(Editor’s Note: We’re pretty excited here at cbaweb.org headquarters to be able to introduce a new Welcome columnist. Charles is one very interesting guy with a life-time (a LONG lifetime) of experiences to share. Here’s a first installment. WELCOME, CHARLES!)
Having experienced a deep-south birth and upbringing on South Georgia tenant farms (a nicer way of saying Sharecroppers:) during the depression years in the 1930s and 40s, I have a lifetime of tuning to the right radio stations for the music my family enjoyed the most. In 1938, when we finally got a tiny radio, powered by a car battery and connected to wires strung between long bamboo poles, we could begin to join the modern world. For thirty minutes each weekday, my mother, when she was free from chores, would listen to “Our Gal Sunday,” the soap opera, and on Saturdays, my sister and I were allowed to listen to the “Let’s Pretend” show for children.
However, on Saturday nights, the adults would fuss with the radio and with the antenna wires to finally get, as clearly as they could, “The Grand Ole Opry.” We would all sit around and listen, through periods of static on this powerful AM station, to the magic of beautiful music and cornball humor. Perhaps, on some of those hot summer nights I dreamed of being up there on that old Ryman Auditorium stage, stomping and sweating and picking the heck out of my guitar or banjo, but the interval between those dreams and the short journey up and onto any stage was about 70 years!
It was a long time before I thought about how the skills of those musicians and singers were developed, but I recall that even then, what appealed to me most was the clarity of the banjo and the sweet harmony of the groups such as the Carter family. The harmony had a down-to-earth country roughness which was ironically quite crystal pure! In those days and times, there were relatively few country stations such as WSM in Nashville and its Grand Ole Opry, for national audiences searching for country music.
In the South and West, however, small country and Bluegrass bands were staples of local radio, and later television, stations. (I remember “The Sons of the Golden West” in Savannah and years later “Clyde Barefoot Chesser and His Texas Village Boys” in Temple, Texas) Although popular in rural America, Country music was mostly ignored in the North until becoming more popular in later years.
Those were the early AM Radio days. However, everywhere one turns today, there continues to be master banjo pickers dominating their moments on stage, from tiny kids (Don’t you just hate that kid and his two brothers?) to old guys like me. There are young and old fiddlers, and a world full of natural singers who sing so sweetly you just want to grab your guitar, mandolin or harmonica and get right up there with them.
But how did the pickers of old and today get started and how did they get so good? The answer is almost always the same: practice, practice, practice! Except for the savants, the answer is desire, determination and hard work, over a long time for most of them. I knew this, and yet I thought that since I had been listening to good country and Bluegrass music since the 1930s, (on tiny, scratchy old AM radios) it would be easier for me. Not true! Let me tell you about my hard rock, bare-knuckle education into learning an instrument.
I sure has heck knew better! I had gone through this scene with my wife many times before, and I knew the outcome would be months of hard work for me and a year’s worth of self-satisfaction in my partner of many years. As soon as I heard the words slip from my tongue, I gasped and muttered, Oh no, what have I done? What I am trying to get to is how I came to be lugging a twenty pound banjo to Sonoma for a Saturday of picking and singing, and how I came to love every minute of it!
You see, what I had said to my wife quite casually that particular morning not so long ago was something like, “I think I might like to learn to play the banjo.” That afternoon when I got home I found in the living room a rented banjo, the classic Earl Scruggs banjo book and five lessons from The Fifth String, in San Francisco. Knowing me, she had struck quickly!
I should have known what would happen. I had had several incidents in our past to suggest that I was in for it. There was that time in Hawaii, as I was completing the last three years of a 22-year Military career when I glanced across the fence where a military flying club at Wheeler Air Force Base offered instruction. I casually mentioned that I thought I would like to learn to fly. Next day, she handed me a flight book, several slide-rule type instruments and a receipt for five flying lessons.
And that’s how I found myself a few weeks later looking down from that tiny Cessna into the deep blue Pacific Ocean somewhere between Honolulu and Maui on my first solo cross-country flight. As I say, I could cite other examples. Should have known!
Well, I plodded through the banjo lessons and the book, turned in the rental for a pretty good banjo and spent a year trying to improve upon my plink-a-plink….all on my own. Then I put the contrary thing in a closet and went back to my life. A few years ago, I picked it up, played around with making it sound a little better with new strings and a better tuning process…and learned a couple of robotic rolls. Then I decided to take it with me to our annual teacher retreat, knowing that Charles Rooney, a close friend and fellow teacher, would have brought his guitar. Within a few minutes of picking and watching his progressions, I was doing a pretty good impression of banjoing!
We began to bring our instruments to school and would get together in our free time. The computer teacher found us out and said she wanted to join our “band.” We agreed, if she’d learn the mandolin. Pretty soon, we actually had something like a band going, with regular practice sessions in the school’s music rooms (It was the classroom of Anita Harmon, our present lead singer/guitarist/banjo picker).
One day, a group of students who had been sneaking in to listen, asked us to play for their celebration at the Bottom of the Hill in San Francisco. Needing a name, we researched and found Seldom Heard Bluegrass Band was just pretentious enough and was not being used…and just took it. (There is a “Seldom HERD Bluegrass Band” somewhere) Later, Charles Rooney’s wife, Maureen, a good Piano and accordion player, decided to “take up” the fiddle (Talk about ambitious!) and join us. Earlier this year, we managed through some sleight of hand to pick up John Karsmeyer, an all-everything musician who brought tons of new sparkle and humor to the band. We have our eye on a bass guitar player who is going to join us at least temporarily when we meet next time.
We pick and choose what we want to play, and ignore everything else. We did come to realize that we were more country than Bluegrass, but we carry on, not being too ambitious about big venues or hitting the big time. Recently, we did a fund-raising gig for a wonderful Mill Valley Church membership who do great things for seniors and the homeless, holding our own with much better-known groups. So, last week, Lee (my wife) and I, Anita Harmon, and John Karsmeyer made our pleasant journey up to the Sonoma home of Charles and Maureen Rooney and began our routine of gossiping picking and singing, sharing a marvelous lunch, picking and singing again, dessert, visiting, and finally, making plans for our next meeting…then sharing hugs and wistful goodbyes.
I have not mastered anything so far, and I’m not that comfortable with my status as a picker and singer, but I get a lot of support from those around me who are good at the job and are way more comfortable. Anyhow, for what it’s worth, that’s how this one guy got through the process. I’m sure there are as many stories as there are pickers and singers. I just hope all of them are having as much fun as I am. (PS: I finally did upgrade to my Deering Sierra, and hope someday to be worthy of it.)
