Gracie Annette Brack Williams

Celebration of Life, Tuesday Dec. 18, 2007, 11 am., Bethany Lutheran Church, Forestville, Maryland.

I must have made five hundred trips to Cleveland, Ohio through the decades and ninety percent of the destinations ended up at 841 Linn Drive in Glenville. My vehicles could make the drive without me, they knew the route through those mean streets so well.

I had my own set of keys to the building and occasionally Grandad and Annette would be out when I arrived; no problem. I think they married in 1969; if I recall, they met in Charleston, West Virginia and played cards with Tom and Roberta Watkins, Grandad's long friends.

I often wonder how they stayed so happily together in that tiny, two bedroom apartment? I guess when the price is right, you make do with your surroundings. Grandad was the building superintendent, trading his maintenance and management skills for the rent and didn't dent his meager miner's pension with housing expense.

But the apartment space was so close they had to utilize every square inch to store a lifetime of collectibles. I remember that the closet in the guest room was full of extra suits, dresses, hats, scrapbooks, sewing equipment, the sweeper, extra canned and boxed goods. The drawers of the dresser were crammed with tools, papers and general stuff.

Even though the kitchen wasn't as big as a minute, there was room for a China cabinet for her collectible glassware items, a large fridge, an electric range and a table by the window that would seat three, if forced to. Many of my favorite moments on this Earth were spent in that humble twenty-four square feet of yellow painted wall space.

The foods that were served in the Williams' kitchen had soul. Cornish game hens, ham, capon and an occasional chicken were baked under those glowing elements, as well as packages of dinner rolls and tins biscuits. Mashed potatoes, eggs, potatoes and onions, bacon, green beans, peas and gravies came to life on the top of the range.

I never learned the recipe for the sweet tea that Annette served; nothing I have tasted in this world rivaled its mellow flavor. Now that I know that she has passed on, I'm starting to get teary, for I shall never fill another eight ounce glass with that wonderful blend of Lipton, sugar and lemon.

My tastebubs have memories of moist turkey dressing, slices of white meat and potatoes swimming in perfectly prepared gravy. Green bean with the smoked taste of a salty ham, sweet potatoes and candied yams to died for. Rolls and soft tubs of margarine, dreaded trips to the neighborhood market, because the meal wouldn't be right unless we had cranberry sauce. Wheaties, ripe bananas, toast from a vintage toaster, grape jelly...

In that space at 841 Linn Drive, I would feel no guilt about having, seconds and just a dab of thirds. For me, soul foods delivered there were like nowhere else. Tony Bennett's heart is in San Francisco, but God knows that mine is in Glenville in my grandpeople's greasy kitchen.

I remember the summer of 2003 was Bob and Annette's last on Linn Drive. The building was not the same strong building as when Grandad inherited its upkeep in 1969. I had gone up for a Cleveland Rockers basketball game in August and when I pulled into the parking lot on Prospect Street, the lot attended told me that the game had been canceled because the power in the city had gone down.

I made a risky beeline (no traffic signals) to Linn Drive, because that August day was stiflingly hot. When I arrived, it took two sweltering hours to talk the old folks into packing an overnight bag and coming south to Columbus or at least to a local motel in the suburbs, where there might be electricity and air conditioning.

We, and the thousands of other victims of a power outage that blanketed the Midwest, East Coast and parts of Canada, drove for three hours, before we got to the nearest available motel in Ashland, Ohio, eighty miles south of Cleveland. I got two rooms and we were comforted. We got up the next morning and power had been restored, so we drove back to Glenville.

With grateful heart, I am thankful for the years that Grandad and Annette comforted and loved each other and the many miles that they traveled safely on the highways visiting friends, attending school reunions, church functions, attending funerals and family holidays. Their favorites were Memorial Day, to decorate the graves of her loved ones in West Virginia, the Gary District High School Reunions and the Pig Roast and Family Days in Plain City, Ohio. They would gather up a carload of the Cleveland Family and strike out for a long day trip to the country and the fellowship of our extended Frazier Family.

When they stopped coming to the Pig Roast during the 2001 Labor Day, I knew that Father Time had caught up with them. But Bob and Annette Williams sure gave the Old Guy a great run, staying active well into their eighties. Perhaps their time together in heaven be full of friends, card games, soulful meals and nice cars. I hope so.

Bright moments from your loving grandboy,

Arnett

Margaret Ann Haney, 1938-2007

"Arnett,
Please accept my sympathy for the lost of your mentor. On June 4, I lost one of my mentors and good friend, Truman Greenwood. He had turned ninety in January. My amount of history about the American Native Indian was increased by him. I learned so much about life and how to treat people from him. I really miss Truman but he was a Christian so I hope to meet him later.

Margaret Haney"

It is time to memorialize my great friend and educator Margaret Ann (Marge) Haney, who made the transition to her heavenly pneuma, Monday, October 16, 2007, 9 pm., while the rest of us were watching Cleveland and Boston's playoff baseball war. Ralph Smucker saw her during lunch earlier that day at Panera Bread on Avery Road and said she had her usual healthy glow and infectious joy.

Her daughter, Stephanie Gerckens , said she got a call from her in the early evening that she was ill and Stephanie rushed over to the family house on Rings Road. She said Marge was pale, out of breath and told her she thought she was having a heart attack. The squad arrived and she was conscious and alert enough to answer medical questions about allergies and to tell Stephanie she loved her, but when the Washington Township Squad arrived at Riverside Methodist Hospital, she became completely pale and went into cardiac arrest.

Stephanie witnessed the hospital's huge emergency trauma team work aggressively to try to restore her heartbeat, but the tremendous efforts weren't successful and Marge was declared dead at 9 pm. I witnessed the Riverside team perform those same acts on my father, George Howard, in January, 1994, with the same results. We deliver our loved one's into God's Hands.

"Always read stuff that will make you look good if you die in the middle of it.
Margaret Haney"

Marge Haney and I met in September, 1960, at Plain City Elementary School, where according to Ralph, she was a twenty-year-old, first-year teacher and Ralph and I were ten-year-old, first-year fifth graders. The Yankees were in the 1960 World Series against the Pirates and Bill Mazeroski hit a homer in the bottom of the ninth to win the for Pittsburgh. My heart was broken, because Elston Howard, the Yankees catcher, was my fantasy uncle and Mrs. Haney put up with my imagination that he was my relative.

1960 was a crossroads year for me because it was the year I began formal music training in piano and trumpet and three educators, starting their first seasons in Plain City schools that fall, Shirley Cox, Ray Starrett and Marge Haney. They all got behind me and gave me a big shove. Thanks to them, my life has been always fast forward.

Marge spent her life as an educator in the Plain City Schools and a church person at St. John's Lutheran in her beloved Amlin, Ohio, a tiny, traditional farming community in Northwest Franklin County. Beginning in 1988, I would come back annually into the Plain City schools to do concert and she would be around to hug me and share her pride that her boy had grown up to be a noted musician and community person.

"Thanks, I appreciate your kindness. Have a good time when you go to Florida.
Margaret Haney"

In 1996, I saw her and best friend/cousin, Betty Patch, at the Dublin Metro Fitness Club where they exercised. When she told me of her upcoming retirement as the curriculum supervisor for Jonathan Alder Schools, I told her that her retirement gift from me was a trip to Jamaica on my fall tour. So happy she was when we landed with a large group of friends and I was able to show her my second home, Negril, and take her to White Hall School. I introduced her to the school's principal, Mrs. Murray, and the two educators bonded.

Marge went on the next trip to Jamaica in 1998 and in 2002, we went to New Orleans, where I introduced her to my favorite city and the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival. She loved to travel and sent me cards from some of her other worldwide excursions.

"Birthdays are good for you. The more you have, the longer you live.
Margaret Haney"

Over the past couple of years we have shared together my greatest passion, besides music, women's college basketball. In January, 2006, we met over at Ohio State's Value City Arena and watched our Buckeyes fight a furious war against Oklahoma, with the Buckeye's turning the tables and winning the the final minute. That night she turned into an active fan and this past January we got together to potluck with Bill and Kathy Dancey to watch the Buckeyes and Sooners game broadcast from Norman, Oklahoma, with the same results; the Sooners played their hearts out, but the Buckeyes took home the win.

I hope she followed my 2007 Fortieth Anniversary Tour through the e-mails that I sent as I played all over Ohio and I trust that her spirit was with us as Bill Dancey and I traveled to Detroit to watch the professional women's teams play in the summer league.

I speak for thousands of her students and even more of her friends and family; WHAT A BLESSING IT IS TO HAVE MARGARET ANN HANEY IN MY LIFE!

"I am glad that you honor your friends. M. Haney"

Tuskegee Airmen at Lockbourne Air Base, 1946-49

During the winter 2007 I got a call from Connie Tracy, public relations administrator for the Columbus Regional Airport Authority (CRAA). Since I am weak for Connie, I let her take me to lunch at the Concourse Hotel and over a turkey rueben sandwich, she conned me into doing months of work for no pay, no expenses and I would have to pay for my own supplies. What a deal; how could I say no?

The request that Connie had was to document a history of the legendary Tuskegee Airmen during the three years that the Black airmen were stationed at Lockbourne Air Base, beginning in May, 1946. I had done a previous project with Connie and CRAA to commemorate the seventy-fifth anniversary of Port Columbus International Airport in 2004 and she latched onto my passion for aviation history.

This was an invitation that was easy to get excited about, since I had started to accumulate bits of the Lockbourne Air Base saga from musicians and retirees that I had met, who had shared with me first hand stories of their journeys to Columbus from the South to become a part of the postwar Air Force. Those Tuskegee/Lockbourne alumni included trombonist Art Baskerville, flight controller Arthur Boudreaux, Ohio Chapter Tuskegee President Bob Peebles and bomber pilot Herdon "Don" Cummings.
I had captured, some years, before a videotape that was a PBS broadcast featuring Ivory (Ike) Mitchell and Willie Ruff, the musical Mitchell-Ruff Duo, that had their beginnings as very young airmen in 1947. This video, on mentoring, told the story of a young airmen being taught music by an older airman and it included photographs and films, with commentary, to illustrate what Lockbourne was like during the late 1940s, “A Sepia Mecca unto itself rising on the Southern Ohio landscape.”

I began my travels into this time machine by calling on my fellow historians Jeff Darbee and Nancy Recchie, husband and wife owners of Benjamin D. Rickey and Company, a consulting firm on historic preservation. They had vacationed in 2001 at Maxwell Air Force Base, in Alabama and spent their time searching the archives of the Air Force Historical Research Agency for documents, photographs and squadron reports of the Black airmen during the heyday of racially segregated Army Air Corps, 1941 to 1949,

After months of juggling our schedules, I met with the Darbee-Recchie Family and they produced the box of pages, pictures, discs and slides that had sat in their basement since a February, 2002 Columbus Historical Society presentation that Jeff gave to show slides and introduce the under-publicized story. I looked through the box, separating pages from the images, hoping that I would be trusted to take the images with me to scan and then use imaging software to enhance.

They did allow me to take the box of media home with me, but it sat for the summer, untouched because of my fortieth anniversary tour and big obligations to the 2007 Lancaster Festival. My calendar opened up in early August and I got to the work of scanning, enhancing, printing and sorting over three hundred images, in hopes of producing a book to be introduced at the 2007 Air Show, Gathering of Mustangs and Legends, September 27-30, 2007 at Lockbourne/Rickenbacker Air Base.


I also found time to get some days in at the Columbus Main Library, where the Microfiche Department had reels containing the Ohio State News, the publication that featured news of Black Ohioans during the war years. In three longs days I was able to look at Lockbourne news, from the speculation in January, 1946 that Lockbourne was going become a Negro base full of “troublemakers” to the “death march” that greeted a winning gunnery team when they returned from an Air Force competition in May, 1949. The in-between years had news about Col. Benjamin O. Davis, Jr. and his "tight ship”, visits from military dignitaries, staff promotions, weddings, track meets, radio model contests, air shows, Army Day parades, football games, visiting bands, special holiday concerts in local clubs, bridge games, the NCO Club, the debut of the Operation Happiness Show at Memorial Hall, arrests, auto and airplane accidents and airmen’s last rites.

I began printing pictures and gathering caption information to add color to the sixty year old images, many of which were shot by base photographer Sgt. Bernard Hale. I entered names into search engines, used magnifying lenses to get info from the prints and the slides that were photographs of squadron reports with pictures stapled to them.

Aside from the well-documented hero and base commander, Col. Davis, a most fascinating personality unearthed from the Darbee’s photo treasures was Lt. Willard W. "Chip” Savoy, the base public relations officer from Washington, D.C. The database search produced a book title under Lt. Savoy’s authorship, Alien Land; a 1949 publication about a man of light complexion who is pressured by the two racial identities that he exists in. I found an original copy on Amazon.com and it arrived in my mailbox in suprisingly good condition for being printed fifty-eight years previous. I also made contact with his daughter, Dr. Lauret Savoy, an educator at Mt. Holyoke College in South Hadley, Massachusetts.

Another interesting Lockbourne officer was Major Vance H. Marchbanks, Lockbourne Army Air Base Surgeon, who was well loved by his fellow airmen because of his skill at keeping them healthy. Later in his military career he played an important role at National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) in the 1960s. When Marine Lt. John Glenn circled the earth in the Friendship 7 capsule, becoming the first American to orbit the earth in space, Marchbanks monitored Glenn’s respiration, pulse, temperature and heartbeat from a base in Kano, Nigeria. Colonel Marchbanks became a pioneer in the field of aeromedical research and later, aerospace medicine.

Then there was the beautiful photo of Lt Allen G. Lane, adjutant of the 100th Fighter Squadron, from Demopolis, Alabama, forced to bail out of his plane set afire by flak bursts over Italy during January, 1944. In early 1949, while returning to Lockbourne from a cross country training flight, his P-47 fighter's engine failed and he died on impact. I found the news story that documented his accident and the young family that was left to grieve him as a hero.

I finished the last of eighty-five display prints on a quality, archival paper on September, 18, 2007. The next day I went into the dry mounting shop with Bruce and Jan Warner, fellow members of the Columbus Historical Society, and in four hours we prepared the prints for exhibition. The exhibition will be at the Gathering of Mustangs and Legends 2007, a four day aviation show, September 27-30th, that is a reunion of one hundred P-51 fighter planes and the legendary men and women pilots that flew them to victory during World War Two.

So thanks to Connie Tracy’s request to take an all-expenses unpaid trip through time, I have delighted in renewing the lost legacy of Lockbourne Air Base, the Black commanding officer and his Air Force. Col. Davis’ ship was run so tight that it put wheels in motion to integrate the U.S. Air Force, the U.S. Military and eventually alert American life to the talents of the well-trained Tuskegee Airmen and America’s people of color.

The Soul Superbs, 1973

Earnest “Pepper” Reed, a phenomenal guitarist, and I had been rehearsing with some band in the spring of 1973, when he suggested that we rehearse with the Soul Superbs. They were a band based in Columbus’ Southfield neighborhood and in June, 1973, all of the players were just graduates of Marion Franklin High School.
We rehearsed at saxophonist Chris Powell’s home; he and drummer Anthony Ludaway shared the leadership of the band. Other members included Larry Farris, bass, Bobby Payton, guitar and Frankie Justice, vocals, along with Billy Taylor who was the road manager.
After a few rehearsals, the band was preparing for a road trip to Rock Island, Illinois to perform for a week at Woody’s Magic Room. Woody was the Black entrepreneur in the famed railroad town and his business complex included a restaurant, liquor carryout and lounge. We drove eight or more hours across Ohio, Indiana and Illinois to get to the Quad Cities of Moline, East Moline, Rock Island and Davenport, Iowa.
In 1973, bands were working six nights a week in night clubs and hotel lounges. Our material was current rhythm and blues, with a heavy accent on Parliment-Funkadelic music from the album America Eats Its Young. After a week in Rock Island, we journeyed in our two cars and U-Hall trailer to Grand Rapids, Michigan to play at the Golden Glow, a nightclub in the Black section of town. Instead of staying in a Motel Six (when the price was six dollars nightly), the club owner rented us a house that he owned for one hundred twenty-five dollars for the week.
One of my fondest memories was meeting Laurie Smith, a bartender at the Glow and we became companions for the week that the Soul Superbs played there. She was Hispanic and after the club date she would take me to the Acapulco Cafe and we would get heaping plates of rich Mexican cuisine. Laurie was also quite a beauty.
I traveled with the Superbs from June to January, 1974 and we made gigs in Virginia, West Virginia, Kentucky, Indiana, Wisconsin, Iowa and Michigan. The highlights were Haywood’s Hotel in White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia, Evansville, Indiana, Des Moines, Iowa and Bluefield, West Virginia.
There were some very low times also; getting stiffed for our weekend pay in Des Moines and having to stay in a flea bag hotel, driving from Beloit, Wisconsin to Beckley, West Virginia, getting slowed down by fog on the West Virginia Turnpike and missing the gig. The road life was full of broken vehicles, greasy food, drinking, drugs and sexually transmitted diseases. However the music business can truly be a university with the lessons that are learned as a young musician travels from state to state.

Westerville Mark Twain Rock and Roll Summer Camp

Monday, August 13th, Day One; We met at 9 am. in Mr. Harvey’s music room, at Mark Twain Elementary School in Westerville, Ohio, introduced ourselves and I sang a song that I wrote with Lancaster, Ohio kids in 2004 called A Kid Beyond Compare, which contains a line, “Right out of my mouth flies a big, fat, fish story, smellin’ up there air.”
On the chalk board I wrote the line, “I woke up this morning with a song in my head.” I passed out rhyming dictionaries and instructed them to find the word “bed.” We worked an hour and finished two verses, before Dr. Scott Ebbrecht arrived with snacks and water.
After snacks we pulled percussion instruments from the shelf and began doodling, before I organized a call and response exercise that gave everyone to have an opportunity to be leader. Afterwards, I solicited song ideas and the subject of the circus came to the forefront. Several of the kids had seen Cirque du Soliel and we consulted our rhyming dictionaries while we developed The Circus, with sixteen lines and a repeated chorus.
Tuesday, August 14th, Day Two; I brought my recording equipment and explained to them how a professional musician’s discipline works when they are recording, respecting the microphones and the need for quiet to engineer a good recording. We recorded the chorus to With a Song in My Head, then finished three additional verses. After the snack break we recorded a tambourine call and response, with the students imitating my beats with their favorite percussion instruments.
I then had them rehearse singng the song about the circus, before I decided that they weren’t responding well to the melody. I recorded the class singing the chorus several times. Afterwards, I recorded Aidan Iannarino playing his wooden flute, before giving each person a chance to solo on percussin instruments before the microphones. A photographer from the Westerville News and Public Opinion came in to shoots for forty excellent images.
Wednesday, August 15th, Day Three; When everyone arrived and we warmed our voices and bodies up, I made them a gift of Hohner plastic kazoos and gave them instruction as to how the instrument made music. It is a challenge to teach a kazoo, an instrument whose best noise is a result of a nasal hum; kids naturally want to blow.
After they got the hang and before the cheap instruments were unusable, the kazoo choir recorded With a Song in My Head and The Circus. Since the music store only had seven kazoos for my eight students, I had to get two plastic, siren whistles. Austin Ebbrecht took a liking to the whistle and offered a unique “beat box” way of making the toy musical. I recorded him rapping with his new whistle, while several of us clapped along and the goods are entitled Mouth Noise 2. He also played a solo piano piece, reminding us of the native Indian culture.
In one of my previous kids recording workshops I had the student record unique body sounds, but this group couldn’t distinguish itself with “arm blats” or hand whistles. However, Aiden, moved to the microphone with distinctive chirp that I thought warranted saving for posterity (Mouth Noise 1).
With a half hour remaining in our session, I wrote the title, Mark Twain Rock and Roll Summer Camp, on the blackboard and passed out rhyming books to solicit help with a song to immortalize Dr. Ebbrecht’s idea of the first Westerville music camp for elementary students. The song came together before we adjourned for the day.
At my home, I work eight straight hours to polish and paste the recording snippets of voices, kazoos, melodic and percussive instruments into eight acceptably finished products. I e-mailed two demo recordings to Dr. Ebbrecht and he responded, “Arnett, once again you impress me! Wonderful stuff ... my twins really enjoyed listening to it with big smiles on their faces. You are sure are doing great stuff with our kids! Can't wait to share with the
principals in the district.”
Thursday, August 16th, Day Four; I assembled playback equipment and introduced the students to their new recordings. We analyzed each of the eight recordings and got opinions about improvement and after an hour and a half, I polled each student and all but two gave the overall project two thumbs up; one student said he needed three thumbs and the other is excited about the camp, but is a late bloomer with his appreciation skills.
I gave the kids templates to design their own disc labels, and after the prototypes were drawn and colored satisfactorily, I gave them label paper to execute their own designs.
Friday, August 17th, Day Five; The assembly process begins; discs are burned, labels are carefully applied, sleeves and j cards are printed, cut and folded. Each student gets to complete the product that started with a blank page and a rhyming dictionary Monday morning, as I guide hands to applying the labels to the discs and jewel boxes and inserting the labels. We finish with a group autograph session and photo.
Hopefully the next generation of musical artists will be launched from this intensive experienced; I was as a young musician being mentored by teachers in the 1960s. Thanks to Dr, Scott Ebbrecht and the families who have made an investment in their children’s growth as musicians and artists.

Arnett Howard, musician, educator

Rock and Roll campers: Aidan Iannarino, Mia Iannarino, Ava Iannarino, Joe Bugenstein, Jack Funderburg, Tristan Rice, Austin Ebbrecht, Nick Fratianne

Arnett's Capital University Years, 1968-70

Bexley, Ohio’s Capital University, in the late sixties, was a campus about to make a major transition, coinciding with the final year of Dr. Harold Yochum’s presidency. I became a freshman in the fall of 1968 and one of the campus traditions of this small Lutheran college, founded in 1876, included mandatory chapel attendance early on Monday and Wednesday mornings.
As I look back on those days, nearly forty years ago, I can see the blessing of mandatory chapel services; it brought the entire student and faculty body together in a place where you could meet regularly and become friends with your fellow students. Very soon in the year, a group of us identified our common interests; sex, drugs, rock and roll, as well as protest against the rapidly unpopular war in Southeast Asia.
Our coed fraternity became known as The Freaks. We had free thinking faculty members to whom we were drawn to help cultivate our countercultural interests. The soundtrack to our social experiments including groups like Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention, Joe Cocker, Blind Faith, John Mayall’s Blues Band, Jimi Hendrix, Janice Joplin, Canned Heat and of course, The Beatles during their final days.
The university seemed to embrace our student activism by bringing in controversial speakers like Madelyn Murray O’Hair, the famed atheist, freeing classes on the days of the national antiwar moratoriums, allowing the first campus parties with alcoholic beverages and coed dorm visitations. One of the biggest surprises in official university blessings was when our Freak fraternity was given a university house to serve as a coffee house, complete with an upright piano, a refrigerator and four bedrooms.
I remember visiting the coffee house one Friday evening and seeing a blazing guitarist that I had never notice on campus before. Don Chakeres was an Upper Arlington native, majoring in chemistry and he had a guitar style that was later to be popularized by jazz guitarist Al Dimeola. We found common ground playing the blues and Beatles hits and when the new school year started in 1969, we became inseparable.
I remember Don’s brother, Dave, was a bassist, his pal, Frank Pierce was an excellent drummer and we worked up an act with David Papke, who was abandoning his Simon and Garfunkel repertoire for original songs. We played constantly in rotating ensembles of different sizes, personnel and soon jammin’ became more important to me than maintaining my track in the conservatory. By the end of my fourth semester at Capital, my grades were in such a spiral that I was called before Dean Roland Sedgewich’s academic review board, where I offered my resignation, rather than being dismissed as a student.
It broke my father’s confidence in me when I admitted that I had quit as a student and I got a job working as a nurses aide at Columbus State Institute, a state mental institution. I worked the overnight shift, would come back to the Capital campus, sleep in Dave Papke’s room, audit some classes and get together with the gang to make more rockin' music.
Don Chakeres married Linda Miller in June, 1970 and I played Bye, Bye Blackbird at their wedding ceremony at First Community Church. Their wedding reception at the OSU Faculty Club was one of the most memorable parties of my first twenty years; the Greeks, the Italians and the Hippies letting it all hang out in celebration.

Arnett's First Musical Days, 1960

In the early 1960’s, before interstate highways were built, Robert Williams, my grandad and best friend, and I often motored U.S. Route Forty-Two north to visit his Aunt Millie Bookman in Cleveland. The only time that we came close to meeting our maker (and it was very close), I missed reporting a stop sign as we intersected Ohio Route Thirty-Seven in Delaware. A gasoline tanker bounced to a sudden stop to avoid broadsiding us; close, but no smoke.
During our visits to Northeast Ohio, we included a stop in Twinsburg Heights, a rural community where Uncle Al Turner, my grandad’s brother-in-law, was raising his children, Robert, Fannie, Gail and Carol Ann, following his wife, Willie Mae’s death. On the way home from one trip, Uncle Al put a field drum and a jazz guitar into the Plymouth for my brother and I to play, since his kids didn’t seem to have musical interests.
These instruments became among the first in the Howard Brother’s collection, to be joined by an upright piano, a bass drum, xylophone, bugle and a host of musical noise making toys. The bulk of the instruments came from the attic of Cornetta Palmer, a church woman whose husband had been a drummer during the jazz age of the 1920’s and ‘30’s.
The bugle was a gift from my neighbor and big brother, Billy Leftwich. He used to blow bugle calls from his porch during the summer of 1960 and that sound burned so deep that I eventually begged Billy for the bugle and with his guidance, I taught myself the calls.
I got my first formal lessons from our pastor’s wife, Mary Liggins, who taught Gerald and I introductory piano that summer of 1960. It took a year to get through Teaching Little Fingers To Play and while we were learning, our mother was teaching her fingers too. We had just started book two when Mom ceased our lessons, apparently frustrated that our exploding passion for little league baseball was destroying her investment in our training.
But my brothers and I kept the ear shattering racket going in the basement, playing along with her tape recorder, listening to WVKO Radio, singing, learning lyrics and harmony, absorbing everything musical. I began to be noticed in school music classes; I raised my hand when my teacher, Shirley Cox, asked, “Whose got that deep voice out there?”
Ray Starrett began instructing instrumental music for Plain City Schools in the fall of 1960 and I was eager to be his fifth grade trumpet student at aged ten. He was confident enough in my progress by aged twelve to allow me to switch from trumpet to the baritone horn; an instrument that I heard solo on a boogie piece called Time Out For A Jam Session. I had to switch back to trumpet in the eighth grade because he needed a strong, first chair, lead trumpeter for the Plain City Junior High School Band. That year I wrote my first chart and was featured in the spring concert on my arrangement of the hit Alley Cat.
When I went to Jonathan Alder High School in the fall of 1964, a lack of seniority forced me to sit with the third trumpets for the football and concert season. But early in my sophomore year, I was apprenticing with the upperclassmen in the lead section, playing selections from Broadway shows like South Pacific, overtures to operas, concert band repertoire, dixieland medleys and in the trio of trumpets on Bugler’s Holiday.
The kids in our Frazier Estates neighborhood had formed a band by 1965 and I was leading with my trumpet and voice. The first group, The Soul Internationals, included my brother Gerald on guitar, Doug Yoder on bass, Richard Madry on tenor saxophone, Chuck and Debbie Davidson on drums and piano. We rehearsed James Brown songs, The Four Tops and Temptations, Otis Redding, etc. Uncle Bill Chapman, an announcer on WVKO, used his connections to get us mentions on the radio and appearances at teen dances with the Belmont Youth Club.
In the early summer of 1967, I was appearing on stage at Columbus’ Veteran’s Memorial Auditorium as a screaming teen in Bye, Bye Birdie, with Gene “Bat Masterson” Barry, singer Arlene Fontana, comedian Totie Fields and Ted “Lurch” Cassidy. Fellow teen Andy Robinson and I were the biggest hams of the entire company, singing and playing the Righteous Brothers at every party or rehearsal break. I cherished that entrance into show business; becoming an adopted son to Totie Fields and George Johnson, her husband/music director. She died two summers later, losing her inspiring bout with cancer.
I became a paid, professional musician, July 21, 1967, seven weeks before my seventeenth birthday.

Arnett, 1968, The Dave Workman Blues Band, Capital University

In the late spring of 1968, less than a year after my professional beginnings, I was about to start gigging with my third professional group, the Dave Workman Blues Band. Hank Fisher, leader of the Metronomes, called me to tell me about a new band that was rehearsing and he wanted me to be a part of the horn section.
Hank and I arrived on the westside of Columbus one after school, at the home of organist Tom Collins and the rehearsal assembled a very talented group of young players. Tom was a senior in high school, but he was a devotee of jazz organist Jimmy Smith. The solid drummer was Andy Smith, who was an alumni of the Grayps, an Arlington rock band. Pat Geany was bassist with the psychedelic sensations, The Four O’Clock Balloon. The horn line was made up of Hank on alto sax and vocals, Neil Gadous, tenor sax, Vaughn Weister, trombone and me on trumpet. A smokin’ rhythm section and four horns.
The guitarist and namesake of the new group was Dave Workman, a worshiper of B.B., Albert and Freddie King. Dave, a Worthington, Ohio brat, had become a star in the mid-1960s when the British Invasion hit and his band, The Dantes, started carrying the early Rolling Stones flag and they had a local hit, Can’t get Enough of Your Love. Dave could play his wicked sounding guitar by stealing everything he could from the King boys.
We started covering the best blues songs, The Laundromat Blues, Crosscut Saw, Sweet Sixteen, Hideaway, Born Under a Bad Sign and occasionally we’d stray into jazz territory with themes like Bluesette and songs from the new Blood, Sweat and Tears group, formed by Al Kooper or Chicago Transit Authority. James Brown got covered (Lickin’ Stick) and within two weeks of rehearsal, we had booked an appearance at Valley Dale, other halls and clubs around the Capitol City.
By the summer a new club, Mr. Frankie's, opened just east of Nelson Road on East Main Street and the Workman Blues Band made a name within weeks of packing in hippies and serious musc fans there. We even got an invitation to go north to Chipawa Lake in Lodi, Ohio, to be a part of a weekend rock festival and we shared the stage with the Blues Magoos.
During a July week at Mr. Frankie’s, I got playful on stage, as Dave was taking a guitar solo, and I put a piece of ice on the back of his neck. He reacted by cursing, bashing me in the face with the neck of his guitar and stomping off stage. I finished singing the song and leaped off stage to continue the battle off stage, but I was restrained from beating on Dave by Hank. I finished the week, but was replaced the next week by trumpeter Lee Savory.
I claim to be the first person fired from the Dave Workman Blues Band. The band continued for at least two decades around the Columbus area, bringing in legendary musicians like Willie Pooch, Bili Turner, Vince Andrews, Steve Burkey and others. Dave still makes music in San Francisco and his blues band was the high point of an era that finished the late 1960s.
I started Capital University, September 6, 1968, on my eighteenth birthday. My first classes were in the Conservatory of Music and, despite not having private lessons, I had pretty good chops in piano, trumpet and music theory. What was missing was my ability to sight read music, a definite advantage when in the competition of a noted music school.
I had plans of becoming a music educator and one day having a great high school marching band. However, no one informed me that the university didn’t have a marching band for their football team’s games. So I shifted my focus from education to a performance major.
But performing in a classical tradition was never in my plans; I wanted to play everything but the music of the masters. My masters became Ray Charles, Frank Zappa, John Mayall, the Beatles and within a short time, I had organized a new group of players from the ranks of my fellow students. Fess Parker brought his bass from Toledo, Steve Trout, played guitar, Steve Dodge was an excellent drummer and I recruited my younger brother, Gerald, who was still at Jonathan Alder High School, to play guitar with us in the campus snack bar.
David Papke and Ron Coats were upper classmen at Capital who had a Simon and Garfunkle thing going, which I wasn’t all that keen on. But by the spring of 1969 came the song Bridge Over Troubled Water and my group, Cash McCall and his Bumswipe Blues Band Boys, were backing them at campus assemblies and antiwar moratoriums.
But at a campus coffee house, I was to soon start jammin’ with my new best friend, guitarist Don Chakeres.

Arnett, Vadicans, Metronomes, 1967

I became a music professional in July, 1967, earning fifteen dollars a night with the Vadicans Band from London, Ohio, twenty-five miles from my home near Plain City. It’s hard to believe that my father, George Howard, allowed me, a sixteen year old, soon-to-be senior at Jonathan Alder High School, to spend the summer wandering the state with a band. He likely trusted Richard Peterson, leader of the Vadicans and a fellow worker with my father at Westinghouse Appliance Plant on Columbus’ Far Westside.
I remember weekends-for-pay in Washington Courthouse, Yellow Springs, Springfield, Chillicothe, Mansfield, Zanesville, East, West and South Columbus. In the fall, when I turned seventeen and school started, I would play in the Jonathan Alder High School Marching Band on Football Friday Nights and Saturdays with the Vadicans at chitterling joints like the Sportsman’s Club on Parson’s Avenue. I saw all of the things that my father probably wished that I didn’t see; dives, bar glasses flying at the stage, a pistol sliding across a tile floor, fights in parking lots that would empty a club in seconds. I probably saw hookers and dope fiends, never in the act, though.
Our band was sensational. Richard was the boss-businessman, drummer and chauffeur who drove the Corvair Van full of instruments. Link (Robert Davis) was the music director and owner of a first generation Farfisa organ, which doubled as bass instrument, since Phil Lowery, the bass guitarist was serving in Viet Nam.
Elden Peterson and Don “Lil’ Moe” Wilson played guitars and were lead voices. Harold McNeil played tenor sax and I would say that we were a horn team, but Harold was so devilish and mean to me. He had a sweet tenor voice and would sing many of the whispering ballads, like At Last.
Gary Lee Thomas was a unique percussionist/dancer. His main percussion instrument were maracas and he would shake the light, simple instrument with high style, snake his hips and leap into the James Brown-inspired splits. He would be the frosting to our show; classic rhythm and blues hits, a range of harmonic voices, two horns and a pretty percussionist that would shake his moneymaker and make the women go crazy.
One Saturday night during the fall of my senior year at Alder, a blue-eyed, soul band from West Jefferson, the Metronomes, played the Homecoming Dance in our gym. The leader, Hank Fisher, was a white West Virginian, but with the soul of a Black bluesman. He worshiped the Vadicans and when he spotted me in the audience with my horn, he called me up onstage and my life changed forever.
Hanks started calling me to appear with the Metronomes and some of their gigs and my favorite was Sunday afternoons at Valley Dale ballroom, where Jerry Razor, a WLW-C TV personality would host The Battle of the Bands. Four bands would be be invited to bring their fans out for the competition that would award a best band $100.00. There were a number of bands with growing popularity; The Grayps, The Fifth Order, The Rebounds, The Electras, The Four O’Clock Balloon, The Muth Brothers.
The band judging was more a popularity contest; the band with the loudest audience response was usually the band with the most friends who paid their dollar for admission. But it was a time to drive to the Big City with my Plain City friends and hang with other teens. Most of the other band were rock and rollers, but the Metronomes were a blue-eyed, southern soul band, performing the hits of James Brown, Booker T. and Otis Redding. I was such a hardcore soul music junkie that when someone offered me two Jimi Hendrix tickets at the face value of nine dollars, I nearly cursed him, “I don’t wanna’ see no damn psychedelic music. I wanna’ see James!” I regret my ignorance at the time.
I had another opportunity to see Jimi Hendrix in May, 1970, however, two days before the May 25th concert, it was announced that his concert was canceled and the tickets were refunded. On September 18, 1970, Hendrix was found dead in a London, England hotel room.

Larry Bechtel Survives Virginia Tech Massacre

Professor Larry Bechtel designed a sculpture of my Aunt Nannie B. Hairston, of Christiansburg, Virginia. After we met in October, 2006, we have corresponded and I intended to see him in February, 2007.
Fortunately he was not in the line of fire in the Virginia Tech University shootings that occured Monday, April 16, 2007, another monumentally dark day in American history.

4/16/07
Larry,

Greetings from Columbus. You and the extended Virginia Tech family are in our prayers at this time. We hope that time will heal the pain that we share with you all.

Arnett

Arnett--

Thank you very, very much. It has been shocking--for everyone at Virginia Tech and in Blacksburg, but for everyone who has seen the news. I do appreciate your prayers. I was on campus and at work when it all happened, but was not in the area. The campus is still pretty much a "crime scene."

Larry

A university professor killed was Dr. Kevin Granata, an Ohio State graduate, a brilliant scholar in spinal/muscular studies and a student of Dr. William S. Marras. Alex Marras, his son, is my trumpet student.

We must take the time to hug each other; even people outside of our friends and family circle. Many, many people are left out or thrown out of the circle of family love and become loners. Loners are deadly, if not to only themselves.

Let our grieve renew our love. Go hug somebody.

My First Professional Band-The Vadicans

According to Richard Peterson, The Vadicans Band was born in Robert “Link” Davis’ home in 1962. “That’s where the old piano was and Link was plunking on it and getting himself together. I drummed on a cardboard box and a pie pan cymbal, while Phil Lowery strummed on an old guitar. We needed a bass so I made one for Phil, before he was able to buy one.”
Phil remembers, “Richard bought some wood and cut out the body and put an older neck on it. We went to Springfield and found pickups and and old amplifier. That guitar had the best blues sound.”
According to Richard, “Link took the name of the band from Vatican City, only he changed the “t” to a “d”.” Richard’s younger brother, Eldon, a guitarist, had been lured to Colorado Springs, Colorado by another brother, Robert, who was in the U.S. Air Force there. A call was made to Colorado and they rehearsed songs with Eldon over the phone, before he was talked into coming back to London to join the them. The Vadicans Trio had already been journeying to Washington, Court House, Ohio play at the Rocking Chair Lounge.
Donnie “Little Moe” Wilson soon joined The Vadicans, along with another singer, Walt Wilson and he remembers that instrumental in the band’s maturation was a series of teen events that they began playing in London for State Theater manager Dick Feree. “Dick had us play regularly and we packed teens in for those dances. He took us to Dayton for a talent show and we were a hit there too.” Richard also remembers Jack Schultz, from The Rebel Room in Bloomingsburg, Ohio, who helped the band buy the first electric piano that Link played.
Eldon Peterson remembers those days, “The Vadicans were hot! We began playing clubs, lounges, dawn dances and cabarets all over the state of Ohio.” A list of performance sites from 1962-1969 include the American Legion in London, Wanda’s Lounge (where the barroom battles were frequent), Central State College in Xenia, Wittenberg College and The Blues Club in Springfield, The Majaga Club in Yellow Springs, The Ponderosa in Chillicothe, The Liberty Club in Delaware, The U Bar in Zanesville, The Blue Note in Mansfield and legendary “Hairy Buffalo Parties” at Kenyon College in Gambier, OH.
In Columbus, The Vadicans auditioned for but were “too good” for Jerry Razor’s Dance Party on WLWC-TV, instead they played for grownups at the Preview Lounge, Joe's Hole, The Sportsmen's Club, The Mecca Club, The Bonfire, The Westinghouse Company picnics and The Arena Lounge, where I first joined them in July, 1967. Phil remembered parties at the NCO Club at Lockbourne Air Force Base and benefits at Training Institute of Central Ohio (TICO).
Link remembered one of the Columbus singing groups that the Vadicans frequently performed with was the Ohio Quotations. “Tommy Crowder and Verlyn Reeves were in that group and their act rivaled the Temptations and Four Tops. They continued to be great friends and guests on stage with us for years.”
My encounter with The Vadicans began in a recording studio on Columbus’ Hilltop at West Broad Street and Eureka Ave in the spring of 1967. Two fellows from Mt. Vernon, Ohio had set up a four track recorder in their storefront and Tutti Rose, a Westsider, was acting the role of talent scout and producer for the studio.
I was just sixteen and recommended by Bill Chapman, WVKO announcer to play my trumpet in the horn trio that was adding a section to The Vadicans’ original song, “Listen People.” When school was out, the group asked if I’d join them for their summer tour, but I had made a commitment to perform in the Kenley Players production of “Bye Bye Birdie,” as a screaming teen in a chorus of Columbus kids.
When I join them on July 21, 1967, the personnel included Richard, drums and leader, Elden, guitar, Link, organ and music director, Little Mo, guitar, Harold McNeil, saxophone and Gary Lee Thomas, dancer and percussion. Bassist Phil Lowery had been drafted and was serving in Vietnam in 1967.
Everyone in the band was a superb vocalist and the songs were all rich with the natural harmonies that make Black music so treasured. James Brown's years as a hit maker were at their peak and we performed “Cold Sweat,” “I Feel Good, I Got You.” Both the Stax and Motown companies were churning out hit records, Otis Redding was making lasting musical memories, before his abrupt ending in a Wisconsin plane accident in late 1967.
I vividly remember “Little Mo” making the women howl as he sang “For Your Precious Love” and Gary Lee playing maracas and leaping from the stage into a full splits and slowly alternating from side to side, while smiling and flirting with the women at the bar stools. Hot, hot hot!
Larry Davis, Link’s younger brother, came into the band as a guitarist replacing Elden, who went to California in 1968-69 and Larry has a phenomenal recall to many of the people, places and Vadican events during the last days of the band before 1970. “I inherited the homemade bass guitar from Phil and it was the instrument that developed me into a player.
One of my favorite memories is of a song that made dancers go crazy. Link sang the hit by Dyke and the Blazers, “Funky Broadway” and he also remembers the songs “Shake a Tail Feather” and “Express Yourself.”
Attracted by the “Battle-of-the-Bands” at Valley Dale Ballroom, I was lured into splitting time between The Vadicans and their younger brothers in the Metronomes from West Jefferson, led by Hank Fisher. From there, Hank and I were privileged to join the original Dave Workman Blues Band in the spring and summer of 1968, before I started college classes at Capital University that fall.
I cannot say that the best of times in my world travels have been any better than the miles down Ohio highways in a Corvair Van, the dim lights, smoke and sweat of the Arena Lounge, the adventure of a snow storm on the way to Zanesville and the pretty ladies that kept us warm until dawn.
The Vadicans Band was my first experience on the road to that good life and I can’t be more thankful to Richard, Link, Phil, Little Moe, Eldon and their wives for being my mentors and extended family. Happy Fortieth Anniversary, good health to all the alumni of the Vadicans Band and prayers for the souls of our departed fellows.

Arnett's Early Music Years Part One

Arnett Howard’s Early Musical Days
Part One

July 21, 2007 marks the fortieth anniversary of my beginnings as a professional musician. I would like to leave a record of my musical history, in case it should become a subject of interest to some future musicians, historians and friends that I have made because of the thousands of concerts that I have played since 1967.
It was at Allen Chapel A.M.E. Church in Marysville, Ohio, that Delores Grettavon Williams Howard, mother to four loud boys, sang solos with the choir. our father, George Howard, supervised the Sunday Schools and the boys tinkled on the church piano. Mom found a used, upright piano and brought it to her new Plain City home’s recreation room and arranged for her two oldest boys, Arnett and Gerald, to take piano lessons from the pastor’s wife, Mary Liggins.
The Howard house became a magnet for musical instruments in 1960; a guitar and field drum came from Uncle Al Turner in Twinsburg Heights, Ohio, a bugle from Billy Leftwich down the street in Frazier Estates, a classic drum set and percussion toys from Mrs. Cornetta Palmer, whose late husband, Pete, played with jass bands and a home reel tape recorder that was Delores’ pride.
Our first neighborhood band was called The Soul InterNationals (Music So Good It’s a Sin!) and the songbook was made up of Motown hits (Junior Walker, The Four Tops, Temptations...), Memphis soul (Sam and Dave, Dyke and the Blazers, Booker T & M.G.s...) and of course, the hardest workin’ man in show business, James Brown. We played neighborhood parties and teen radio dances thanks to a uncle of two of our players who was an announcer on WVKO-AM & FM.
During the winter of 1967, Uncle Bill Chapman recommended his young trumpeter, Arnett, aged sixteen, to a Westside recording studio that was doing a four track session with a London, Ohio band called The Vadicans (as opposed to the Vatican, home of Pope Benedictus). The band like the kid and by mid-July, after I finished performing in Kenley Players Summer Theater (Bye Bye Birdie), they ask me to join them onstage at their Saturday show.
I hitched a ride with a neighbor from Plain City and rode the bus to the Arena Bowling Alley Lounge, at Columbus’ 1436 East Main Street and Miller Avenue. I hooked up on the bus with a fellow session horn player, Mickey Wallace and when we walked in the doorway of the lounge, the Vadican’s were playing the new James Brown hit, Cold Sweat. Although Mickey and I were underaged, we walked straight to the stage blowing our horns.
I traveled to Black nightclubs throughout Central Ohio with the Vadicans that summer and weekends during my entire senior year at Jonathan Alder High School in Plain City. My band director, Ray Starrett, was so enthusiastic about his prized student’s professional travels that he loaned his Bach Stradivarius trumpet when the kid left his horn in the recording studio and it was lost.

I Am My Hero's Hero!

I met Matt Burford in Gahanna ten years ago at a Gahanna music and arts festival. I am drawn to children, especially those who are differently abled and Matt was in a wheel chair. Through the years he has been through more health emergencies, surgeries and hospitalizations than a human wants to go through in a lifetime. But he and his loving family are survivors.
I could write a book about the Burford and the Davises, Matt's grandparents who live in Bremen, Ohio. Let's just say, we are family.
Thursday, March 29, 2007, Matt invited me to be his special guest at Gahanna Middle School East, as seventh grade classes honored their heroes. Here's a little of what Matt wrote and spoke about me:
"What would the world be like without heroes? ...no one would be courageous or caring...no one would help those in need. But it's heroes, like my friend Arnett Howard, who make the world a caring, compassionate and wonderful place. They find out what people need and try their best to help them... A seeker goes out of his or her way and tries to find someone to help. Despite all of the people that Arnett knows, he loves and cares about every one of them...I don't know anyone who loves what he does so much that he actually failed at retirement and started working again...Thank you, Arnett, for being my hero and showing me your compassion and originality. But most of all, thank you for seeking me and being my friend."
Matt is my hero because, despite the pains of his twisted body, frequent illnesses and hopitalizations, he has a wonderful attitude. Now he's playing percussion drums, he's on a hockey team, his voice is changing and he has an assist dog, Breem. We will always be family!

Sound the Trumpet is Dedicated to Arnett

John Carter and I have been playing original arrangements of hymns and spirituals since Tree of Life Community Church was founded Easter Sunday, four years ago. Hope Publishing Company, of Carol Stream, Illinois, has just published the collection under the title Sound the Trumpet and John dedicated the forward to me.
Sound the Trumpet contains nine selections for piano and trumpet, all written for me by John. He was born in Nashville, Tennessee into a religious and musical family. He received his B.M. from Trinity University in San Antonio and an M.M. from Peabody College in Nashville. He is a well-known composer with several hundred choral compositions to his credit, as well as several musicals, an opera, and dozens of collections for keyboard and organ. He and his wife, Reverend Mary Kay Beall, often collaborate as writers and in Music Ministry.
He is a recognized clinician and choral conductor and is particularly noted for his versatile writing style and his long-standing creative productivity. He teaches composition classes at Trinity Lutheran Seminary and admits to being a frustrated jazz pianist.
Having a book dedicated to me is a first and I am quite honored. I released a Christmas disc entitled Piano, Trumpet and Arnett Howard, featuring recordings that John and I did in November, 2006.
To order Sound the Trumpet, visit the Hope Publishing website at http://www.hopepublishing.com/html/main.isx

Mom Barksdale Hits the Big Nine-Two

After assaulting her with birthday crazy cards for a week, I took Mom Ellen Barksdale out Wednesday, March 28, 2007, for birthday luncheon. We went to the Bexley Monk and Chef Charles Langstaff prepared a delicious fare of soups, salads and breads to go along with chocolate cake.
Mom Barksdale and I have played piano and trumpet duet concerts since the mid-1980s. We have performed at church services, community concerts, birthday celebrations, anniversary parties and for several years we made regular visit to her good friend Helen Ramsuer at Lutheran Village, entertaining the luncheon audience with religious favorites. We have also recorded a number of songs together that have appeared on two of my compact discs.
I produced a series of recordings and a compact disc for her in February, 2007. Mom Barksdale was inducted into the Columbus Senior Musicians Hall of Fame in 1999. Happy birthday from your crazy "sun."

Barbara Chavous

Greetings. It's been a long, cold winter; sorry I've been outta' touch. I heard from Marge Mitcham, my former wife, that our artistic mom, Barbara Chavous, was in a North Columbus nursing center and didn't recognize her when she visited last week. I had just gotten an e: from Dayna Jalkenen,an educator for the Columbus Museum of Art, who had googled Barbara's name and came upon a Black history blog that I had done in February, 2006.

Dayna wrote, "I’m in charge of designing and teaching a weekly program called Doodles which focuses on one artist, artwork, or art movement each month and families are encouraged to explore the artwork then create their own art work in our studio. For the month of April, I am creating a Doodles based on the Jazz Totem sculptures by Barbara Chavous that are featured in our exhibition Still I Rise. For this program, I like to give the visitors some information about the artist or artists that are that month’s focus, but I’m having a difficult time finding anything about Ms. Chavous. I saw on your 2006 Columbus Black History Blog that she was one of your mentors and that the two of you had worked together. I was wondering if you would have any additional information about her and/or her artwork that I could share with my visitors."

I returned promptly, "I searched my scrapbooks and found a 1980 article written by Cols. Dispatch Arts writer Sara Carroll, entitled "Columbus Artist Designs Owens Trophy," commemorating her design of an award presented the winners of the former Columbus Bank One Marathon.

Here is a paraphasing of the biographical info from the article.

Barbara Chavous was born and raised in Columbus in a very creative household. "I don't know that we called what we did art at the time, but we we always involved in things artistic."

She graduated from Columbus East High School, where she was involved in drama, music and she went to college at Central State University, graduating with a degree in elementary education. She met and married New York photographer Adger Cowans and had a son named Eden. She enjoyed living in New York, "A whole new world opened up to me. I felt at home there and discovered so many wonderful things about living."

She taught for ten years in the New York City School system, emphasizing visual arts. "At least once a week I took my classes somewhere. If it was not to a museum, we went to Midtown New York and strolled around looking at buildings." She continued educating herself by attending classes at the Museum of Natural History, the New York Art League and visiting galleries.

"I learned that art didn't have to be perfection; it had to do with spiritual feeling, emotions, reacting to nature and doing what comes naturally." She met and married Stanley Sourelis, a Chicago native, engineer and painter. They moved to Glassboro, New Jersey and "That's where I started making my totems."

She said, "I began to visit flea markets and wound up with a lot of junk. One day I started putting all that junk together and the education process started again. I was getting myself into wood and metal, seeing things in their natural form."

She established a circular trademark on her totems called loukoumis, named after a Greek candy that she liked (Sourelis, her husband, is from a Greek family heritage). She says that she paints the whole structure white, then adds color to it as it occurs to her. In the 1990s she discovered puff paint, a dimensional paint that expands when heated and she added a new texture and meaning to her colorful palette.

"My jazz totem art does not fit into any mold. It doesn't have limitations; one has to explore who they are. America is a creative place and we do types of work here that are not done anywhere in the world."

"What makes people important to each other and to themselves is creativity. It doesn't answer all the questions of life, but it's a start."

Rick Frye Was Here!

"We know not the day, nor the hour," a phrase that eighty-five year old saxophonist Paul Renfro reminds me. We have memorialize so many of our musical buddies and today, we celebrate the life of Rick Frye.

At the beginning of a rehearsal this morning, it was announced that drummer Rick Frye collapsed and died in Williamsburg, Virginia Friday, January 5, 2007, after Phil Dirt and the Dozers had finished a showcase. After the performance, Rick said he wasn't feeling well and told his brother, Mark, that he was going back to the band's bus. It was Mark that found him on the pavement outside of the vehicle and EMS crews couldn’t revive him.

Rick and Mark Frye we born into a musical family from Grove City, Ohio. Their father was a jazz lover and high school band director. They joined the Dozers in 1983 and Rick, knowing that I was a music historian, promised that we would collaborate on some rock and roll history for kids in Delaware, where he resided.

Each year, since 1991, Phil Dirt and the Dozers were the rhythm support for the Sunny '95 Old Fashion Christmas Show. On the last show, December 23, 2006, I sat next to Rick as he sang the bass lead on "White Christmas," a classic doo-wop song originated by the Drifters in the early 1950s. I was jealous; I love that lead so.

So, If I have an enduring memory of Rick Frye, it will be sung in a basso profundo, "And may all your Christmases be whiiiiiiiiiiiite!"

Bright moments and love to you Brother Rick. There's no business like show business; it's in our blood!

Arnett News, January, 2007

Arnett Howard and Friends celebrated New Years 2007 for the third consecutive year at the Capitol Club in the Huntington Center. Thanks to Robert Lee and the staff of the Capitol Club for your wonderful hospitality.

Arnett has been keeping company with pianist John Householder lately, jamming with the former Lancaster pianist at the Short North Tavern just before New Years. Arnett agreed to play with John at the Thirsty Ear Tavern (1200 West Third Ave., 299-4987), on Tuesday, January 9th at 10 pm.

John is also music director for A Year With Frog and Toad, being produced by Phoenix Theater for Children at the Vern Reife Center’s Capitol Theater, January 12-14, 2007. Arnett is playing trumpet in the pit band, as the Phoenix cast brings to life Arnold Lobel’s well-loved characters, Frog and Toad. The ticket information is available at http://www.thephoenixonline.org/FT.htm.

Arnett Howard and Friends are appearing at the Winking Lizard Beer Club Party, Sunday, January 14th, 3 pm. at the Winking Lizard’s Crossroads Center location, 100 Hutchinson Avenue in the Worthington area, north of I-270.

For the second consecutive year Arnett and Friends have been invited to entertain at the New Orleans themed Scioto Country Club Winter Ball 2007. The private event takes place on Saturday, January 20th at 6:30 pm. at the club on Riverside Drive.

After a late January snowbird tour of the South, Arnett and his friends team up with Dave Wallingford, Chef Chuck Langstaff and the Bexley Monk Restaurant and Bar for Fat Tuesday. The Bexley Monks hosts a Mardi Gras Party on Tuesday, February 20, 2007, 6:30 pm. at the club’s location, 2232 East Main Street, in Bexley (239-6665, www.bexleymonk.com).

Arnett and Friends journey to the Schuster Center in Dayton for the Dayton Diabetes Gala, Saturday, February 10, 2007, 8 pm., providing music for a Mardi Gras themed party.

Ohio Arts Alive airs on WOSU-89.7 FM each Sunday at 5 pm. February 11, 2007, host Christopher Purdy presents a program entitled "Arnett Howard @ The 502." The program notes say, "Columbus based jazz great Arnett Howard recalls the glory days of jazz in Columbus, with a special tribute to Marty Melman’s 502 Club. We’ll hear interviews with neighborhood residents who recall the Club in its heyday.

Special guest, Nancy Wilson. Performances by 502 favorites Hank Marr, Nancy Wilson, Rusty Bryant, Cannonball Adderley and Miles Davis."

Donato’s Pizza is showing their area managers appreciation by hosting a bash at the Hilton Easton, Sunday, February 25th, 6 pm., featuring Arnett and Friends.

Bob Brighthaupt, executive director of the Columbus Jazz Orchestra and chairman of the Capital University jazz Studies Department has made good on a invite to Arnett to present a course on Columbus jazz history. The course is part of the Jazz Arts Group Jazz Academy and classes take place on Wednesdays beginning February 28 through April 4, 2007, 7-9 pm. in Capital University’s Mees Hall, Room 205.

For information on the JAG Jazz Academy call 294-5200 or 477-8395.