two different rooms, including an outdoor tent. Brian called me over and introduced me to some friends and customers, and one guy said, "Bill Kelly!, the mythological character I've heard about, as every time Brian starts a great story it usually begins with "When Kelly and I were..."
"Are they all true?" he wanted to know.
Of course, I hadn't heard Brian's side of the story, but on quick reflection, I would have to venture that they were true and that he would not have to exagerate.
In that regard I decided to write down some of Bill and Brian's Great Adventure(s) in another post.
I'm also writing articles on the Irish Pubs of Browns Mills and the Irish Pubs of New York, Boston and Washington D.C., as I get around to them.
As for Ireland, they never used to celebrate St. Patrick's Day, except as a holy day you went to mass and then had a big breakfast, but today, they really know how to party.
Drunken mayhem mars St. Patrick's in Ireland
By SHAWN POGATCHNIK –
DUBLIN (AP) — Cars torched, firefighters attacked, police bombarded
and neighbors terrified: It was another fine St.. Patrick's Day in
Ireland, where inebriated mobs annually turn districts of Dublin and
Belfast into a nightmare.Authorities were counting the cost Wednesday from trouble associated with dusk-to-dawn drinking on Ireland's national holiday.
Police in the Republic of Ireland said they were still adding up the number of
public-order arrests from Tuesday's festivities but said the total
would easily exceed 200, typical for recent years. Police in
Northern Ireland clashed with some of the British territory's most
privileged youth — hundreds of students at Queen's University, the
major college in Belfast — in what authorities called the worst public
drinking-related confrontation of any recent St. Patrick's Day.Nineteen
teenagers and 20-somethings, mostly Queen's students, were arrested
during several hours of clashes with riot police.. Belfast police
Superintendent Chris Noble said most were still sobering up Wednesday
in their cells, while five were arraigned in court on charges of
riotous behavior.Noble said police expected to arrest more students in coming days after analyzing their surveillance TV footage.
"We will not abandon an area to drunken thugs," he said.Officers
of the Police Service of Northern Ireland donned full riot gear,
including flame-retardant suits, to drive about 1,000 students back
into their rented red-brick homes in a neighborhood called the Holy
Land directly beside Queen's University.The area — so named
because it has streets named Jerusalem, Damascus and Cairo — has
suffered St. Patrick's riots for several years running, but older
residents and politicians agreed this year's was by far the worst.Leaders
from the British Protestant and Irish Catholic sides of Northern
Ireland's power-sharing government demanded that Queen's expel students
at the center of the trouble. Until now university authorities have
issued warnings or fines to students only.
"I toured the area myself last night and was absolutely disgusted. The place was like a war zone. It was an atmosphere of intimidation and mayhem," said
Protestant politician Reg Empey, minister for higher education in the
power-sharing government.
The Irish Republic's police commander, Commissioner Fachtna Murphy, said it suffered one of its most dangerous holiday periods on the roads amid increased levels of drunken driving. He said since Friday police had arrested 346 suspected drunk drivers and 72 for dangerous driving, while eight people died in crashes, compared
to three in the same period last year.
The Dublin Fire Brigade said its officers were pelted with stones, cans and bottles in several public housing projects overnight as they dealt with 46 fires, mostly
smashed-up cars that had been set ablaze.Ambulance crews dealing with more than 200 emergency calls — including a dozen stabbings involving knives or broken bottles — said they also suffered physical and verbal abuse as they responded to booze-fueled bloodshed.
Ah, yes, here we are, St. Patrick's Day Two Thousand and nine, with the bust of the Celtic Tiger Bubble, the renewal of bombings and assassinations in the north, and the beginnings of the demise of Western Civilization, at least as Yeats knew it.
My plan is not too much different as last year, when I donned my father's white Donnegal cardigan sweater and head out to visit a few friends in Somers Point or Williamstown, where Brian O'Keeney has the Libary IV on the Black Horse Pike, and where they behave like its St. Patrick's Day all the time.
Last year Sean Fleming came in late and played, just as he has on many other fine occassions, and I reminicesed about Sean's interesting career in one of my first blogs one year ago.
One St. Paddy's Day a few yeras ago I stopped in at Brian's Library on my home from somewhere, and the place was really hoppin, with live music in two different rooms, including an outdoor tent. Brian called me over and introduced me to some friends and customers, and one guy said, "Bill Kelly!, the mythological character I've heard about, as every time Brian starts a great story it usually begins with "When Kelly and I were..."
"Are they all true?" he wanted to know.
Of course, I hadn't heard Brian's side of the story, but on quick reflection, I would have to venture that they were true and that he would not have to exagerate.
In that regard I decided to write down some of Bill and Brian's Great Adventure(s) in another post.
I'm also writing articles on the Irish Pubs of Browns Mills and the Irish Pubs of New York, Boston and Washington D.C., as I get around to them.
As for Ireland, they never used to celebrate St. Patrick's Day, except as a holy day you went to mass and then had a big breakfast, but today, they really know how to party.
Drunken mayhem mars St. Patrick's in Ireland
By SHAWN POGATCHNIK –
DUBLIN (AP) — Cars torched, firefighters attacked, police bombarded
and neighbors terrified: It was another fine St.. Patrick's Day in
Ireland, where inebriated mobs annually turn districts of Dublin and
Belfast into a nightmare.Authorities were counting the cost Wednesday from trouble associated with dusk-to-dawn drinking on Ireland's national holiday.
Police in the Republic of Ireland said they were still adding up the number of
public-order arrests from Tuesday's festivities but said the total
would easily exceed 200, typical for recent years. Police in
Northern Ireland clashed with some of the British territory's most
privileged youth — hundreds of students at Queen's University, the
major college in Belfast — in what authorities called the worst public
drinking-related confrontation of any recent St. Patrick's Day.Nineteen
teenagers and 20-somethings, mostly Queen's students, were arrested
during several hours of clashes with riot police.. Belfast police
Superintendent Chris Noble said most were still sobering up Wednesday
in their cells, while five were arraigned in court on charges of
riotous behavior.Noble said police expected to arrest more students in coming days after analyzing their surveillance TV footage.
"We will not abandon an area to drunken thugs," he said.Officers
of the Police Service of Northern Ireland donned full riot gear,
including flame-retardant suits, to drive about 1,000 students back
into their rented red-brick homes in a neighborhood called the Holy
Land directly beside Queen's University.The area — so named
because it has streets named Jerusalem, Damascus and Cairo — has
suffered St. Patrick's riots for several years running, but older
residents and politicians agreed this year's was by far the worst.Leaders
from the British Protestant and Irish Catholic sides of Northern
Ireland's power-sharing government demanded that Queen's expel students
at the center of the trouble. Until now university authorities have
issued warnings or fines to students only.
"I toured the area myself last night and was absolutely disgusted. The place was like a war zone. It was an atmosphere of intimidation and mayhem," said
Protestant politician Reg Empey, minister for higher education in the
power-sharing government.
The Irish Republic's police commander, Commissioner Fachtna Murphy, said it suffered one of its most dangerous holiday periods on the roads amid increased levels of drunken driving. He said since Friday police had arrested 346 suspected drunk drivers and 72 for dangerous driving, while eight people died in crashes, compared
to three in the same period last year.
The Dublin Fire Brigade said its officers were pelted with stones, cans and bottles in several public housing projects overnight as they dealt with 46 fires, mostly
smashed-up cars that had been set ablaze.Ambulance crews dealing with more than 200 emergency calls — including a dozen stabbings involving knives or broken bottles — said they also suffered physical and verbal abuse as they responded to booze-fueled bloodshed.
Sunday, March 15, 2009
Bill & Brian's Great Adventure
Bill & Brian's Great Adventure (Con't)
Brian's Story
Brian is from Ireland, Northern Ireland, and came over to the USA in the 1970s to work with his friend John Hassen, both finding work as house painters at the Jersey Shore. Living in Somers Point, one day Brian was on his way to work in Ocean City on his motorcycle when a little old lady pulled out in front of him. He tried to swerve, but went down, his head hitting the curb and cracking his helment.
In Shore Memorial Hospital in Somers Point for months, they tried to save one badly damaged leg, but eventually had to amputate it, extending his stay. A good friend, Gregroy's bartender George McGonigle, who loves everything Irish, tried to get people to go visit the poor Mick, far from home, in the hospital, with one leg. I didn't go.
But one day I was sitting under the TV by the front door when in walks a one legged guy who must be Brian, and we sat at George McGonigle's bar for a few hours and got to know one another. I had been to Belfast, where Brian went to school, and I had even visted Kelly's Cellar, an 800 year old Belfast bar that he frequently patronized.
Brian, with one leg, could no longer paint houses, so he began to tend bar, and did so at Gregory's dining room bar, Zaberer's on the Black Horse Pike and later the Libary III in Cardiff, before managing and owning the Libary IV in Williamstown.
Eventually, John Hassen returned to Ireland, where he married his sweetheart Finvola, whose father owned a bar, McReynold's in Dungiven, in northwest Ireland, near the border, which John now runs with Fin and her seven sisters.
After John went back to Irleand, Brian lived, on occassion at my family's home, 819 Wesley, as did all our friends, and we shared a winter, off season appartment on the beach at 38th street in 1977, with Bill Potterton and Pete Pospich, both Mack & Manco guys. I know its hard to imagine today, but we actually paid about $300 a month for a four bedroom apartment on the beach in Ocean City from September until April, an apartment that otherwise rented for $2,000 a week in the summer. It was also one of a string of three really bad, freezing rain and snowy winters that we haven't seen since. That was also the year Brian finally got his insurance settlement for losing his leg, and after paying off his expenses, including laywers, he had enough left over to send some money home and buy a brand new, red TR7 sports car. It looked like a little wedge, but was souped up and fun to drive.
"Let's go!," he said. "California. Coast to Coast."
The plan was to go to the Long Beach Grand Prix auto race, which was being held that year through the streets of Long Beach, just like Monaco, where I had seen Brit Graham Hill win the 1970 Monte Carlo Grand Prix. It would be a cross country jaunt, from Ocean City to Long Beach, ocean to ocean, and in a sports car like the two guys in the Corvette on Route 66, or Then Came Bronson, the motorcycle reporter who meandered around the country on a whim.
"Let's go!"
Although I wasn't broke, I wasn't working steady, except some odd jobs on the side and collectiung unemployment from working the previous summer at Mack & Manco's. I only had a few hundred bucks, but Pete said he'd send along my undemployment check, and for a couple extra bucks, I sold my typewriter to Carolyn Nixon(who reminded me of this when I ran into her at a Tony Marts Reunion last summer).
My brother Leo gave us his CB radio, that we hooked up, and using the natural handle "Red 7," and we stopped by Gregory's to say goodbye to George McGonigle, the bartender, before heading west in a rain storm. Since Brian had unhooked the dashboard speedometer so it wouldn't register the miles, thinking about reselling the car later on, we had no idea how fast we were going or how much gas we had, and promptly ran out on the Pennsey Turnpike. It was the worst driving rain you could imagine, and since I had a Topsider raincoat, I hitched a few miles down the road, got gas and hitched back with it, all in the driving rain. An inauspicious start, that I later recalled when pirate entrepaneur Pat Croce set out from Ocean City on his motorcycle trip to San Diego and almost lost his foot in an accident before getting out of state.
Once we were on the road though, things went pretty smoothly. Arriving in Pittsburh, per the plan, we stopped in unexpectedly on my college roommate Mark Connelly, who had also spent many summers in Ocean City, painted 819 Wesley and was part of the crew of the summer of my group rental (circa 1973?).
Since we went to the University of Dayton, where Mark's sister Kathy also matriculated, Pittsburg was often a half-way pit stop when driving between Ocean City and Dayton for my four years at college.
Mark suggested we stop in Boulder, Colorado and visit his sister Mary, who has also spent summer time in Ocean City, and then cross the rockies and check in with his other sister Kathy, thus saving motel money as well as seeing good friends.
Mary, a firey red head (are there any other kind?) and her boyfriend, lived in a big apartment in big, corner house in the same hip neighborhood where Mork & Mindi were supposed to live. It was near the university, and was pretty neat. There was a news and coffee shop around the corner called Eight Days A Week, where I bought my Rock Mountain News (RIP this week, after a century of great newspapering), and plotted my day.
We must have stayed there a week or more because I remember visiting the Garden of the Gods (which I had seen ten years earlier on a summer road trip with Gary Pancoast and his parents), Pikes Peak and place with the girl on the barroom floor, a story that my father had once related.
Mary had some friends who were really interesting too, incluidng Dave and Jennifer, ski nuts, who I recently thought about out of the blue for some reason. One night Brian cooked a chinse sweet and sour dish and we all went into town to the Boulderado Hotel, where there was live jazz in the second floor lounge.
The Boulderado still has, at least it did then, an old west atmosphere. When you walk in the door you can just imagine how it was a hundred or more so years ago, with its front desk, winding staircases and second floor balcony. I forget who was playing, but we did meet beat poet Alan Ginsburgh, who I recognized, as I had seen him previously give a lecture at Stockton collge at the Jersey Shore. When I introduced myself, he invited us to sit down in these old upolustry chairs and antique coffee table.
When I told him I was from Camden, he asked if I ever visted Walt Whitman's grave, and I had, though nobody else is ever there when I was. I asked him to recount how he was related to Whitman, as detailed in some recent magazine article, and he elaborated on how there was a line of mutual homosexual lovers that link them. He said he was there to give a beat nick lecture at the William Burroughs? school.
Then we were off in the Red Seven (our CB handle) back on the highway west, over the hump to the other side of the alps, past Vail to Glenwood Springs, and then back east to Aspin. At least that's the way it looked on the map. But it didn't turn out that way.
There may have been a snowstorm, and the pass closed for the night, or some delay, but we got sidetracked to WinterPark, a small ski community just off the main highway between Denver and Vail. We were just driving around the rockies, listening to music (Billy Joel's "New York State of Mind" comes to mind), when Brian sees a sign "Handicap Ski Parking Only."
"That's us!" he said, pulling right into the slot, and picking up his plastic prothesis knee and walking in the door that read: "Handicap Ski Office - Hal O'Leary".
It didn't take long to meet Hal O'Leary, a jovial guy with an Irish smile, who asked one question: "AK or BK?"
Brian's an AK, above the knee amputee, which meant he would ski three track, rather than with his prothesis. Brian went into the locker room to put on a ski boot, and met a guy whose name I should never forget, but I do have a mental block. But he was a Vietnam vet who stepped on a mine and lost both legs below the knee, so he's a BK, and skis with his prothesis and two outriggers. Skiing with one leg and two outriggers, Brian would ski Three Track, a type of skiing reportedly invented by O'Leary, who really wrote the book on the concept, and had Brian skiing within an hour of meeting him.
The handicap ski program at Winterpark also taught blind people how to ski by following the cow bell of their guides, and they got me to ski, since how could I watch them ski and not do it.
We stayed at this rustic all wood lodge, in an almost dormatory style setting, but they had a fireplace, a little bar and had a great owner, host who made everybody feel at home, and served as our Winterpark HQ for a few other visits over the next few years.
They were going to have their annual Handicap Ski Tournament a few weeks later, and we tried to time ourselves to get to Aspin, hit the Long Beach Grand Prix, spend some time at the coast, and make it back to Winterpark for the Handicap Ski Tournament, which they promised would be a blast.
When we finally got to Aspin we found Kathy Connally driving a Mellow Yellow taxi cab, and glad to see us. She lived in a fairly modern apartment building on the slope of a hill on a road that emptied into town at the Jerome Hotel. We had sleeping bags and a couch, and took Kathy out to breakfast and lunch, and got to know the town pretty well.
Ajax mountain was steep, an all black trail, mogul strewn slope that I really didn't want to try to tackle, so while Brian and some new friends skied AJAX, I walked into town and poked around a bit.
The bar at the Hotel Jerome, of course, became our base of operations. Heading down the road to town I had to pass a foreign car repair shop, where there was this big bald guy with a beard who looked like a Viking, certainly a biker, tinkering with these exotic sports cars.
Martin was the name on his sign, but I learned his name was Martini, of Martini and Rossi fame and fortune, and we talked a few times and I told Brian about him. Just down the road from Martin's Garage was the Hotel Jerome, a fine establishment indeed.
I went down there the afternoon Brian was skiing and was sitting at the bar drinking a draft beer and reading the newpaper when I hear from behind my back, "My God, it's Bill Kelly!"
Now who could this be?
It was Maryanne, a cashier at Circle Liquor in Somers Point, and two of her friends from the Gregory's-Charle's-Anchorage crowd. They were on tour too, and it was a miracle we happened to cross paths. I walked them across town to the bar at the base of Ajax mountain where, low and behold, Nancy from Irenes's on the Ocean City boardwalk was there, working as a waitress. When Brian made it to the bottom of the hill, it was a real Jersey Shore reunion.
While skiing down Ajax Brian had met another one-legged Irish skier, Teddy Kennedy, Jr., then only 17 years old, and having recently lost his leg to cancer. It was great that he hooked up with Brian, as Brian showed him some ski moves, and taught him how to shift gears with one leg in the TR7.
Aspen has plenty of celebrities, including John Denver. There was a John Denver look-a-like who hung out at the Aspen bars, but the real John Denver would't be seen in town, as everybody hated him. Apparently he had some gasoline tanks installed at this ranch and was hoarding gas when it was scarce. Kathy's hair dresser, who came around and gave us all haircuts one night, gave us some inside dirt on Denver, since she also did his hair, but I forget the good parts now.
One day, riding around the country roads with Kathy in the Mellow Yellow cab, she gave me a book, John Kennedy Toole's "A Confederacy of Dunces," and now, every once in awhile, I'll give the same book to somebody who I think will appreciate it.
Hunter Thompson was there too, but I never met him, and didn't make it to the little Creek Bar he hung out near his home. I did meet his wife Sandy, a beautiful lady who worked at the Aspen bookstore, which was owned by guy whose father was a big shot CIA officer. We all went out to breakfast together one Sunday morning, to a local's place where after a week in town, we knew most of the people there.
On Sunday afternoon, while everyone else went off into the mountains on a mission of some sort or other, I went to the bar at the Hotel Jerome to watch the ball games and read the papers. I was sitting next to the brass rail waitress station, and every once in awhile the waitress would come up and order some drinks and then say, "Jack wants to know what the score is," and after the third or fourth time she asked for the scores for Jack, I was wondering who the hell this Jack guy is. When she bent over to empty a tray into the trash while asking for the scores for Jack, I could see behind her, a guy sliding up low to the floor and pinch her on the ass hard enough to make her scream. I had a 35 mm camera with me at the time, right there in front of me, but didn't use it when Jack Nicholson looked right at me, and smiled, a smile just for me.
Then he went back to his drink and games, but I'll always have that face in my mind.
We had to get to Long Beach for the Grand Priz, and time was running out, so we reluctantly headed out again, west, across the desert, to California. One night, I was driving and Brian was sleeping, and Lew London't "Swingtime in Springtime" was playing on the radio. It was a college student station out of New Mexico and was beginning to fade out so I pulled over to hear it all, which woke Brian up, wondering why we're stopped on the side of the road in the middle of the desert.
It was a Sunday night, because I noted to Brian how Lew London was playing at that same time back by the fireplace at the Library III where some of our friends worked, including Lew.
We got a motel room when we got to Bakersfield, on the other side of Death Valley, and after a big breakfast with the truckers, we decided to head north to San Francisco because we still had a few days to kill before the Grand Prix. In San Fran we looked up my friend from Philly Bill Vitka, who we had heard on the radio on the drive up. Vidka went to Penn in Philly and was the news director at WMMR, where I worked with him on a couple of important stories (ie. Army dioxin studies), and he offered to put us up on the floor of his meager apartment. I also called Kathy Fletcher, a local teacher who I went to school with at Dayton, and we all met at a local bar. We also visited Fisherman's Warf, the Buena Vista, where Irish coffee is the house drink, and the beatnick poets bookstore around the corner.
We would come back to San Fran the following year, and stay longer while Brian took the competition driving school course, but we didn't know that at the time. Vitka took us to a seafood restaurant in Sausalito, on the bay, and the next morning, to a a cliff they jump off with the hang gliders, before we started heading south on the coast road. Past Big Sur, and Carmel, William Randolph Hursts' Zanadau castle, the TR7 really handled the coast road well, and we started playing tag with two chicks in a sports car heading in the same direction.
When we got to Los Angeles, we got the girls to go to a bar with us for a few drinks while I tried to call my friend Glenn Gebhard, a UCLA film student and cab driver. He was working at the time and I called the cab company he works for and they directed him to where we were with him thinking we were a fare. Was he surprised to see me, and I introduced him to Brian and the girls we had just met and he had us follow him to down the road to Venice, where he had an apartment near the beach.
Venice, home to the Doors and the hippies of LA, with its winding blacktop prominade that runs along the water, and bars right there on the beach, something you'd never see in Ocean City, "America's Greatest Family Resort," and dry Methodist blue law island.
But here, in Venice, California, it was natural. Glen took us out to eat at some Italian joint where Bob Newhart and his family sat at an ajoining table, and we observed Glen's instructions not to bother them. And it was quite funny to see Bob Newhart talking to his family like he was in character on his TV show, which itself is pretty dry but funny humor.
It turned out, as we discovered while all sleeping together on Glenn's hardwood floor, that the girls were lesbians, and the next morning they were gone. Later that week I did meet another neat girl, who had just joined the air force, and who I later met at the Philadelpia airport and drove to McGuire to fly to Greenland for a year. We hooked up with a lot of my old frinds, but also met people who we would remain friends with for a long time.
We got to Long Beach for race day, and didn't have any trouble picking up the press passes I had requested a few weeks earlier, and had the run of the place.
Watching a Formula One auto race is difficult because you have to get a good location, near a turn, where the cars slow down enough for you to get a look at them and keep them in order.
Like we did at the US Grand Prix at Watkins Glenn, we walked around the course to get a feel for it, and then went over to the pits, and low and behold, there in the Ferrari pit was Rip Martin, the guy from Aspin.
Of course Mario Andretti, the Nazareth, Pennsylvania, Italian born American was the favorite, and won the race, becoming the first American to win an American Grand Prix. After the race, while walking through the parking lot, we came across Mario's two sons, said hello and I took their picture. They were pretty young then, young teenagers, and Michael looked a like a chubby Italian, but he went on to be a good race driver like his father. And now his son, Marco, wants to be one of the USAFI drivers on next year's F1 circuit.
After the race, everyone went over to the Queen Mary, where the Victory party was to be held in the ball room. The press passes we had got us on the boat and in a party in the big bar, but we really wanted to get into the Victory party and hung out in the cocktail lounge seats by the banquet room door.
Things got exciting when Mario showed up, with photographers popping bulbs and TV and radio crews there broadcasting live, I got up and started taking photos in front of Mario and walked backwards into the room. I was in! Without even trying. The Mario, the man of the hour, in the room, they quickly sealed the door and I tried to act like I belonged there and walked over to the open bar for a drink.
This party was for the drivers, and sponsors and it seemed most of the people knew each other pretty well, so I tried to inconspiciously blend in.
I looked around the room for Rip Martin, who should have been there and could have gotten Brian in, and would have stood out a head and shoulders above everybody else, but I didn't see him anywhere.
There, I recognized the guy next to me but didn't quite know exactly who he was, so I chatted up a conversation with him and he was British, a clue, ah yet, Sterling Moss, the Great Sterling Moss, the world motorcycle champion, world Formula One champion, one of the greatest road race drivers ever. And he was drinking beer with me on the Queen Mary.
Not a snob, and with a beautiful babe hanging on to his arm, Moss appeared friendly enough, and he was interested in the fact that I had drove across country in new TR7, and started to question me about the car's handling, when I explained that my friend, who owned the car, Brian was just outside the door. Brian, I said, didn't have an invitation to get in, and was from Ireland, and had lost a leg in a motorcycle accident. With that, Moss handed his drink to the babe, and asked where this Brian was? Right outside the door, I said, and we went out and there was Brian, sitting back chatting it up with some other people.
"Hey Brian," I said, "I'd like you to meet my new friend, Strling Moss," and you could see Brian light up as he recognized the road racing hero of the century, who escourted us both back in to Mario Andretti's Victory Party on the Queen Mary, where a great time was had by all.
Brian's Story
Brian is from Ireland, Northern Ireland, and came over to the USA in the 1970s to work with his friend John Hassen, both finding work as house painters at the Jersey Shore. Living in Somers Point, one day Brian was on his way to work in Ocean City on his motorcycle when a little old lady pulled out in front of him. He tried to swerve, but went down, his head hitting the curb and cracking his helment.
In Shore Memorial Hospital in Somers Point for months, they tried to save one badly damaged leg, but eventually had to amputate it, extending his stay. A good friend, Gregroy's bartender George McGonigle, who loves everything Irish, tried to get people to go visit the poor Mick, far from home, in the hospital, with one leg. I didn't go.
But one day I was sitting under the TV by the front door when in walks a one legged guy who must be Brian, and we sat at George McGonigle's bar for a few hours and got to know one another. I had been to Belfast, where Brian went to school, and I had even visted Kelly's Cellar, an 800 year old Belfast bar that he frequently patronized.
Brian, with one leg, could no longer paint houses, so he began to tend bar, and did so at Gregory's dining room bar, Zaberer's on the Black Horse Pike and later the Libary III in Cardiff, before managing and owning the Libary IV in Williamstown.
Eventually, John Hassen returned to Ireland, where he married his sweetheart Finvola, whose father owned a bar, McReynold's in Dungiven, in northwest Ireland, near the border, which John now runs with Fin and her seven sisters.
After John went back to Irleand, Brian lived, on occassion at my family's home, 819 Wesley, as did all our friends, and we shared a winter, off season appartment on the beach at 38th street in 1977, with Bill Potterton and Pete Pospich, both Mack & Manco guys. I know its hard to imagine today, but we actually paid about $300 a month for a four bedroom apartment on the beach in Ocean City from September until April, an apartment that otherwise rented for $2,000 a week in the summer. It was also one of a string of three really bad, freezing rain and snowy winters that we haven't seen since. That was also the year Brian finally got his insurance settlement for losing his leg, and after paying off his expenses, including laywers, he had enough left over to send some money home and buy a brand new, red TR7 sports car. It looked like a little wedge, but was souped up and fun to drive.
"Let's go!," he said. "California. Coast to Coast."
The plan was to go to the Long Beach Grand Prix auto race, which was being held that year through the streets of Long Beach, just like Monaco, where I had seen Brit Graham Hill win the 1970 Monte Carlo Grand Prix. It would be a cross country jaunt, from Ocean City to Long Beach, ocean to ocean, and in a sports car like the two guys in the Corvette on Route 66, or Then Came Bronson, the motorcycle reporter who meandered around the country on a whim.
"Let's go!"
Although I wasn't broke, I wasn't working steady, except some odd jobs on the side and collectiung unemployment from working the previous summer at Mack & Manco's. I only had a few hundred bucks, but Pete said he'd send along my undemployment check, and for a couple extra bucks, I sold my typewriter to Carolyn Nixon(who reminded me of this when I ran into her at a Tony Marts Reunion last summer).
My brother Leo gave us his CB radio, that we hooked up, and using the natural handle "Red 7," and we stopped by Gregory's to say goodbye to George McGonigle, the bartender, before heading west in a rain storm. Since Brian had unhooked the dashboard speedometer so it wouldn't register the miles, thinking about reselling the car later on, we had no idea how fast we were going or how much gas we had, and promptly ran out on the Pennsey Turnpike. It was the worst driving rain you could imagine, and since I had a Topsider raincoat, I hitched a few miles down the road, got gas and hitched back with it, all in the driving rain. An inauspicious start, that I later recalled when pirate entrepaneur Pat Croce set out from Ocean City on his motorcycle trip to San Diego and almost lost his foot in an accident before getting out of state.
Once we were on the road though, things went pretty smoothly. Arriving in Pittsburh, per the plan, we stopped in unexpectedly on my college roommate Mark Connelly, who had also spent many summers in Ocean City, painted 819 Wesley and was part of the crew of the summer of my group rental (circa 1973?).
Since we went to the University of Dayton, where Mark's sister Kathy also matriculated, Pittsburg was often a half-way pit stop when driving between Ocean City and Dayton for my four years at college.
Mark suggested we stop in Boulder, Colorado and visit his sister Mary, who has also spent summer time in Ocean City, and then cross the rockies and check in with his other sister Kathy, thus saving motel money as well as seeing good friends.
Mary, a firey red head (are there any other kind?) and her boyfriend, lived in a big apartment in big, corner house in the same hip neighborhood where Mork & Mindi were supposed to live. It was near the university, and was pretty neat. There was a news and coffee shop around the corner called Eight Days A Week, where I bought my Rock Mountain News (RIP this week, after a century of great newspapering), and plotted my day.
We must have stayed there a week or more because I remember visiting the Garden of the Gods (which I had seen ten years earlier on a summer road trip with Gary Pancoast and his parents), Pikes Peak and place with the girl on the barroom floor, a story that my father had once related.
Mary had some friends who were really interesting too, incluidng Dave and Jennifer, ski nuts, who I recently thought about out of the blue for some reason. One night Brian cooked a chinse sweet and sour dish and we all went into town to the Boulderado Hotel, where there was live jazz in the second floor lounge.
The Boulderado still has, at least it did then, an old west atmosphere. When you walk in the door you can just imagine how it was a hundred or more so years ago, with its front desk, winding staircases and second floor balcony. I forget who was playing, but we did meet beat poet Alan Ginsburgh, who I recognized, as I had seen him previously give a lecture at Stockton collge at the Jersey Shore. When I introduced myself, he invited us to sit down in these old upolustry chairs and antique coffee table.
When I told him I was from Camden, he asked if I ever visted Walt Whitman's grave, and I had, though nobody else is ever there when I was. I asked him to recount how he was related to Whitman, as detailed in some recent magazine article, and he elaborated on how there was a line of mutual homosexual lovers that link them. He said he was there to give a beat nick lecture at the William Burroughs? school.
Then we were off in the Red Seven (our CB handle) back on the highway west, over the hump to the other side of the alps, past Vail to Glenwood Springs, and then back east to Aspin. At least that's the way it looked on the map. But it didn't turn out that way.
There may have been a snowstorm, and the pass closed for the night, or some delay, but we got sidetracked to WinterPark, a small ski community just off the main highway between Denver and Vail. We were just driving around the rockies, listening to music (Billy Joel's "New York State of Mind" comes to mind), when Brian sees a sign "Handicap Ski Parking Only."
"That's us!" he said, pulling right into the slot, and picking up his plastic prothesis knee and walking in the door that read: "Handicap Ski Office - Hal O'Leary".
It didn't take long to meet Hal O'Leary, a jovial guy with an Irish smile, who asked one question: "AK or BK?"
Brian's an AK, above the knee amputee, which meant he would ski three track, rather than with his prothesis. Brian went into the locker room to put on a ski boot, and met a guy whose name I should never forget, but I do have a mental block. But he was a Vietnam vet who stepped on a mine and lost both legs below the knee, so he's a BK, and skis with his prothesis and two outriggers. Skiing with one leg and two outriggers, Brian would ski Three Track, a type of skiing reportedly invented by O'Leary, who really wrote the book on the concept, and had Brian skiing within an hour of meeting him.
The handicap ski program at Winterpark also taught blind people how to ski by following the cow bell of their guides, and they got me to ski, since how could I watch them ski and not do it.
We stayed at this rustic all wood lodge, in an almost dormatory style setting, but they had a fireplace, a little bar and had a great owner, host who made everybody feel at home, and served as our Winterpark HQ for a few other visits over the next few years.
They were going to have their annual Handicap Ski Tournament a few weeks later, and we tried to time ourselves to get to Aspin, hit the Long Beach Grand Prix, spend some time at the coast, and make it back to Winterpark for the Handicap Ski Tournament, which they promised would be a blast.
When we finally got to Aspin we found Kathy Connally driving a Mellow Yellow taxi cab, and glad to see us. She lived in a fairly modern apartment building on the slope of a hill on a road that emptied into town at the Jerome Hotel. We had sleeping bags and a couch, and took Kathy out to breakfast and lunch, and got to know the town pretty well.
Ajax mountain was steep, an all black trail, mogul strewn slope that I really didn't want to try to tackle, so while Brian and some new friends skied AJAX, I walked into town and poked around a bit.
The bar at the Hotel Jerome, of course, became our base of operations. Heading down the road to town I had to pass a foreign car repair shop, where there was this big bald guy with a beard who looked like a Viking, certainly a biker, tinkering with these exotic sports cars.
Martin was the name on his sign, but I learned his name was Martini, of Martini and Rossi fame and fortune, and we talked a few times and I told Brian about him. Just down the road from Martin's Garage was the Hotel Jerome, a fine establishment indeed.
I went down there the afternoon Brian was skiing and was sitting at the bar drinking a draft beer and reading the newpaper when I hear from behind my back, "My God, it's Bill Kelly!"
Now who could this be?
It was Maryanne, a cashier at Circle Liquor in Somers Point, and two of her friends from the Gregory's-Charle's-Anchorage crowd. They were on tour too, and it was a miracle we happened to cross paths. I walked them across town to the bar at the base of Ajax mountain where, low and behold, Nancy from Irenes's on the Ocean City boardwalk was there, working as a waitress. When Brian made it to the bottom of the hill, it was a real Jersey Shore reunion.
While skiing down Ajax Brian had met another one-legged Irish skier, Teddy Kennedy, Jr., then only 17 years old, and having recently lost his leg to cancer. It was great that he hooked up with Brian, as Brian showed him some ski moves, and taught him how to shift gears with one leg in the TR7.
Aspen has plenty of celebrities, including John Denver. There was a John Denver look-a-like who hung out at the Aspen bars, but the real John Denver would't be seen in town, as everybody hated him. Apparently he had some gasoline tanks installed at this ranch and was hoarding gas when it was scarce. Kathy's hair dresser, who came around and gave us all haircuts one night, gave us some inside dirt on Denver, since she also did his hair, but I forget the good parts now.
One day, riding around the country roads with Kathy in the Mellow Yellow cab, she gave me a book, John Kennedy Toole's "A Confederacy of Dunces," and now, every once in awhile, I'll give the same book to somebody who I think will appreciate it.
Hunter Thompson was there too, but I never met him, and didn't make it to the little Creek Bar he hung out near his home. I did meet his wife Sandy, a beautiful lady who worked at the Aspen bookstore, which was owned by guy whose father was a big shot CIA officer. We all went out to breakfast together one Sunday morning, to a local's place where after a week in town, we knew most of the people there.
On Sunday afternoon, while everyone else went off into the mountains on a mission of some sort or other, I went to the bar at the Hotel Jerome to watch the ball games and read the papers. I was sitting next to the brass rail waitress station, and every once in awhile the waitress would come up and order some drinks and then say, "Jack wants to know what the score is," and after the third or fourth time she asked for the scores for Jack, I was wondering who the hell this Jack guy is. When she bent over to empty a tray into the trash while asking for the scores for Jack, I could see behind her, a guy sliding up low to the floor and pinch her on the ass hard enough to make her scream. I had a 35 mm camera with me at the time, right there in front of me, but didn't use it when Jack Nicholson looked right at me, and smiled, a smile just for me.
Then he went back to his drink and games, but I'll always have that face in my mind.
We had to get to Long Beach for the Grand Priz, and time was running out, so we reluctantly headed out again, west, across the desert, to California. One night, I was driving and Brian was sleeping, and Lew London't "Swingtime in Springtime" was playing on the radio. It was a college student station out of New Mexico and was beginning to fade out so I pulled over to hear it all, which woke Brian up, wondering why we're stopped on the side of the road in the middle of the desert.
It was a Sunday night, because I noted to Brian how Lew London was playing at that same time back by the fireplace at the Library III where some of our friends worked, including Lew.
We got a motel room when we got to Bakersfield, on the other side of Death Valley, and after a big breakfast with the truckers, we decided to head north to San Francisco because we still had a few days to kill before the Grand Prix. In San Fran we looked up my friend from Philly Bill Vitka, who we had heard on the radio on the drive up. Vidka went to Penn in Philly and was the news director at WMMR, where I worked with him on a couple of important stories (ie. Army dioxin studies), and he offered to put us up on the floor of his meager apartment. I also called Kathy Fletcher, a local teacher who I went to school with at Dayton, and we all met at a local bar. We also visited Fisherman's Warf, the Buena Vista, where Irish coffee is the house drink, and the beatnick poets bookstore around the corner.
We would come back to San Fran the following year, and stay longer while Brian took the competition driving school course, but we didn't know that at the time. Vitka took us to a seafood restaurant in Sausalito, on the bay, and the next morning, to a a cliff they jump off with the hang gliders, before we started heading south on the coast road. Past Big Sur, and Carmel, William Randolph Hursts' Zanadau castle, the TR7 really handled the coast road well, and we started playing tag with two chicks in a sports car heading in the same direction.
When we got to Los Angeles, we got the girls to go to a bar with us for a few drinks while I tried to call my friend Glenn Gebhard, a UCLA film student and cab driver. He was working at the time and I called the cab company he works for and they directed him to where we were with him thinking we were a fare. Was he surprised to see me, and I introduced him to Brian and the girls we had just met and he had us follow him to down the road to Venice, where he had an apartment near the beach.
Venice, home to the Doors and the hippies of LA, with its winding blacktop prominade that runs along the water, and bars right there on the beach, something you'd never see in Ocean City, "America's Greatest Family Resort," and dry Methodist blue law island.
But here, in Venice, California, it was natural. Glen took us out to eat at some Italian joint where Bob Newhart and his family sat at an ajoining table, and we observed Glen's instructions not to bother them. And it was quite funny to see Bob Newhart talking to his family like he was in character on his TV show, which itself is pretty dry but funny humor.
It turned out, as we discovered while all sleeping together on Glenn's hardwood floor, that the girls were lesbians, and the next morning they were gone. Later that week I did meet another neat girl, who had just joined the air force, and who I later met at the Philadelpia airport and drove to McGuire to fly to Greenland for a year. We hooked up with a lot of my old frinds, but also met people who we would remain friends with for a long time.
We got to Long Beach for race day, and didn't have any trouble picking up the press passes I had requested a few weeks earlier, and had the run of the place.
Watching a Formula One auto race is difficult because you have to get a good location, near a turn, where the cars slow down enough for you to get a look at them and keep them in order.
Like we did at the US Grand Prix at Watkins Glenn, we walked around the course to get a feel for it, and then went over to the pits, and low and behold, there in the Ferrari pit was Rip Martin, the guy from Aspin.
Of course Mario Andretti, the Nazareth, Pennsylvania, Italian born American was the favorite, and won the race, becoming the first American to win an American Grand Prix. After the race, while walking through the parking lot, we came across Mario's two sons, said hello and I took their picture. They were pretty young then, young teenagers, and Michael looked a like a chubby Italian, but he went on to be a good race driver like his father. And now his son, Marco, wants to be one of the USAFI drivers on next year's F1 circuit.
After the race, everyone went over to the Queen Mary, where the Victory party was to be held in the ball room. The press passes we had got us on the boat and in a party in the big bar, but we really wanted to get into the Victory party and hung out in the cocktail lounge seats by the banquet room door.
Things got exciting when Mario showed up, with photographers popping bulbs and TV and radio crews there broadcasting live, I got up and started taking photos in front of Mario and walked backwards into the room. I was in! Without even trying. The Mario, the man of the hour, in the room, they quickly sealed the door and I tried to act like I belonged there and walked over to the open bar for a drink.
This party was for the drivers, and sponsors and it seemed most of the people knew each other pretty well, so I tried to inconspiciously blend in.
I looked around the room for Rip Martin, who should have been there and could have gotten Brian in, and would have stood out a head and shoulders above everybody else, but I didn't see him anywhere.
There, I recognized the guy next to me but didn't quite know exactly who he was, so I chatted up a conversation with him and he was British, a clue, ah yet, Sterling Moss, the Great Sterling Moss, the world motorcycle champion, world Formula One champion, one of the greatest road race drivers ever. And he was drinking beer with me on the Queen Mary.
Not a snob, and with a beautiful babe hanging on to his arm, Moss appeared friendly enough, and he was interested in the fact that I had drove across country in new TR7, and started to question me about the car's handling, when I explained that my friend, who owned the car, Brian was just outside the door. Brian, I said, didn't have an invitation to get in, and was from Ireland, and had lost a leg in a motorcycle accident. With that, Moss handed his drink to the babe, and asked where this Brian was? Right outside the door, I said, and we went out and there was Brian, sitting back chatting it up with some other people.
"Hey Brian," I said, "I'd like you to meet my new friend, Strling Moss," and you could see Brian light up as he recognized the road racing hero of the century, who escourted us both back in to Mario Andretti's Victory Party on the Queen Mary, where a great time was had by all.
Tuesday, March 3, 2009
Tony Marts Hard Rock March 27
Hey, it looks like Carmen and Nancy are going to have regular shows at the Hard Rock, maybe all summer, which sounds good to me.
After having one or two Tony Mart Reunions a year for the past few years, they've already had two this year and have another one coming up on Friday, March 27, featuring The Billy Walton Band, and that's not the basketball player.
That's Billy the guitarist from Asbury Park who has captured the heart of the South Jersey music scene, at least in Somers Point, where he's played the bars, Friday night beach concerts and Good Old Days Picnic, as well as previous Tony Mart Reunions.
Billy Walton's the best, well, maybe second best after the other Billy, Billy Hector, who has yet to really get the attention of those south of Tuckerton, but he will.
Now I don't think it's Billy Walton getting the Tony Marts Lifetime Achievement Award since he's not old enough, and never played there, but I will find out whose in this year's nominations and get back to you on it.
Also want to hear from somebody who caught Dr. Bobby Fingers and Danny Eyer at the Hard Rock last show? Thanks.
BK
Ah, ha!, just as I suspected. There's more to this story still coming over the wires. Here's more details from Nancy.
PRESS RELEASETONY MART’S PRESENTS “NIGHTLIFE ACHIEVEMENT AWARDS”
Tony Mart’s will present another series of “Tony Mart Lifetime Achievement Awards” at their “Let the Good Times Roll for the Right Reasons” celebration at the Hard Rock Cafe on Friday, March 27th at 8PM.
Before the phenomenal Jersey Boy Rockers, The Billy Walton Band performs, awards will be presented to Joseph Fiore, Manager of Tony Mart’s in the early ‘70’s, Roger Evoy, 40 year Tony Mart Aficionado and contributing photographer; Steve Wright, a loyal, veteran bartender of the late 70’s and 80’s; and last, but not least, Jimmy Walker, the lovable Shakespearean character who served nobly as custodian during the final years of Tony Mart’s.
Please honor these recipients and support this charitable event. All proceeds from the minimal admission charge of $5 and the sale of Tony Mart t-shirts and “Hard Rock March on Stage” Pins will benefit a great cause, the Hard Rock’s “Musicians on Call” organization that brings live and recorded music to the bedsides of patients in healthcare facilities.
Help us honor people who made the legacy of Tony Mart’s great while we “Let the Good Times Roll for the Right Reasons!”
More to come on this one.
Tony Mart Presents
FRIDAY, MARCH 27, 2009 8 PM
Tony Mart's Lifetime Contribution Awards
Featuring The Billy Walton Band
Live!
At the Hard Rock Cafe in Taj Mahal
Friday, March 27, 2009 8 PM
Both Shows only $5 At The Door
For more info call 609-653-6069
or email TONYMARO@AOL.COM
If anybody was at this show, I'd like a full report and some pix - BK
A Tribute to Three Decades of Rock n' Roll
Featuring the Music of
Ray Charles
The Beatles
Billy Joel
Performed by
Dr. Bobby Fingers & Danny Eyer
LIVE!
At the Hard Rock Cafe in Taj Mahal
With Very Special Guests
Bubba Mack & Richie Baker
Friday, March 6 2009 8 PM
****************************
After having one or two Tony Mart Reunions a year for the past few years, they've already had two this year and have another one coming up on Friday, March 27, featuring The Billy Walton Band, and that's not the basketball player.
That's Billy the guitarist from Asbury Park who has captured the heart of the South Jersey music scene, at least in Somers Point, where he's played the bars, Friday night beach concerts and Good Old Days Picnic, as well as previous Tony Mart Reunions.
Billy Walton's the best, well, maybe second best after the other Billy, Billy Hector, who has yet to really get the attention of those south of Tuckerton, but he will.
Now I don't think it's Billy Walton getting the Tony Marts Lifetime Achievement Award since he's not old enough, and never played there, but I will find out whose in this year's nominations and get back to you on it.
Also want to hear from somebody who caught Dr. Bobby Fingers and Danny Eyer at the Hard Rock last show? Thanks.
BK
Ah, ha!, just as I suspected. There's more to this story still coming over the wires. Here's more details from Nancy.
PRESS RELEASETONY MART’S PRESENTS “NIGHTLIFE ACHIEVEMENT AWARDS”
Tony Mart’s will present another series of “Tony Mart Lifetime Achievement Awards” at their “Let the Good Times Roll for the Right Reasons” celebration at the Hard Rock Cafe on Friday, March 27th at 8PM.
Before the phenomenal Jersey Boy Rockers, The Billy Walton Band performs, awards will be presented to Joseph Fiore, Manager of Tony Mart’s in the early ‘70’s, Roger Evoy, 40 year Tony Mart Aficionado and contributing photographer; Steve Wright, a loyal, veteran bartender of the late 70’s and 80’s; and last, but not least, Jimmy Walker, the lovable Shakespearean character who served nobly as custodian during the final years of Tony Mart’s.
Please honor these recipients and support this charitable event. All proceeds from the minimal admission charge of $5 and the sale of Tony Mart t-shirts and “Hard Rock March on Stage” Pins will benefit a great cause, the Hard Rock’s “Musicians on Call” organization that brings live and recorded music to the bedsides of patients in healthcare facilities.
Help us honor people who made the legacy of Tony Mart’s great while we “Let the Good Times Roll for the Right Reasons!”
More to come on this one.
Tony Mart Presents
FRIDAY, MARCH 27, 2009 8 PM
Tony Mart's Lifetime Contribution Awards
Featuring The Billy Walton Band
Live!
At the Hard Rock Cafe in Taj Mahal
Friday, March 27, 2009 8 PM
Both Shows only $5 At The Door
For more info call 609-653-6069
or email TONYMARO@AOL.COM
If anybody was at this show, I'd like a full report and some pix - BK
A Tribute to Three Decades of Rock n' Roll
Featuring the Music of
Ray Charles
The Beatles
Billy Joel
Performed by
Dr. Bobby Fingers & Danny Eyer
LIVE!
At the Hard Rock Cafe in Taj Mahal
With Very Special Guests
Bubba Mack & Richie Baker
Friday, March 6 2009 8 PM
****************************
Tuesday, February 24, 2009
Jazz at the Shore 2009
Jazz at the Shore 2009
Things are usually quite at the shore in the winter months, but this year jazz is hot even when everything else is cold.
Not a quirk of nature, the jazz is supported and promoted by a number of jazz societies who bring in the acts and four wall the rooms at various venues in Somers Point and Cape May.
While the Cape May Jazz Festival is the mother of all Jersey Shore music fests, the Somers Point Jazz Society has certainly increased the tempo considerably, and the new, fledgling Cape May Traditional Jazz Society has established a beachhead and hopes to remain on the scene, and maybe even encouraging others to follow suit.
Where ever there’s an empty room with a stage there’s somebody who wants to play on it, and there’s people who want to hear it, and when the people with the good ears get to pick the acts, you know they’re going to bring in the best.
The winter jazz season kicked off on January 17th when the Blue Moon Jazz series of the Point. Somers Point Jazz Society featured special shows with organist Luke O'Reily at the Inlet and basist Andy Lalasis at Gregs.
Then on January 25th they held the 1st Annual Somers Point Jazz Society benefit concert at the Inlet, featuring the George Mesterhazy Trio, with George on piano, Tim Lekan on bass and Bob Shomo on drums.
The Jazz Society newsletter has a good interview with Mesterhazy that gets into his days, err nights playing the old clubs in Atlantic City and the casinos [that I’ll put a link to when I get it].
George can now be found playing his baby grand most nights at the historic Merion Inn, on Decatur Street in Cape May (just down from the Ugly Mug), where the drinks are good, the food is great and jams, when any body George knows stops in, are truly fantastic.
There are no shortage of great jazz in Cape May, but it still wasn’t enough for the guys who started the Cape May Traditional Jazz Society and held their inaugural gig on January 25th at the Cape May VFW Post 386. No way out jazz, these guys like the New Orleans Marti Gras variety, initially provided by the Atlantic City Jazz Band, which features Franny Smith on banjo, Bob Rawlins on clarinet and the Red Garter Band from the old North Wildwood Days.
Promoting traditional Dixieland, blues, Ragtime and New Orleans jazz, the Cape May Traditional Jazz Society (CMTJS) is led by Bob Ashman and Charlie Logeman [who can be reached at info@capemaytraditionaljazzsociety.com.].
Shows are also scheduled at the VFW, on Congress Street in West Cape May on March 8, April 19, May 10, June 14, July 12 and August 9. Proceeds benefit the bands at Lower and Middle High Schools.
Always looking for something new and different to do, the Somers Point Jazz Society had their first Jazz Movie Nite on February 6th screening "A Great Day In Harlem!" the documentary film about how Art Kane assembled many of the great jazz musicians of New York City for one of the famous photographs of all time and published in Esquire Magazine. There's a local angle to this story too, since Art Kane, shortly before he committed suicide, lived in Cape May and started the Cape May Photographers Workshop.
The Jazz @ the Point 2009 Festival traditionally begins with a series of free shows on Thursday (March 5), that will be held this year at Stumpos, with The Magnificant 7, and at Gregory's with Ken Fowser/Ben Gillece Quartet, who have a new CD “Full View.” (Two shows 8:30 PM & 11:30 PM).
The following nite, Friday, March 6 will feature the One For All sextet with Eric Alexander, David Hazeltine, Jim Rotondi and friends, at Stumpos (8 PM & 10 PM), with Tony Day Quartet and Denis King, at the Inlet, (8 & 10); Jazz guitarist Dave Stryker & Trip will be at Gregorys (10 PM & 1 AM), with the timing of the sets staggered so you catch all the acts and end up at the last set at Gregs.
On Saturday Vincent Herring & The Earth Jazz Agents will land at Stumpos (8 & 10), while trumpet giant Brian Lynch and his Latin Jazz quartet will keep things hot at the Inlet (8 & 10). Local guitarist Steve Giordano and Spacetet will be a little more laid back at Gregory's (10 PM & 1 AM).
On Sunday, the matinee shows begin at 2 PM at the Inlet with the Jim Ridl Quartet, while Trumpete Margnarelli Quartet plays for the afternoon crowd at Gregory’s and jazz diva Gina Roche and her quartet jam at Stumpos, beginning at 4 PM, and second set a 6PM, where everbody should end up for a grand finale jam session.
[(609) 927-6677 - Thursday Nite free, Friday $30, Saturday $35, Sunday $25, or all event pass $50 in advance, with discounts to SPJS members. Jazz@thePoint2009 http://www.spjazz.org/ ]
And just when you thought it couldn’t get any better, the Cape May Jazz Fest kicks in.
Things are usually quite at the shore in the winter months, but this year jazz is hot even when everything else is cold.
Not a quirk of nature, the jazz is supported and promoted by a number of jazz societies who bring in the acts and four wall the rooms at various venues in Somers Point and Cape May.
While the Cape May Jazz Festival is the mother of all Jersey Shore music fests, the Somers Point Jazz Society has certainly increased the tempo considerably, and the new, fledgling Cape May Traditional Jazz Society has established a beachhead and hopes to remain on the scene, and maybe even encouraging others to follow suit.
Where ever there’s an empty room with a stage there’s somebody who wants to play on it, and there’s people who want to hear it, and when the people with the good ears get to pick the acts, you know they’re going to bring in the best.
The winter jazz season kicked off on January 17th when the Blue Moon Jazz series of the Point. Somers Point Jazz Society featured special shows with organist Luke O'Reily at the Inlet and basist Andy Lalasis at Gregs.
Then on January 25th they held the 1st Annual Somers Point Jazz Society benefit concert at the Inlet, featuring the George Mesterhazy Trio, with George on piano, Tim Lekan on bass and Bob Shomo on drums.
The Jazz Society newsletter has a good interview with Mesterhazy that gets into his days, err nights playing the old clubs in Atlantic City and the casinos [that I’ll put a link to when I get it].
George can now be found playing his baby grand most nights at the historic Merion Inn, on Decatur Street in Cape May (just down from the Ugly Mug), where the drinks are good, the food is great and jams, when any body George knows stops in, are truly fantastic.
There are no shortage of great jazz in Cape May, but it still wasn’t enough for the guys who started the Cape May Traditional Jazz Society and held their inaugural gig on January 25th at the Cape May VFW Post 386. No way out jazz, these guys like the New Orleans Marti Gras variety, initially provided by the Atlantic City Jazz Band, which features Franny Smith on banjo, Bob Rawlins on clarinet and the Red Garter Band from the old North Wildwood Days.
Promoting traditional Dixieland, blues, Ragtime and New Orleans jazz, the Cape May Traditional Jazz Society (CMTJS) is led by Bob Ashman and Charlie Logeman [who can be reached at info@capemaytraditionaljazzsociety.com.].
Shows are also scheduled at the VFW, on Congress Street in West Cape May on March 8, April 19, May 10, June 14, July 12 and August 9. Proceeds benefit the bands at Lower and Middle High Schools.
Always looking for something new and different to do, the Somers Point Jazz Society had their first Jazz Movie Nite on February 6th screening "A Great Day In Harlem!" the documentary film about how Art Kane assembled many of the great jazz musicians of New York City for one of the famous photographs of all time and published in Esquire Magazine. There's a local angle to this story too, since Art Kane, shortly before he committed suicide, lived in Cape May and started the Cape May Photographers Workshop.
The Jazz @ the Point 2009 Festival traditionally begins with a series of free shows on Thursday (March 5), that will be held this year at Stumpos, with The Magnificant 7, and at Gregory's with Ken Fowser/Ben Gillece Quartet, who have a new CD “Full View.” (Two shows 8:30 PM & 11:30 PM).
The following nite, Friday, March 6 will feature the One For All sextet with Eric Alexander, David Hazeltine, Jim Rotondi and friends, at Stumpos (8 PM & 10 PM), with Tony Day Quartet and Denis King, at the Inlet, (8 & 10); Jazz guitarist Dave Stryker & Trip will be at Gregorys (10 PM & 1 AM), with the timing of the sets staggered so you catch all the acts and end up at the last set at Gregs.
On Saturday Vincent Herring & The Earth Jazz Agents will land at Stumpos (8 & 10), while trumpet giant Brian Lynch and his Latin Jazz quartet will keep things hot at the Inlet (8 & 10). Local guitarist Steve Giordano and Spacetet will be a little more laid back at Gregory's (10 PM & 1 AM).
On Sunday, the matinee shows begin at 2 PM at the Inlet with the Jim Ridl Quartet, while Trumpete Margnarelli Quartet plays for the afternoon crowd at Gregory’s and jazz diva Gina Roche and her quartet jam at Stumpos, beginning at 4 PM, and second set a 6PM, where everbody should end up for a grand finale jam session.
[(609) 927-6677 - Thursday Nite free, Friday $30, Saturday $35, Sunday $25, or all event pass $50 in advance, with discounts to SPJS members. Jazz@thePoint2009 http://www.spjazz.org/ ]
And just when you thought it couldn’t get any better, the Cape May Jazz Fest kicks in.
Seymour W. Duncan Interview
Seymour W. Duncan - Premier Guitar Mag Interview - August 2008
http://www.premierguitar.com/Magazine/Issue/2008/Aug/Seymour_On_Seymour.aspx
Hey, we should know this guy! He's from South Jersey, played Tony Marts in summer of '65, and then moved to Cinncinatti. Does anybody remember him? Billy Mueller, or Kurt Loder might. - BK
"At the same time, I was playing on a bill with a band at Tony Mart’s in Ocean City, New Jersey. The band eventually became known as the Hawks – and went on to become the Band and play with Bob Dylan. The guitarist, Robbie Robertson, and I were talking and he said, “Maybe my pickup sounds fatter because I have more turns on it than yours.” I had only a vague idea what he was talking about, because I knew little about pickups at the time." - Seymour Duncan.
The Complete interview:
August 2008 \ Features \ Artist Interview \ Seymour On Seymour
Seymour On Seymour
by Brett Petrusek & Rebecca Dirks
You’ve probably never run into Howard Johnson staying at one of his hotels, or talked stocks with Charles Schwab, but the beauty of the guitar industry is the visibility and accessibility of the men behind the big names. In some instances, the faces are as recognizable as the sounds they’ve worked so hard to give us. So when we see a player using an Alnico II Pro and Pearly Gates, Seymour W. Duncan’s flowing white hair and friendly visage instantly come to mind.
Perhaps it’s because working with artists’ egos leaves little room for your own, or because 30 years in business is a relatively short time to forget about the “little things,” but Seymour operates in the way you envision your favorite bands – somehow managing to be larger-than-life while retaining a friendly, open demeanor. After talking with him in his Santa Barbara home about everything from coming up in Jersey to repairing pickups for Hendrix, we think it might be that, deep down, he’s just a kid who wanted to be a rockstar – just like the rest of us.
How did you get into the pickup business?
I was about 12 or 13 years old, and someone had borrowed one of my guitars – a ’56 Telecaster – and they got the high E string wedged under the lip [of the pickup]. It was gouged into the coil, so it didn’t work and I had to play all night with just the rhythm pickup.
So the next week, I went to school and took apart the pickup in Biology class because I had microscopes, tweezers and other stuff handy. I started pulling all these fine hairs and pieces of wax off the pickup in an attempt to figure out what the problem was. I’d take the turn off and it would break again.
Because the pickup was so damaged, I ended up taking all the wire off and, luckily, my dad’s brother-in-law noticed what I was doing and helped me out. He took the magnet wire and got me a spool of 42-gauge plain enamel from Philadelphia and I started winding the pickup. My first coil machine was an actual record player that went 33 1/3, 45, and 78 – I just mounted a block of wood and the Tele pickup on it!
At the same time, I was playing on a bill with a band at Tony Mart’s in Ocean City, New Jersey. The band eventually became known as the Hawks – and went on to become the Band and play with Bob Dylan. The guitarist, Robbie Robertson, and I were talking and he said, “Maybe my pickup sounds fatter because I have more turns on it than yours.” I had only a vague idea what he was talking about, because I knew little about pickups at the time.
Les Paul gave you some pointers along the way as well, right?
Yeah, my uncle knew Fred Waring and Paul Whiteman, who were band leaders in the 1930s and 40s, and he eventually took notice to me liking the guitar, so I took a trip with my uncle to Atlantic City to see Les Paul and Mary Ford. After the show, we went backstage and I saw Les’ pulverizer and everything he had on his guitar. I asked Les what the pickup was and how it worked, and he told me.
Later, he talked on a radio show about how he remembers me as a little kid, coming backstage to talk to him and how I now do guitar pickups. I played a tape of the radio show for my employees.
So you started out making pickups just for yourself?
Yes, they were just for my guitars. A few years later, when I was 16 or 17, I was winding pickups with my own machine and repairing old guitars and reselling them. I sold a ’57 Strat for $35! I never imagined that a guitar would be so valuable today – I had dozens of them that I fixed and resold.
There was a place called Landis Music in Vineland, New Jersey that I’d go to after school, and in the back room there was a box full of broken guitars that people traded in – old Strats and Teles – and I started collecting parts and pickups. I would ride my bike to look for guitars that were in the trash and forgotten on Saturday afternoons. It was a great time to be able to do that.
Just by that experience, I started doing things. I went to eight grammar schools, four high schools, two sub-universities and photography schools, and it was hard being the new kid in town. But by the time I was 16 and 17, I was always the new guitar player in town, and that made it easier to socialize when moving around so much. Once you’re in a band it’s pretty easy to meet new people, and it was great. Some of my first customers were local bands from South Jersey.
Was it through these repairs that you gained an appreciation for vintage instruments?
Well, when I moved from New Jersey to Cincinnati, I did repair work for a place called Dodd Music center, but there was another store in Norwood, Ohio called Hughes Music. I’d see all these old guitar parts and once asked Mr. Hughes what he was going to do with so many maple Tele and P-bass necks. He grabbed one of the necks, turned on the bandsaw and cut the neck in three or four places. He used these pieces as starter firewood for his fireplace.
They were warranty necks because the finish was wearing off the fingerboards, and people were trading them in for new ones with rosewood fingerboards. Mr. Hughes had hundreds of necks, and walls and walls of parts. I had a newer Tele and he liked the new stuff, while I liked the older stuff, so I traded him.
The old Tele had all the old ’53 hardware and the serial number on the plate was 1835. At the age of 16, I was already very much interested in vintage. For one, you could find them at a decent price, but it wasn’t just that. Something about the older guitars just really appealed to me.
I watched Roy Buchanan play an old ’53 he called Nancy – I loved that sound. There was another band called the Fendermen who always played their blonde Teles, Strats and P-basses. These were the first bands I saw and they all played older guitars.
Seymour with Seth Lover
How were you making pickups in the early days – after the record player?
My first pickup was basically a single-coil pickup. I would cut out each pickup and each piece of flatwork one at a time. I also made a router jig, and I would route out each blank part and then drill each hole out. After making some money doing that, I bought a Roper-Whitney punch and made a fixture where I could line up each pole piece and punch out each piece one at a time. I did thousands of hole-punches in bobbins.
What was the first official pickup from the Seymour Duncan company?
Well, my first products were actually Tele pickguards and brass Tele bridges, then knobs and everything else. The first pickup was the SSL-1. We had someone call us from Nashville looking for a vintagestyle pickup – which wasn’t really being made at that point. And I started doing the SSL-1 and STL-1, which was the first Tele pickup. Then, I was doing [pickups for] Duo-Sonics, Jazz Basses and P-basses at the end of 1976 and into 1977.
We got the humbucker mold from the original Gibson molder, so we went to them and were able to get our first humbucker mold made.
Speaking of things like the original Gibson molder, you have in your possession some pretty huge pieces of electric guitar history. Can you tell us about some of these?
I have a number of pickups I received from Seth Lover. There’s a very early prototype of the Staple pickup – he made these prototypes in ‘54-‘55 and used them as a neck pickup on all the custom Les Pauls. They called it the “black beauty” or “fretless wonder.”
And then of course there’s my Holy Grail. It’s the actual pickup used for the Gibson patent, and it was given to me by Seth before he passed away. He just had it in a shopping bag; it’s fabricated like a dog-ear P-90 with the dog-ear mounting ring.
Have you ever heard it?
Oh yes, I’ve heard it. It’s actually pretty bright, but it’s because of the pole structure once it got the adjustable poles and everything.
Another one Seth just had sitting in a box was a ‘58-’59 PAF Double Cream. It’s beautiful. It was made from the old butyrate; it’s a certain grade of butyrate, but I have all the historical data on proper ingredients, temperatures and grade of butyrate that were actually used to make the pickup, and we use that in our recreations of it.
Seymour with Les Paul
How did you become friends with Seth?
I was doing NAMM shows with my partner Cathy Carter Duncan and Phil Kubicki of K and D guitars. Phil is a brilliant designer and craftsman and builds beautiful instruments.
So we were showing the K and D guitars with our pickups on them during one of these shows in 1976 – when the company was just about to start we were still doing re-winds – and some man came up to me and gave me a business card. He introduced himself as Seth Lover, the guy who invented the humbucking pickup.
Lover set the standard for everything and everyone. We instantly became great friends, and over the years I would go down to his place in Garden Grove, California. We were both into ham radios, so we talked a lot about them and even got on the air a few times and talked to some people in Japan and all over the place. That was so cool.
A lot of times we’d just sit around the kitchen table, and his wife would make tea and biscuits for us. Seth would bring out old articles about amplifiers and prototype pickups he’d done, and then he’d show me the actual pickup used in the patent of the PAF humbucker in 1955. It was pretty amazing to see the beginning of what now is one of the top pickups used by all guitar companies.
I felt very proud when he’d take me into his garage and shop. I couldn’t find anything on the workbenches, but Seth knew where everything was. He’d have boxes and boxes of transformers, and the drawers were filled with Fender parts from when he worked with Fender. The other bins would have all the Gibson parts and he’d often give me a thing here and there.
How did you get all the information on the butyrate formulas and other secrets of the pickups – directly from Seth?
Right before he passed away, he said he had some notes for me and he ended up giving me some of his notebooks with all the drawings and different plastics. I have all the sheets from the plastics that he used to make his prototypes. It’s really pretty neat to have, and some day I may publish a book with all this really cool history in it, with the drawings and everything else. I’m just so proud that he thought enough of me to pass on this history.
Jeff Beck, Seymour, Don Felder & Billy Gibbons
I also have Seth’s original winder that he made back in 1952-1953 when he was working with Gibson. It’s a little hand-winder that he would use to make his prototypes and experiments. He would hand-wind some of the prototypes, but they were eventually all machine-wound. He made all the prototypes, including the Holy Grail PAF, on this hand-winder. Last year at NAMM, some gentleman approached me and brought me Leo Fender’s original winder that Doc Kaufman used on the early lap steel K & F pickups.
The company is very proud to be associated with Seth. I was very proud to have him as one of our endorsees of the products we make here. He put his stamp of approval on our products, how we do it, the manufacturing techniques and how we make all our own parts, including bobbins. We stamp out stuff, laser-cut things, use punch machines, etc., while a lot of other pickup manufacturers buy their parts from outside sources and then assemble the parts themselves.
Who are some of the famous guitarists you’ve wound pickups for?
I’ve always really admired Jeff Beck, and when I was in England in 1972, I made a guitar called the TeleGib. It was my first JB and my first JM model. I called the bridge pickup JB for Jeff and the neck JM for John Milner, who was in American Graffiti. He had that little yellow High Boy hot rod and would drag race against Harrison Ford. This was way before I was manufacturing pickups though – these were rewinds that I had done.
I gave the TeleGib to Jeff and he used it during the last days of the BBA, and then used it on the Blow by Blow album. I actually got the chance to introduce Roy Buchanan and Jeff Beck, and for me to be able to do that was really great because they are two of my favorite guitar heroes of all time.
It was neat having Beck dedicate the Stevie Wonder cover, “Cause We’ve Ended As Lovers” to Buchanan on Blow by Blow, and then have Roy eventually dedicate a song to Beck. I grew up watching Roy Buchanan, and I was quite lucky to know him.
It has to feel good that one of your heroes created some legendary songs and tones with your creations.
I mean, it’s their talent, workmanship and tone that makes their songs really work, but when I hear Jeff’s songs he used with the TeleGib – how tasteful the sound is when he used that guitar – it’s a great feeling.
I did prototype Stack pickups for Michael Sembello for the song “Maniac,” and I worked with Buzzy Feiten when he did Full Moon. I worked with Santana in his early days, and I also did some work with Eric Johnson, who is one of my favorite players. I also worked with James Burton. When I was in England, I wound pickups for Golden Earring and they used it on their song “Radar Love.” I also did the neck pickup for Blackie, Eric Clapton’s famous Strat.
So you did all these re-windings for these guys when their other pickups went bad?
Yeah, pickups can go bad when moisture gets in through the exposed poles. I call it ICPC – Inter-Coil Pole Corrosion. It’s when the coil can actually rust and break down the insulation on the magnet wire. If you’ve ever pulled an old sixties Tele pickup that wasn’t waxed, you’d see a lot of rust around the pole pieces when you take the coil off because there are all sorts of ferrous materials in the pole pieces that can actually rust. That’s why it’s good to use the old lacquer and wax, because that’ll help to stop the moisture from permeating.
My fondest days, though, were when I rewound a bunch of old Strat pickups for Jimi Hendrix. I gave them to Roger Mayer and he put them into one of Jimi’s white Strats back in 1968. I actually rewound two sets of pickups for Hendrix. If you ever see pictures of Hendrix wearing a black brim hat with the rings on it, that’s the era I was working with him.
Actually, it’s funny – during that time, Jimi bought a ’62 or ’63 Jazzmaster, and I took photos of him with it. Two years ago, I get this call from Steven Segal asking if I knew something about a guitar he just bought from the Hendrix family – it was Jimi’s old Jazzmaster. Steven wanted to know for sure, so he came up here with his entourage, and I knew at first glance it was Jimi’s, but we compared the guitar with the photos and confirmed it.
Back in Cincinnati, I was playing at this club called the Mug Club and this guy would come in and sit with me – we were the only guys in Cincinnati (that I knew of) that could play Yardbird songs. The other guy was Joe Walsh, and this was right before he got into the James Gang. We were out there playing and we’ve been friends ever since. He actually was the one who originally got me more interested in ham radio! For me, all those guys were a lot of fun and an honor to work with.
For video interview, plus footage of rare historical pickups and inside the Seymour Duncan factory see link:
http://www.premierguitar.com/Magazine/Issue/2008/Aug/Seymour_On_Seymour.aspx
http://www.premierguitar.com/Magazine/Issue/2008/Aug/The_Pickup_King_A_Video_Interview_with_Seymour_Duncan.aspx
Seymour Duncan
seymourduncan.com
http://www.premierguitar.com/Magazine/Issue/2008/Aug/Seymour_On_Seymour.aspx
Hey, we should know this guy! He's from South Jersey, played Tony Marts in summer of '65, and then moved to Cinncinatti. Does anybody remember him? Billy Mueller, or Kurt Loder might. - BK
"At the same time, I was playing on a bill with a band at Tony Mart’s in Ocean City, New Jersey. The band eventually became known as the Hawks – and went on to become the Band and play with Bob Dylan. The guitarist, Robbie Robertson, and I were talking and he said, “Maybe my pickup sounds fatter because I have more turns on it than yours.” I had only a vague idea what he was talking about, because I knew little about pickups at the time." - Seymour Duncan.
The Complete interview:
August 2008 \ Features \ Artist Interview \ Seymour On Seymour
Seymour On Seymour
by Brett Petrusek & Rebecca Dirks
You’ve probably never run into Howard Johnson staying at one of his hotels, or talked stocks with Charles Schwab, but the beauty of the guitar industry is the visibility and accessibility of the men behind the big names. In some instances, the faces are as recognizable as the sounds they’ve worked so hard to give us. So when we see a player using an Alnico II Pro and Pearly Gates, Seymour W. Duncan’s flowing white hair and friendly visage instantly come to mind.
Perhaps it’s because working with artists’ egos leaves little room for your own, or because 30 years in business is a relatively short time to forget about the “little things,” but Seymour operates in the way you envision your favorite bands – somehow managing to be larger-than-life while retaining a friendly, open demeanor. After talking with him in his Santa Barbara home about everything from coming up in Jersey to repairing pickups for Hendrix, we think it might be that, deep down, he’s just a kid who wanted to be a rockstar – just like the rest of us.
How did you get into the pickup business?
I was about 12 or 13 years old, and someone had borrowed one of my guitars – a ’56 Telecaster – and they got the high E string wedged under the lip [of the pickup]. It was gouged into the coil, so it didn’t work and I had to play all night with just the rhythm pickup.
So the next week, I went to school and took apart the pickup in Biology class because I had microscopes, tweezers and other stuff handy. I started pulling all these fine hairs and pieces of wax off the pickup in an attempt to figure out what the problem was. I’d take the turn off and it would break again.
Because the pickup was so damaged, I ended up taking all the wire off and, luckily, my dad’s brother-in-law noticed what I was doing and helped me out. He took the magnet wire and got me a spool of 42-gauge plain enamel from Philadelphia and I started winding the pickup. My first coil machine was an actual record player that went 33 1/3, 45, and 78 – I just mounted a block of wood and the Tele pickup on it!
At the same time, I was playing on a bill with a band at Tony Mart’s in Ocean City, New Jersey. The band eventually became known as the Hawks – and went on to become the Band and play with Bob Dylan. The guitarist, Robbie Robertson, and I were talking and he said, “Maybe my pickup sounds fatter because I have more turns on it than yours.” I had only a vague idea what he was talking about, because I knew little about pickups at the time.
Les Paul gave you some pointers along the way as well, right?
Yeah, my uncle knew Fred Waring and Paul Whiteman, who were band leaders in the 1930s and 40s, and he eventually took notice to me liking the guitar, so I took a trip with my uncle to Atlantic City to see Les Paul and Mary Ford. After the show, we went backstage and I saw Les’ pulverizer and everything he had on his guitar. I asked Les what the pickup was and how it worked, and he told me.
Later, he talked on a radio show about how he remembers me as a little kid, coming backstage to talk to him and how I now do guitar pickups. I played a tape of the radio show for my employees.
So you started out making pickups just for yourself?
Yes, they were just for my guitars. A few years later, when I was 16 or 17, I was winding pickups with my own machine and repairing old guitars and reselling them. I sold a ’57 Strat for $35! I never imagined that a guitar would be so valuable today – I had dozens of them that I fixed and resold.
There was a place called Landis Music in Vineland, New Jersey that I’d go to after school, and in the back room there was a box full of broken guitars that people traded in – old Strats and Teles – and I started collecting parts and pickups. I would ride my bike to look for guitars that were in the trash and forgotten on Saturday afternoons. It was a great time to be able to do that.
Just by that experience, I started doing things. I went to eight grammar schools, four high schools, two sub-universities and photography schools, and it was hard being the new kid in town. But by the time I was 16 and 17, I was always the new guitar player in town, and that made it easier to socialize when moving around so much. Once you’re in a band it’s pretty easy to meet new people, and it was great. Some of my first customers were local bands from South Jersey.
Was it through these repairs that you gained an appreciation for vintage instruments?
Well, when I moved from New Jersey to Cincinnati, I did repair work for a place called Dodd Music center, but there was another store in Norwood, Ohio called Hughes Music. I’d see all these old guitar parts and once asked Mr. Hughes what he was going to do with so many maple Tele and P-bass necks. He grabbed one of the necks, turned on the bandsaw and cut the neck in three or four places. He used these pieces as starter firewood for his fireplace.
They were warranty necks because the finish was wearing off the fingerboards, and people were trading them in for new ones with rosewood fingerboards. Mr. Hughes had hundreds of necks, and walls and walls of parts. I had a newer Tele and he liked the new stuff, while I liked the older stuff, so I traded him.
The old Tele had all the old ’53 hardware and the serial number on the plate was 1835. At the age of 16, I was already very much interested in vintage. For one, you could find them at a decent price, but it wasn’t just that. Something about the older guitars just really appealed to me.
I watched Roy Buchanan play an old ’53 he called Nancy – I loved that sound. There was another band called the Fendermen who always played their blonde Teles, Strats and P-basses. These were the first bands I saw and they all played older guitars.
Seymour with Seth Lover
How were you making pickups in the early days – after the record player?
My first pickup was basically a single-coil pickup. I would cut out each pickup and each piece of flatwork one at a time. I also made a router jig, and I would route out each blank part and then drill each hole out. After making some money doing that, I bought a Roper-Whitney punch and made a fixture where I could line up each pole piece and punch out each piece one at a time. I did thousands of hole-punches in bobbins.
What was the first official pickup from the Seymour Duncan company?
Well, my first products were actually Tele pickguards and brass Tele bridges, then knobs and everything else. The first pickup was the SSL-1. We had someone call us from Nashville looking for a vintagestyle pickup – which wasn’t really being made at that point. And I started doing the SSL-1 and STL-1, which was the first Tele pickup. Then, I was doing [pickups for] Duo-Sonics, Jazz Basses and P-basses at the end of 1976 and into 1977.
We got the humbucker mold from the original Gibson molder, so we went to them and were able to get our first humbucker mold made.
Speaking of things like the original Gibson molder, you have in your possession some pretty huge pieces of electric guitar history. Can you tell us about some of these?
I have a number of pickups I received from Seth Lover. There’s a very early prototype of the Staple pickup – he made these prototypes in ‘54-‘55 and used them as a neck pickup on all the custom Les Pauls. They called it the “black beauty” or “fretless wonder.”
And then of course there’s my Holy Grail. It’s the actual pickup used for the Gibson patent, and it was given to me by Seth before he passed away. He just had it in a shopping bag; it’s fabricated like a dog-ear P-90 with the dog-ear mounting ring.
Have you ever heard it?
Oh yes, I’ve heard it. It’s actually pretty bright, but it’s because of the pole structure once it got the adjustable poles and everything.
Another one Seth just had sitting in a box was a ‘58-’59 PAF Double Cream. It’s beautiful. It was made from the old butyrate; it’s a certain grade of butyrate, but I have all the historical data on proper ingredients, temperatures and grade of butyrate that were actually used to make the pickup, and we use that in our recreations of it.
Seymour with Les Paul
How did you become friends with Seth?
I was doing NAMM shows with my partner Cathy Carter Duncan and Phil Kubicki of K and D guitars. Phil is a brilliant designer and craftsman and builds beautiful instruments.
So we were showing the K and D guitars with our pickups on them during one of these shows in 1976 – when the company was just about to start we were still doing re-winds – and some man came up to me and gave me a business card. He introduced himself as Seth Lover, the guy who invented the humbucking pickup.
Lover set the standard for everything and everyone. We instantly became great friends, and over the years I would go down to his place in Garden Grove, California. We were both into ham radios, so we talked a lot about them and even got on the air a few times and talked to some people in Japan and all over the place. That was so cool.
A lot of times we’d just sit around the kitchen table, and his wife would make tea and biscuits for us. Seth would bring out old articles about amplifiers and prototype pickups he’d done, and then he’d show me the actual pickup used in the patent of the PAF humbucker in 1955. It was pretty amazing to see the beginning of what now is one of the top pickups used by all guitar companies.
I felt very proud when he’d take me into his garage and shop. I couldn’t find anything on the workbenches, but Seth knew where everything was. He’d have boxes and boxes of transformers, and the drawers were filled with Fender parts from when he worked with Fender. The other bins would have all the Gibson parts and he’d often give me a thing here and there.
How did you get all the information on the butyrate formulas and other secrets of the pickups – directly from Seth?
Right before he passed away, he said he had some notes for me and he ended up giving me some of his notebooks with all the drawings and different plastics. I have all the sheets from the plastics that he used to make his prototypes. It’s really pretty neat to have, and some day I may publish a book with all this really cool history in it, with the drawings and everything else. I’m just so proud that he thought enough of me to pass on this history.
Jeff Beck, Seymour, Don Felder & Billy Gibbons
I also have Seth’s original winder that he made back in 1952-1953 when he was working with Gibson. It’s a little hand-winder that he would use to make his prototypes and experiments. He would hand-wind some of the prototypes, but they were eventually all machine-wound. He made all the prototypes, including the Holy Grail PAF, on this hand-winder. Last year at NAMM, some gentleman approached me and brought me Leo Fender’s original winder that Doc Kaufman used on the early lap steel K & F pickups.
The company is very proud to be associated with Seth. I was very proud to have him as one of our endorsees of the products we make here. He put his stamp of approval on our products, how we do it, the manufacturing techniques and how we make all our own parts, including bobbins. We stamp out stuff, laser-cut things, use punch machines, etc., while a lot of other pickup manufacturers buy their parts from outside sources and then assemble the parts themselves.
Who are some of the famous guitarists you’ve wound pickups for?
I’ve always really admired Jeff Beck, and when I was in England in 1972, I made a guitar called the TeleGib. It was my first JB and my first JM model. I called the bridge pickup JB for Jeff and the neck JM for John Milner, who was in American Graffiti. He had that little yellow High Boy hot rod and would drag race against Harrison Ford. This was way before I was manufacturing pickups though – these were rewinds that I had done.
I gave the TeleGib to Jeff and he used it during the last days of the BBA, and then used it on the Blow by Blow album. I actually got the chance to introduce Roy Buchanan and Jeff Beck, and for me to be able to do that was really great because they are two of my favorite guitar heroes of all time.
It was neat having Beck dedicate the Stevie Wonder cover, “Cause We’ve Ended As Lovers” to Buchanan on Blow by Blow, and then have Roy eventually dedicate a song to Beck. I grew up watching Roy Buchanan, and I was quite lucky to know him.
It has to feel good that one of your heroes created some legendary songs and tones with your creations.
I mean, it’s their talent, workmanship and tone that makes their songs really work, but when I hear Jeff’s songs he used with the TeleGib – how tasteful the sound is when he used that guitar – it’s a great feeling.
I did prototype Stack pickups for Michael Sembello for the song “Maniac,” and I worked with Buzzy Feiten when he did Full Moon. I worked with Santana in his early days, and I also did some work with Eric Johnson, who is one of my favorite players. I also worked with James Burton. When I was in England, I wound pickups for Golden Earring and they used it on their song “Radar Love.” I also did the neck pickup for Blackie, Eric Clapton’s famous Strat.
So you did all these re-windings for these guys when their other pickups went bad?
Yeah, pickups can go bad when moisture gets in through the exposed poles. I call it ICPC – Inter-Coil Pole Corrosion. It’s when the coil can actually rust and break down the insulation on the magnet wire. If you’ve ever pulled an old sixties Tele pickup that wasn’t waxed, you’d see a lot of rust around the pole pieces when you take the coil off because there are all sorts of ferrous materials in the pole pieces that can actually rust. That’s why it’s good to use the old lacquer and wax, because that’ll help to stop the moisture from permeating.
My fondest days, though, were when I rewound a bunch of old Strat pickups for Jimi Hendrix. I gave them to Roger Mayer and he put them into one of Jimi’s white Strats back in 1968. I actually rewound two sets of pickups for Hendrix. If you ever see pictures of Hendrix wearing a black brim hat with the rings on it, that’s the era I was working with him.
Actually, it’s funny – during that time, Jimi bought a ’62 or ’63 Jazzmaster, and I took photos of him with it. Two years ago, I get this call from Steven Segal asking if I knew something about a guitar he just bought from the Hendrix family – it was Jimi’s old Jazzmaster. Steven wanted to know for sure, so he came up here with his entourage, and I knew at first glance it was Jimi’s, but we compared the guitar with the photos and confirmed it.
Back in Cincinnati, I was playing at this club called the Mug Club and this guy would come in and sit with me – we were the only guys in Cincinnati (that I knew of) that could play Yardbird songs. The other guy was Joe Walsh, and this was right before he got into the James Gang. We were out there playing and we’ve been friends ever since. He actually was the one who originally got me more interested in ham radio! For me, all those guys were a lot of fun and an honor to work with.
For video interview, plus footage of rare historical pickups and inside the Seymour Duncan factory see link:
http://www.premierguitar.com/Magazine/Issue/2008/Aug/Seymour_On_Seymour.aspx
http://www.premierguitar.com/Magazine/Issue/2008/Aug/The_Pickup_King_A_Video_Interview_with_Seymour_Duncan.aspx
Seymour Duncan
seymourduncan.com
Little Stevie Wonder at Somers Point
Stevie Wonder played the Inagural Blast in January, and is now going to receive a special award after performing at the White House, a show that will be taped and aired on television the following night.
Back in the early 1960s, the one summer that the old Orsatti's Gateway Casino became the liquor-less Under 21 Club, Little Stevie Wonder played there.
He was still called "Little Stevie Wonder," as they billed him, and was out promoting one of his early, if not first album.
Does anyone remember that show?
Were you there?
Will anyone who was there please contact me and let me know what happened.
Also looking for photographs.
Bill Kelly
billkelly3@gmail.com
Back in the early 1960s, the one summer that the old Orsatti's Gateway Casino became the liquor-less Under 21 Club, Little Stevie Wonder played there.
He was still called "Little Stevie Wonder," as they billed him, and was out promoting one of his early, if not first album.
Does anyone remember that show?
Were you there?
Will anyone who was there please contact me and let me know what happened.
Also looking for photographs.
Bill Kelly
billkelly3@gmail.com
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