Tuesday, November 29, 2011

Paul Tyler, saxophonist


Paul Tyler, a Columbus South High School graduate born in 1908, was a well traveled saxophonist who played with a number of orchestras, Sammy Stewart, Captain Warmack’s Algerians, Thomas Howard’s Orchestra DeLuxe, the 25th Battallion Ohio Guard Military Band. He was an inspiration to Harry “Sweets” Edison and talked him into joining Earl Hood’s Orchestra when Sweets was a fourteen year old trumpeter.

Tyler was the music director of the Hood Orchestra from 1935 until 1950.

Tuesday, November 22, 2011

Strike Up The Bands



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.
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.
The first group included my brother Gerald on guitar, Doug Yoder on bass, Richard Madry on tenor saxophone, Chuck and Debbie Davidson on drums and piano. 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.
During the winter of 1967, Uncle Bill was supervising a recording session on Columbus’ Hilltop and invited me to come and play as part of a teenaged horn section. I recorded with two other players, including saxophonist Mickey Wallace and we began a lifelong friendship. The group, The Vadicans Band, from London, Ohio, featured Richard and Eldon Peterson, drums and guitar, Don “Little Moe” Wilson, guitar and vocals, Robert “Link” Davis, organist and arranger.
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 Fields and George Johnson, her husband/music director.
In July, after I finished performing Bye Bye Birdie, The Vadicans 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 Vadicans were playing the new James Brown hit, Cold Sweat. Although Mickey and I were underaged, we walked straight to the stage blowing our horns like we owned the place.
According to drummer 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.
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, Ohio.
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 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.”
When I join them 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.
The scene that I strolled in on at the Arena Lounge was surreal; a dark room with show lights, that was smokey, loud. Growling organ sounds pulsed groove and “funky broadway.” Drums rolled and rimmed hot shots that made slender, lanky, pompadored men in satin shirts with huge collars, leap into the air, land in splits, ala The Godfather of Soul. Hips snaked and rolled to and fro, maracas shook and flirtation went on with the fine ladies watching the action from close by.
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 teasing 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.
I cannot say that the best of times in my world of travels have been any better than the miles down Ohio highways in a 1962 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.

Friday, May 27, 2011

New Compact Disc: With Grateful Heart I Thanks You, Lord



Last Monday, May 16, 2011, I said, “What the heck” and I started a compact disc project. I hadn’t done a disc in a while and if I’m serious about recording in the past, I’m usually thinking about it in March and recording during April.

April recording makes way for May production and the disc is ready for Memorial Day sales. When Arnett Howard Creole Funk Band was around we followed this formula for Arnett Howard’s Rocket 88s and Kidding Around I.

I had gotten lazy in my retirement, but with appearances at Jimmy V’s in Westerville and Grandview in 2011, I am back in the mode of boosting my career. Although things have changed drastically since my salad days of the 1990s, I want to see what sales a new disc might generate for me in units and gigs.

Now, a compact disc is simply a business card that says that I, Arnett Howard, am a real professional musician. Most bands have their ways of doing a compact disc recording and I have my own. Bands record in a studio, using very expensive recording equipment and microphones and when they’re done, they might have invested $50,000 to $300,000.00 and all they have is a master; duplications are additional.

My latest disc was done on an eleven-year-old Roland VS-1680 Digital Workstation, using three good microphones, a Korg Triton Studio and Yamaha DGX-520 portable keyboard. I had Mike Roberts, saxophone, David Hampton, bass and Kraig Phillips, guitar, come in and add their instruments to my tracks. Nine days after I started, on May 25th, I had sixteen songs on a master disc and my out of pocket costs for recording were be less than $500.00. Duplications are additional; good Memorex CD-Rs at thirty cents each, jewel boxes for twenty-five cents and adhesive labels for twenty cents. I bought three used duplicators a while back for $100.00.

So, I hope you like my compact disc/business card and I hope it sells lost of units and generates many more gigs. The song With Grateful Heart I Thank You, Lord was written by Columbus composer Reverend Mary Kay Beale Carter.

Friday, April 29, 2011

Delores Grettavon Williams Howard, my mom




Delores Grettavon Williams was born in Amonate, Virginia to Myrtle Hairston (April 7, 1916-November 4, 1979) and Robert F. Williams (March 1, 1913-August 25, 2005). Robert was a coal miner from Gary West Virginia, who had gone to Amonate because the coal mines in Gary had closed temporarily because of the Depression.

Robert was nineteen and Myrtle, sixteen, they got together and soon she became pregnant. It soon became evident that Myrtle didn’t have motherly instincts and she only stayed married for less than three years. It is said that her mother, Janie Moore Hairston had Myrtle sterilized afterwards, but the date of that trauma is unknown.

So with Myrtle unwilling to be a mother, the responsiblity was lovingly undertaken by Robert. His own mother, Fannie Mae Hairston Williams, had passed away in 1928 and Robert lived with his father, George Williams. He moved back to Gary, West Virginia to work in those mines.

Robert said that Delores was a happy child and like him, loved the same Gary schools that he had gone to. Soon World War Two interrupted the family and Robert was drafted into the U.S. Navy in 1943. Delores was sent to Amonate and while Myrtle enlisted in the U.S. Army, she lived with John and Nannie Mae Hairston, Myrtle’s younger brother, who called her Prellie.

Delores was a young, bright college student, entering Bluefield State Teachers College in 1949 at aged sixteen. Her roomate was Josephine Griffin, who later married her college sweetheart, Otto Charles.

She got together with George Howard, a chemistry major from Walnut Cove, North Carolina, who graduated in 1950 and they married February 25, 1950. Their son, Arnett (me), was born September 6, 1950 in Welch, West Virginia, near his mother’s coal mining hometown, Gary.

At 2:00 a.m., that morning George with his friend, Arthur Froe driving, took his young wife from their home in the coal fields of Gary and their destination was Stevens Clinic, in Welsh, West Virginia, six miles away. “Your father came back from the hospital and said ‘It’s a boy!’” Robert remembered. Delores was like all young moms, enjoying the great feeling of the gift of a child.

She started a babybook in late November, 1950 and among her first remarks were “Baby was nice size; not too small or too large, but very ugly. I sure hope he improves. He’s an exact replica of his father. Even to that head.”

She added remarks, “Most people said that my baby was ugly and I readily agree, but he’s going to grow into a beautiful baby with Mommy and Daddy’s help.”

She took me for my first photo shoot to the Welch Photo Store on February 17, 1951 at five months of age. She happily wrote, “Baby is eager and easy to photograph and his looks have greatly changed.”

She notes in the baby book, “Arnett always has been an easy baby to handle; very seldom cross and easy to love. At six months he hated to sit down, loved to stand and try to walk. He is as devilish as anything. When he was five months old, he cried after his daddy, at six months he stood alone in the bath tub. He’s a very frisky baby. At night he likes to wake up and play after everyone else in the house is asleep, especially me.”

After several auto trips to Amonate, Bluefield, Walnut Cove and Martinsville, Virginia to visit my father’s family, Mom took me on my first train trip when the family resettled to Columbus, Ohio. After nearly two years in Columbus, Dad got a job at the Westinghouse Appliance Plant as an industrial chemist.

The earliest remembrance that I have, at aged three or four in 1955, is walking back home from a car buying trip. We lived at 175 North Chicago Avenue and I remember crossing West Broad Street. We had purchased a 1951 Oldsmobile and walked back home before taking delivery of it. I can recall driving to White Castle at Central Avenue and West Broad Street and enjoying those wonderful little burgers that cost a dime and carryouts were served by carhops who were dressed in uniforms.

There was a family named Harris who took up residence next to us on Chicago Avenue and they had a daughter, Connie, who shared the same birthday as me, September 6, 1950. So our mothers threw a party for us on that day in 1956 in our backyard. Delores was twenty-three.

When I was eight and my brother Gerald was six, we were given a Christmas gift of ice skates. Mom took us to Franklin Park in Columbus’ Eastside for two seasons of skating and I recall the three of us skating on the frozen pond and my little ankles getting scraped from the chafing of the shoe skates, but we enjoyed it.

When we were children we belonged to a neighborhood/street club that met each Saturday at Mrs. Booker’s home up the street on Chicago Avenue, near Cable St. On those days we would play, get education, games and go to Franklin Park for picnics. Mrs. Booker, an older woman, had an unpowered sewing machine and we would kick the pedals that made the needles work.

We were friends with The Washingtons from across the street and The McKeevers who had nine children. We called Mr. and Mrs. Washington Mom and Pop, because they were our great-grandparent’s age. I can still see Pop Washington stroking the leather belt that he used to keep his razor sharp and I can hear Mom Washington’s voice as clear as it was yesterday.

Mr. and Mrs. Theodore Nowles lived across the street also and had a double sized yard where they raised chickens. Their son was named Teddy and his son was a dwarf named T.J. who was my age and later played football at Columbus Central High School.

The family was friends with other Chicago Avenue families; The Buckners, the Evans, the Roberts and The Flemisters. We would go down the street to Mr. Flemister’s because he had a pair of electric hair clippers and we would go for hair cuts. We’d get a group together for hair trimming day and those clipper surely got hot after a couple of heads.

Gerald was born June 22, 1952 and the twins, Keith and Kevin, were born September 17, 1955. In 1958 or so, Mom began working at the General Motors plant on Columbus’ westside, just down the street from Westinghouse were Dad worked. She worked there less than two years.

The first Church our family became aligned with in Columbus was St. Paul A.M.E. on Long Street. My father went to a barbershop that was right next door and his barber and later mine, was a Baptist minister named Benny Brogsdale. Grooming rituals of Negro men included shaves complete with steaming towels wrapped around the face and tweezers with barbed ends to lift the curly ingrown hairs from the skin and neck.

I also have first memories of accompanying Mom to the beauty shop on Mount Vernon Avenue, the heartbeat of Columbus’s Negro business during the mid 1950s. I have recollections of women, gossip, hot steel combs resting over flames and the aromatic bouquet of smoldering hair being styled; the decorous rituals of African women through the ages.

I entered Chicago Avenue School on September 11, 1955 at the age of five, became a kindergarten student and my first teacher was Nina Bowen. As a first grader I remember a fellow student, Jo Ellen Valentino, because she was a good singer; her favorite song was Tammy’s in Love. I recalled getting spanked by Mrs. Wolske as a third grader for being a smarty because I went home and got spanked again.

Punishment was memorable as a child because we got whipped with a variety of things. We dropped Kevin off the Harris’ porch, onto his head and Mom told me to go get a switch. Kevin fell again under the outdoor swing and I got beaten with the bad end of a garden hose. Mom suffered under the strain of four over-active sons.

When I was six or seven, a Christmas gift for Gerald and I were ice skates. Mom took us to Franklin Park several times during cold winters to try them out; she had a pair also. I remember getting scrapes on my ankles from skin chafing against skate leather, but I have a vivid picture of being on ice with my mom.

I was eight years old in January,1959, in the third grade at Chicago Avenue School, when the westside levee broke and the flood waters came. I remember my father, George, climbing into the crawl space above our ceiling about bed time and turning off the pilot light to our gas furnace. Our parents gave us the sense that we were in an emergency but were not panicked. All four Howard Boys crawled into bed together and body heat kept us warm.

Within a few hours, we were awakened and it was time to evacuate; the Ohio National Guard troop transporter was parked in our flooded street and military men were carrying neighbors in porch chairs to the covered military truck. Our first stop was Fire Engine House Number Ten on West Broad Street and from there, our family was shuttled to the Navy/Marine Recruiting Center located on Sandusky Street at Dublin Road, in the same site that now stands Confluence Park Restaurant.

I recall hundreds of people overnighting there on wooden and canvas folding cots. After breakfast, ten hours since we were evacuated in the middle of the January night, we contacted our family friends, Otto and Josephine Charles, who had an apartment on Clifton Avenue in East Columbus and spent several days with them, before returning back to the westside. Josephine was Mom’s roomate at Bluefield State Teachers College.

Flood waters had crept up to our front steps, but no closer and since we had no basement at 175 Chicago Avenue, we saw no flood damage. But our family purchased acreage in Plain City/Union County, built a new home and by November, 1959, we had fled the Bottoms and flooding for good.

In the summer of 1959 George began building a new residence. I think that Mom was still working at General Motors when the house building began, but I remember the meals that she used to fix and the picnic baskets that we’d take to Plain City on Sundays to work on the house.

Chicken dinners, complete with fixings and delicious fresh rolls that were oh-so sweet and wonderful were the fair that we’d dine on. Mom had a magic in the kitchen and when we finally moved on November 9, 1959, my folks grew a garden and Mom canned cherries, strawberries, apples, green beans, corn and tomatoes, among other items that we grew.

The Howard’s and their four boys moved into 8564 Frazier Road, next door to The Thomas Crumps and their four girls, who had preceded our move by one month. Frazier Estates was to grow into a neighborhood of twenty- four homes occupied by African-American families.

Although the Frazier kids were five miles from Dublin local schools, we were bussed six miles to Plain City Elementary another five miles to Jonathan Alder High School. Plain City was a culturally diverse community; a large population of Old Order Amish, Mennonites, a number of long time and respected black families made up the local population of 2400 people.

Snapping beans, shucking corn and peas became as much a ritual as playing baseball. In the basement we had a wringer washer and twin sinks that Mom taught us how to use when I was aged ten. We fill the washer with a short hose that ran from the sink and the washer emptied via a hose from the bottom into the sump drain in the floor. We’d use the two sinks to rinse our clothes, then we’d take the clean clothes out to the line to dry.

After they were dried, then we’d bring them in and she’d show us the process of setting up the board and firing up the iron to press the fresh clothes. I thank Mom for showing me how to press a dress shirt and put a crease in my pants.

I remember the day that Mom rented the trailer for her 1955 Chevy and brought home the piano. She backed into the driveway, we unloaded the huge instrument and wheeled it into our recreation room. Eight little hands started pressing keys and within the first hour I had created a blues melody.

It took a year for Gerald and I to get through Teaching Little Fingers To Play and while we were learning, Mom 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. It was the first signs of a depression.

The Howard house soon became a magnet for musical instruments; a bugle from Billy Leftwich, a guitar and field drum from Uncle Al Turner in Twinsburg Heights, Ohio. Mom also had acquired a monophonic, reel tape recorder and she recorded television programs. One of the things that she recorded was the New York Philharmonic Orchestra playing George Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue. This has become one of my favorite symphonic pieces and I have several recordings of it.

Mom and Dad had a bag of pictures of them when they were younger. I can remember snapshots of Dad in the Army when he was stationed in New Guinea when it was so hot that the soldiers were shirtless annd dressed in shorts. I recalled college photos from Bluefield State when George had several of his girlfriends, including Mom, draped over him and in the late model Buicks. We have lost those photos.

I remember a violent wind and rainstorm, perhaps it was even a tornado in the area in the early 1960s. The winds blew so that the rains were coming in the back door and Mom held onto that door throughout the rain.

Beginning in 1960, our church home was Allen Chapel A.M.E. in Marysville, where Reverend Thomas Liggins presided. Their new religious home was named after Bishop Richard Allen, organizer of America’s first African American church in 1803. The Allen Chapel community built their first church in Marysville, Ohio, in 1879 and Howard family joined The Flemings, The Browns, The Carters, The Evans, The Calloways, The Woodsons, Vada Beauchamp, The Barnes, The Martins, The Leftwitchs, The Estis and they became a regular in attendance. George served as Sunday School Superintendent most of his church life.

Mom sang in the choir and she would take solos, Lead Me, Guide Me, When I’ve Gone the Last Mile of the Way. She was an excellent singer and good church woman.

It was through our church that we got a number of musicial instruments from Mrs. Cornetta Palmer. Her husband, Pete, had been a drummer during the 1930s and one day we cleaned out her attic and took home a bass drum, cymbals, a Chinese tom tom, a xylophone and various other noise makers. There was a scene painted on the head of the drum and a light blub inside, but we couldn’t wait to paint over it. That was a mistake, because that scene of some exotic painting was valuable.

Mary Liggins-Goodrich was the wife of Tom Liggins, pastor at both Allen Chapel A.M.E. in Marysville and Zion A.M.E. in Delaware, OH. The Liggins’ had four children right around our same age, Tommy, Timmy, Teresa and Tony. She was also our piano teacher and Mom’s best friend.

Mary was so close to Delores that she calls me her “son.” She said that they would see each other at church on Sundays and enjoy each other in the kitchen. “Couple of things that stayed in my mind, was, a lot of times we would go to each others houses for Sunday dinners.  Your mom made the best fresh lemonade and delicious fresh corn, picked from her garden; pot roast and green beans, also picked from the garden. Her cooking was awesome, although she liked my dinners as well, she loved my pound cakes.  We often talked about her lemonade and my pound cake.

Tom recalls being in school when he met Mom. “I had five kids, two churches, worked at the Post Office and went to seminary at Wilberforce University in the evening; talk about having a full plate. Delores would read the textbooks that I was assigned and give me a synopsis of what I should know to pass my courses. She was an avid reader and had an analytical mind, which I admired very much.”

One Sunday in 1962, Mom invited Robert Duncan, a Republican lawyer and soon-to-be Federal Court judge, to Allen Chapel to speak. James A. Rhodes was running for his first term as Ohio governor, Mom and Judge Duncan campaigned for Rhodes and likely met during those campaign days.

“Your mother was chair person for it and did a fantastic job,” says Mary Liggins-Goodrich. “She sent me a thank you note, thanking me and teasing, saying that me and Mrs. Palmer were "green hornets" in the kitchen because we've never served kitchen duty before. I always played the piano and Mrs. Palmer ushered. Your mom was the one who did things in the kitchen for dinners, etc.”

But they all suspected Delores’ growing depression. Mary says, “In our conversations Delores would tell me that she was tired of the garden, country life and she wanted to move back to the city. Tom says that Delores would go into a room and shut herself off from family.

George and Delores visited The Liggins Family in Delaware the Saturday prior to Palm Sunday, April 6, 1963. They enjoyed the womens cooking and Delores’ lemonade, but the next morning, when George drove the church bus, Delores stayed home.

My mother, Delores, who planted of the seeds of music in her four boys died the next morning, Sunday, April 7, 1963. When we return home from Sunday services at Allen Chapel, my brothers Kevin and Gerald raised the garage door and saw mom’s arms dangling out of the door of her Chevy parked inside. She had stayed home from church many mornings during the previous months, suffering from the depression that we children knew little about. Her self-asphyxiation was the end of a difficult time for her.

Reverend Liggins said that he got a call from George that Sunday afternoon. “Can you come to Riverside Hospital? Something has happened to Delores.” Tom said that he got a sinking feeling in his gut that wasn’t good. Mary said that the gravel flew as he left the home in Delaware alone in a rush.

Tom Liggins’ memory is fresh, “Mary and I were devastated, helpless, in shock, crying. What could we have done to help her? What a thing to happen so young in a ministry?”

After the ambulance had left for Riverside Hospital, we boys went over to Karlton Williamson’s to play basketball and our games were interupted when we got a call across the lawn to come home. Our father was weeping when he told Gerald and I that our mother was gone. I immediately broke down, hugged him around the neck and said, “It’s alright, Dad. We’re gonna’ make it.” He called my grandad, Robert, and he came later that evening from Charleston, West VA.

Delores’ funeral services were handled by the Faulkner Funeral Home in Marysville, where the wake was on Tuesday, following the Sunday passing. The funeral was on Wednesday at the Allen Chapel A.M.E. and among the very long list of all of our family and friends who came to Marysville, in addition to my grandfather was Delores’ mother, Myrtle Scales, who was living in Denver, Colorado. We picked her up from the airport Tuesday evening, she slept in our parents bedroom and we smothered her with our curiousity.

Myrtle wore a beautiful green dress and a large hat to the funeral and I remember her weeping. But I can remember little else. We took her back to the airport the next day and never heard from her again. Delores died on Myrtle’s forty-seventh birthday.

Delores, it seems, was a victim of codependency; the destructive behaviors that result from a youthful abuse that has not been properly addressed in adulthood. The codependency addict continues to live oblivious or in denial of their illness, continuously repeating the behaviors that will eventually lead to him or her to ruin.

Was the source of Delores’ illness her mother’s abandonment at an early age? Or was the illness triggered by George’s having a second family with Camille Campbell, a fellow student at Bluefield State who lived in Columbus?

Did Myrtle have a codependent addiction because of her forced sterilization by her mother Janie? What caused Janie to tramautize her daughter by cutting off her reproductive choices?

Codependency, according to writer Pia Melody, author of Facing Codependence, is hereditary. In the succeeding years I discovered that my mother’s defining childhood abuse was an abandonment by her mother at aged three. Her mother’s "illness" was defined by a forced sterilization by her mother, after her sixteen year old childbirth. My great-grandmother was a preacher’s wife and evidently moved to over-control her young daughter’s life by the morals of the day. God only knows if the slave experience that abused the life of my great-grandmother’s ancestors was the tree that roots several generations of codependency and addictions.

Questions that because of death will never be answered. I hope that the codependent addictions have ended with me, but I cannot tell. I can just tell Delores’ story as completly as possible.

Delores Grettavon Williams Howard lived just a little over thirty years. She loved school, like her father remembered, spent too short a time at Bluefield State, because of her pregnancy. But as Mary Liggins-Goodrich recalled, “She was a fantastic scholar.”

Wednesday, March 9, 2011

George Howard, 1925-94




By Kevin Howard


On January 11, 1994, Grandad Bob Williams called with the news, “Your dad passed away last night of a massive heart attack.  Arnett is taking care of the arrangements.  You’ll need to make your travel plans and come home.”

The day that we all dread as children arrives.  At the age of thirty-nine, both of my parents are gone. The celebration of Pops’ life is a catalyst for the Howard Clan to come together under one roof for the first time in fifteen years.

At his funeral, everyone gets up to share some good deed that Pops did, which they promised to keep secret. Burying Pops, just short of his sixty-nineth birthday, we lay him next to Mom in Oakdale Cemetery, Marysville, OH.  

That evening, January 14th, Arnett plays an engagement at the Hoster Brewing Company and our Frazier neighborhood takes up half the joint. In the New Orleans tradition, the Howard Brothers send Pops off ‘on the good foot’.  Surrounded by the people who were there when we first picked up instruments, all the Howard Brothers appear on stage together.

It’s a milestone. Our celebration takes us back to the basements and garages of Frazier Estates. Parent or child, thirty years later, everyone’s on the dance floor. Gerald’s daughter, Tina, joins us on the congas. Granddad sits proudly on stage with his grandsons, tapping his cane to the rhythm.

Mrs. Estes, will you come on up here and sing us a song,”  Arnett says. Father Time may be wearing on our bodies, but not our enthusiasm.  Belting out a song that has the whole neighborhood thinking that they can sing, the night is a watershed event in all of our lives.  Singing and dancing, we send our Old Man off to those pearly gates!

Wednesday, March 2, 2011

Three Posts on Robert F. Williams, our Grandad




By Gerald Howard

I lose track of what happened, when.... as I get older.  Naw, I just have a bad memory, but somewhere around '93/'94 someone asked me to move them to Cleveland, Ohio. So with the opportunity to kill two birds with one stone, I accepted.

I packed up a truck with some furniture and a buckethead (an employee) and headed towards Cleveland. Of couse I told Grandad of my plan and it was fine with him. The job went fine so my next stop was Grandad's place. As I neared 841 Linn Dr.

I thought I'd stop anywhere convienent to pick up beer so Grandad, the buckethead and I could have a lit'l sump'n, sump'n to sip on. As I entered the store, to my surprise there was Grandad! It was quite a coincidence but feasible because I was in his neighborhood. So in my playfulness as Grandad was at the register, I drunkertly stumbled close enough to ask if I could borrow some money.  I hid my identity but as soon as he realized it was me we hugged and cracked up.

The next day in my anxiousness to start heading back to Georgia, Grandad slowed me enough to insist that he take me somewhere to show me something. I had no idea what he had in mind, but I agreed anyway.

We entered a funiture store that wasn't too far away from the apartment. To my surprise Grandad had picked out a huge picture/murial that fit perfectly on the blank wall in the entrance of my new house. It was perfect because it was a black and glass art piece of a baby grand, in a black frame picture. The perfect size for that particular wall and even matched the theme of the atmosphere I was trying to present.

No one could have hit the nail on the head any better. The picture will be on that was as long as I live in the house. Thanks Grandad!

Mr. Grandad

By Kevin Howard

It’s the summer of 1981 and I’m traveling around the country, visiting old friends and making new ones.  Spending three days in Toronto at the Caribana Festival, I make a right turn on I-86 and make a beeline to Cleveland to see Grandad.
 
“Hey Mr. Grandad, are ya still kicking?” Outside to greet me, “Yeah, Son, I’m still above ground.” 
 
Grandad is living in the worst part of Cleveland.  Half of the housing in the area is dilapidated and boarded up and the other half should be. Unemployment is higher than the crack-head talking shit on the corner.
 
“You gotta let me hit the shower Grandad.  I need to wash this road off of me.” Always humming, “You go hit those pits, Son.  I’ll get the wife to fire up the pots.” 

A diehard fan of the Cleveland Indians, we sit and watch the game.  Flipping to the sport page of the Cleveland Plain Dealer, “Looks like another year of dwelling in the cellar, Grandad.” 
 
Rocking in his favorite chair, Grandad explains his loyalty.  “Son, I’ve been with the same team through the good years and the bad.  Your team should be like a wife, for better or worse.  No matter how fat and out of shape they get, you gotta stick with-em.” 
 
His comment draws a retort from the kitchen,  “Same thing goes for you, boyfriend,” his wife says.
  
“Let us know when you get settled out in Seattle, and we’ll come for a visit.”  Unlike other parts of the clan, if Grandad says he’s coming for a visit, he’s showing up.
 
“For now, I’ve got to get back to Seattle and register for school. With fifteen months left to knock off for this degree, soon I’ll be officially ‘edu-mac-ated’.” 
 
Grandad chuckles, “Son, with all this traveling that you're doing, I’m sure that something is sticking.  In my day, I’ve known a few people with a lot of book sense, but little common sense.  If you don’t have a formal education, then ya got use your brain!”  Grandad’s never steered any of us wrong.  Grabbing his hat, “Let’s take the car up the street to the garage and get everything checked.”  Always the guardian angel, Grandad picks up the tab. 
 
“Grandad, you don’t have to do that.” Letting me save grace, “Ya can’t take it with ya’, Son.” 

Hough Riots: 1966

By Arnett Howard


Grandad and I drove to Cleveland where he was living during the summer of 1966. The song Sunny by Bobby Hebb was hot on the Soul and Top Forty charts that summer and the day we arrived in Cleveland was the day the Hough Riots started.

From Wikipedia; “On July 18, 1966, at dusk, someone posted a sign outside the 79'ers bar, situated on the southeast corner of E.79th Street and Hough Avenue. The sign read, "No Water For Niggers". Adding to the volatility of the situation, the bar manager and a hired hand, both white, patrolled the front of the bar, armed with shotguns. An African American woman described as a "prostitute" was seeking money for charity. An altercation occurred and she was told to leave.

Later, a Black man entered the building and bought a bottle of wine. When he asked for a glass of water, he was told that blacks were not being served. Soon after, a crowd of about 50 people gathered outside. The Cleveland Police Department arrived, in force, to defuse the situation. The presence of the CPD only intensified the crowd's anger. As angry crowds gathered over a twenty-three block area, chants of "Black Power" were followed by the throwing of rocks and molotov cocktails, bringing more than three hundred police and firemen.

Racial tension was high between Cleveland's police and African American community. The arrival of police precipitated gunfire, as well as brick-throwing by angry residents. The police shot out some street lights and asked drivers to turn off their car lights to limit possible targets by snipers.

Joyce Arnett, a black 26-year-old mother of three, was shot dead when she called from a window, as she was trying to get permission to go home and check on her children.

The next day, Ohio governor James A. Rhodes activated 1,600 local members of the National Guard, but they did not arrive in Cleveland until 11:00 p.m. The Hough area became quiet after the troops were deployed. An attempt by Cleveland mayor Ralph S. Locher to limit potential violence by closing local bars and taverns at 6:00 p.m. did not succeed. Arsonists attacked abandoned houses and commercial buildings.” The riots and isolated burings lasted for six days.

Grandad lived near the intersection of 119th and Kinsman Avenues in an apartment. He was working then, but I can’t remember where. He was still driving his 1957 Plymouth Savoy.

I remember being fifteen then and walking all over the neighborhood, which was very close to Shaker Heights, an upscale Cleveland suburban community. I recall someone asking me if I was going to burn something and I responded, “Of course not.”

After a time with Grandad, I took the Greyhound bus back to Columbus and Plain City.

Friday, February 25, 2011

Arnett Howard and his Creole Funk Band:1985-2003





I was working for Adrian McLymont at Universal Classic Cars when I started rehearsing Arnett Howard and His Creole Funk Band. I was tossing around names when my friend Chuck Davidson said, “Why don’t you just call it the Creole Funk Band?” He spoke with such conviction that I just said, “OK. Creole Funk, it is.”

Late April, 1985, at D.J. Prophet’s Neighborly Pub, now known as Union Station, marked the premier of Arnett Howard and his Creole Funk Band. The first crew was Donald Payne, bass, Kevin Turner, guitar, Gregg Pearson, drums and Ron Funderburg, percussion. Within the first year, inspired by a film that featured David Byrne and Talking Heads, I added Pat Funderburg, Debra Tucker and Marcia Daniels as vocalists.

I had left Universal Classic Cars to work at WBBY-FM, Jazz 104, in April, 1985, but by September of that year the evening schedule conflicts had made the band my priority. We played Union Station and the Short North Tavern to huge audiences. But the Short North soon ended in August and we filmed a television show for GTC-3 that December. The TV spot was growing fame fast for the band and in January, 1986, we were invited to substitute for the regular entertainment at Deibel’s Restaurant in German Village.

Saturday night at Deibel’s was usually Esther Craw’s accordion night, however when the Creole Funk Band hit the stage with its brand of New Orleans and Jamaican soul, folks forgot about Esther. We strolled through the audience in a Mardi Gras style and blew the roof off of the place. The management knew that they had to keep us coming back.

On February 6, 1986, the Creole Funk Band began playing Wednesdays at Deibel’s and for five and a half years, whenever we weren’t at Deibel’s, we were in New Orleans or Jamaica. The world would come to Deibel’s, people would bring guests from out of town, international groups would have their dinners there, school kids would have their birthday gatherings where they could dance and have good food and their parent could have some adult refreshments.

In December, 1986, Arnett Howard’s Creole Funk Band recorded its first cassette. Unfortunately, Pat, Debra and Marcia were done, victims of conflicting schedules. We managed to get them recorded and we began the New Year with almost a new lineup, Gregg on drums, Al Morgan, bass, Lance Ellison, guitar and Ron Hope, percussion. We recorded at new venues like Victory’s on High Street, The Hoster Brewing Company, the Avenue, Hoggy’s, The Patio, The Dell, Max and Erma’s, The Scoreboard Restaurant and plenty of public events and private parties. We were named People to Watch in 1987 by Columbus Monthly Magazine.

We made our first trip with the band to Jamaica, October, 1987, although it was nearly a disaster because when we arrived, the instruments that we had waiting for us were junk. The speakers were blown in two of the amps, the mixing board was missing channels. But the audience realized that despite the equipment, there was quality among the group. We traveled to Jamaica from 1987 to 2000, taking as many as thirty-two boxes of instruments with us.

The Creole Funk Band performed as many three hundred-twelve times in a year from 1988 to 2002. We performed at forty weddings each season and as many as seventy school performances. Beginning in November, 1988, we put out a monthly newsletter called The Creole Funk Gazette that would have news stories on the members of the band and upcoming events, along with our schedule.

I was missing a percussionist so in May, 1988 I added Capital University student Eric Paton to the group and he brought with him a tremendous saxophonist, Jeffrey Scot Wills. We did our first performance at the Lancaster Festival and recorded our third cassette there with Amerisound Recording. The Lancaster Festival has had us annually for twenty-three years since.

For the Lancaster crowd we performed a variety of musics, starting out with Word Up, a smash hit from the Atlanta group, Cameo, then The Right Stuff by New Kids on the Block. We went retro by doing You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feelin’, but at the bridge, we launched into a reggae groove. The Funky Cold Medina and The Wild Thing were a pair of tunes by Ton Loc that we medleyed, then we went smooth jazz with Jeffrey Scot Wills performing Silhouette on soprano saxophone. Our biggest song was Hot, Hot, Hot, which we started doing the summer of 1987, inspired by Bahamian artist Arrow. We finished the set with a rousing version of The Jailhouse Rock.

NBC 4, WCMH-TV commissioned a jingle entitled Football Friday Nite in July, 1994, Al Morgan did the music, I wrote the lyrics while we waited to go on stage in Dayton. We recorded it one Tuesday after a show at the Scoreboard and it has run for eighteen years consecutively with new lyric for each season. Our video history, 1985-1994, came out also that same month.


We released our first compact disc, 10 For 10, in June, 1995, second, Arnett Howard’s Rocket 88’s, June, 1996, Kidding Around, June, 1997, fourth, Joyful Heart, Generous Spirit, 2001, fifth and last, Extended Family, June, 2002. Compact disc versions of our first three cassettes have had subsequent reissues.

Through the years I have changed musicians. On percussion I have had Ron Funderberg, Ron Hope, Chuck Palmer, Nathan Anders and Eric Paton, guitarists have included Kevin Turner, Victor Martin, Lance Ellison, Daris Atkins, Greg Herman and Kraig Phillips. Saxophonists have include Jeffrey Scot Wills, Keith Kimble and Kevin O’Neil, with bassists Donald Payne, Al Morgan, Robert Daniels and Manny Quintero. Drummers in the Creole Funk Band have include Gregg Pearson, Eric Paton, Jeff Peters, Chuck Palmer, Mark Lomax and Rahsaan “Rizzi” Bowers.

Rizzi became my drummer in October, 2000. He had played with Foley McCreary prior to joining us, but the Creole Funk Band was his first job that had a regular payday. He had a young family and was looking forward to the new year, but in May, 2001 he was wounded by a home invader. He lived for thirty-six days before dying of his wounds. The band acted as his pallbearers and he was laid to rest near another Rahsaan, Roland Kirk, in Evergreen Cemetery.

In 2002, I made the decision to end the Creole Funk Band at the conclusion of year. I had been using Capital University as my farm team and the group, much to my dismay, had become a jazz band, as opposed to a funk band. Combined with my exhaustion from eighteen summers of between two hundred fifty and three hundred concerts, I finally pulled the plug on January 3, 2003, when we performed at the second inauguration for Ohio Supreme Justice Evelyn Stratton at the Marriott North Hotel.

From D.J. Prophet’s to the Marriott North, eighteen summers and thousands of stops in between, Arnett Howard and His Creole Funk Band performed nearly 5000 times. Joyful music and a generous spirit, for sure!

Jambalya: November, 1984-February, 1985.



I journeyed to Los Angeles, California to strike it rich with my brother Keidi, in November, 1984. He had been there for most of the year and was living in Long Beach. The group was named Jambalya, a Creole Funk Bank, combining his love for Jamaican music and mine was for New Orleans.

I took two keyboards with me, along with my trumpet. We rehearsed, recorded and performed a couple of gigs a week, but the winter in California is just not the time to start a new band. I learned to stretch the few dollars I made by shopping for bread, tuna and noodles.

But I saw and enjoyed a lot of California. I went to flight museums and air bases in Compton and Chino. I spent Christmas with my wife Marge coming out to visit, but after ten weeks of little gain, I bid California farewell and returned to work as an auto mechanic in a Volvo-Mercedes shop in Columbus.

Thursday, February 24, 2011

The Pacesetters:1981-84




The Pacesetters were formed during the winter/spring of 1981 by Quandoures “Q.D.” Williams, bass, Grayland Williams, drums, Larry "L.A." Almon, guitar, Arnett Howard, keyboards, trumpet and Skeemer Frye, deejay. We rehearsed at Joanie Frye’s home in Eastmoor. We were later joined by Pera Payne, vocals.

During the first season we played at Club Tropicana, 1317 East Livingston Avenue, off Lockbourne Road and drew tremendous crowds there. No one in the group wanted to sing and you couldn’t very well have a group without a singer, so I chose to sing lead. L. A. would sing I Love You Just the Way You Are.

We played at Charbert's in Downtown Columbus near the end of the year that I booked, but Q.D. booked himself and another band there for new years. There was little discussion about it; he had formed the Pacesetters, but Q.D. was the first one out.

In November, 1982, we were invited to play at the Short North Tavern in the near Northside of Columbus, when there was but one place with the Short North in its name. When we went for our first gig, we invited Jeannette Williams to be guest artist. I picked her up, she sang nine songs, three per set, I dropped her off and she was paid fifty dollars for the evening. The other four members of the band played the entire evening, then split one hundred-twenty five dollars with hard feelings about Ms. Williams.

But that first evening at the Short North Tavern was impressive. We did a New Orleans song called They All Asked For You and, like the great musician before us, Rusty Bryant, we walked the bar. I remember parading down through the crowd tooting on my trumpet with Jay Harmon on saxophone following, climbing on a barstool and walking down the length of the bar with Jay following. We were a hit.

Larry Almon lasted until 1983, before leaving and with Jay, Jeff Edelstein, bass and Chris Dawkins, drums, we continued until November, 1984, when The Pacesetters broke up. We played at Union Station and the Canabar, amongst other places and our repertoire include hits like Purple Rain and When Doves Cry by Prince.

A Musician's Scrapbook




In January, 1980, after working six years at the O.M. Scott and Sons Company in Marysville, Ohio, I left to start a project to document the Black music culture of Central Ohio. The working title was A Musician’s Scrapbook: The Illustrated History of Columbus’ Black Entertainers and the first person that I interviewed was Jimmy Carter, a pianist and organist who I had met at Clyde’s at Courthouse Square.

One evening at the club, when Jimmy was taking a break for his gig with the Frank Hooks Trio, we sat together and he told me stories about his beginnings in music. “I was sixteen and the first job that I had was playing at a burlesque club on Main Street. I was making twenty-five dollars a week and that was ten dollars a week more than my father was making. The sisters at Mt. Vernon A.M.E. Church were wondering how I could be allowed to work in a strip joint, but my family knew how much money I was pulling in.”

He laughed at comparing his salary with kids his age that were running paper routes. He finished by exclaiming, “If someone would ever write a book about those days in Columbus when no one had keys to their house and there was music on every corner, they’d have one hell of a book.” That was my inspiration.

When I showed up at Jimmy’s house the next week with my tape recorder and camera, the first picture that he shared with me was of the Rusty Bryant Quartet, with Jimmy Rogers on drums, Harry Ross, bass and Jimmy Carter sat behind the piano, circa 1951. He had several photos of he and drummer Eddie Nix playing with the Earl Hood Orchestra in 1940 at the Valley Dale Ballroom. After I finished recording our session, he said, “You’ve got to interview Earl Hood”, and he gave me his phone number.

Earl Hood was approaching his eighty-fourth birthday and in great health, when I called him for a visit. His musical biography was huge; be began playing violin professionally in 1910 with the Thomas Howard Orchestra at the Masonic Lodge in Downtown Columbus at he remembered his pay, four dollars. He played with Charlie Parker’s Popular Players, led by pianist Sammy Stewart and when Stewart formed his band, the Singing Syncopators in 1918, Earl went with them to the Southern Hotel.

Hood continued playing with Stewart after his father, Charles, died and he became the bread winner of the family. During the summers Earl would spend time with the band when Sammy ventured out to strike his musical gold mine. He told me about the contracts that Singing Syncopators would get to spend the year in the large hotels like Cleveland’s Hollenden, Toledo’s Secore, the Ritz Supper Club in Detroit, then the Entertainer’s Cafe and Sunset Cafe in Chicago.

Earl’s legacy in music grew in Columbus when he formed the Earl Hood Orchestra and became the house band at Valley Dale Ballroom from 1928 through 1950. Those were the peak years when swing music brought nearly every touring band to Valley Dale, whose owners were the Peppe Family, brothers Jimmy and Lou. Performers included Sammy Kaye, Kaye Kyser, Guy Lombardo, Benny Goodman, Jimmy and Tommy Dorsey, Glenn Miller, Frank Sinatra, Artie Shaw, Duke Ellington, Count Basie, among others. Earl was one of the few Black men who was there throughout the era.

Others that I spoke with during these heady days were Bill Carter, Elaine Crockett, Raleigh Randolph, Eddie Nix, Milton “Doc” Payne, Sammy Hopkins and Bill Stewart, who had been a young member of Sammy Stewart’s band when they went to Chicago in 1924. “Sammy was the best pianist that I’ve ever seen. He could play two separate melodies simultaneously, he was a great arranger and his orchestra was made up of Columbus musicians who were first class gentlemen.”

Bill continued to play with Sammy in Chicago through 1928 and the the band returned to Columbus to open the Ogden Theater, built by Al Jackson. They opened the theater, later known as the Lincoln Theater, on Thanksgiving, 1928. In 1931, with Bill still playing saxophone and reed instruments, the Stewart Band went to the Lafayette Theater in New York City. They played all of the big spots in New York, but music progressed and the Sammy Stewart Band broke up in 1933.

I coined my visits with Central Ohio musicians “Traveling Through Time.” I got to travel with saxophonist Rusty Bryant to the years when Dot Records captured an evening in 1954 at the Carolyn Club when Rusty’s group, which included a young Hank Marr on piano, recorded Pink Champagne, the Castle Rock and All Night Long. I was with Hank on Leonard Avenue, when he and Rusty recorded a recorded Live at Club 502.

In September, 1982, we had a birthday party at Valley Dale Ballroom in honor of Earl Hood and the following year, in October, 1983, we welcomed Harry “Sweets” Edison back to honor his old band leader’s birthday with a concert. Sweets had left Columbus in the 1930s to become Count Basie’s star trumpeter and later gave Frank Sinatra a boost with his unique trumpet style.

I apprenticed as an entertainment writer with the Columbus Call-Post, culling photos from its vast collection of entertainment photos of little know musical personalities, like the the Selby-Barton Trio, Three Bs and a Honey, the Soul Techniques, Madame Rose Brown, the Four Mints and the Wallace Brothers. By the time I put together my musician’s scrapbook I had nearly one thousand photographs.

Candy Watkins took an interest in the collection that I was amassing and suggested that she write grants for the project. Others became involved, poets, writers and photographers and in September, 1990, the book entitled Listen For the Jazz: Keynotes in Columbus History debuted at the Hot Times Festival on the Near Eastside. By then Earl Hood was nearing his ninety-fourth birthday, but he got in his Buick and came to get his copy of the book and sign autographs.

Saxophonist Rusty Bryant, organist Eddie Beard, trumpeter Bobby Alston and violinist Earl Hood came to get their copies of Listen For the Jazz and to share their musical legacies with others, before they passed on the following year. Jimmy Carter didn’t live to see the publication, he died in 1983. But he was right, “We have one hell of a book.”

My Life As A Creole




Creole is a world describing “mixture.” In America, when we use the term, we are mindful of the French-speaking people of color that inhabit or are descendent of Louisiana, both European and African descent. The term is actually from the Spanish word “criollo,” believed to be a colonial corruption of criadillo (bred, brought up, reared). In my travels, I have found references to Jamaican Creole, Haitian Creole, Bahamian English, Sierra Leone Krio, Seychelles Creole and Cuban Criollos.

I adopted my Creole life from roots that I acquired when I met a band in San Francisco. My brother Kevin and I had first visited California to attend the Monterrey Jazz Festival in mid-September, 1975 and we spent our first Thursday night at a San Francisco concert hall, The Boarding House, where Bob Marley and the Wailers had played two weeks before. The Meters were performing there, prior to going south to play in Monterrey.

The Meters original membership was; Art Neville, keyboards, Cyrille Neville, congas, Joseph (Zigaboo) Modeliste, drums, Leo Nocentelli, guitar and George Porter, bass. They had become legend in the New Orleans recording studios, working with composer Allen Toussaint, recording many sessions for sixties hit recordings.

The funky melodies and rhythms that came off the Boarding House stage that Thursday evening drew me and Kevin out of our seats and into their second line as they paraded around the room. We partied with them on into their dressing room during the break and we saw them on Saturday afternoon at the jazz festival. I went home and found their album, “The Meters: Fire on the Bayou,” and learned every note on every song. My favorite became They All Asked For You, a traditional song passed down from their musical fathers in New Orleans parade bands.

I made my first trip to “The Big Easy” the following summer, 1976 to visit an adopted sister, Stephanie Winkfield LeDuff, who had married into a Creole family when she jumped the broom with Peter LeDuff. They lived in half of a “shotgun style” double on Lapeyrouse Street off of Gravier Street, downtown, and Peter’s grandmother, a French speaking matron, occupied the other half.

Peter’s parents, Ferd and Sis LeDuff had built a beautiful home Uptown New Orleans and they showed me so much Southern hospitality and love, that I just adopted myself into their family. We shopped at neighbood markets, toured the French Quarter, the St. Louis and Elysian Fields Cemeteries and ate authentic home-cooking in the kitchens of Creole homes. My soul was hooked for life.

January 1959: The Flood In the Bottoms




I was eight years old in January, 1959, living on Chicago Avenue and in the third grade at Chicago Avenue School. When the westside levee broke and the flood waters came, I remember my father George Howard, climbing into the crawl space above our ceiling about bed time and turning off the pilot light to our gas furnace. Our parents gave us the sense that we were in an emergency but were not panicked. All four Howard Boys crawled in bed together and body heat kept us warm.

Within a few hours, we were awakened and it was time to evacuate; the Ohio National Guard troop transporter was parked in our flooded street and military men were carrying neighbors in porch chairs to the covered military truck. Our first stop was Engine House Number Ten on West Broad Street and from there, our family was shuttled to the Navy/Marine Recruiting Center located on Sandusky Street at Dublin Road, in the same site that now stands Confluence Park Restaurant.

I remember hundreds of people overnighting there on wooden and canvas, folding cots. After breakfast, ten hours since we were evacuated in the middle of the January night, we contacted our family friends, Otto and Josephine Charles, who had an apartment on Clifton Avenue in East Columbus and spent several days with them, before returning back to the westside.

Flood waters had crept up to our front steps, but no closer and since we had no basement at 175 Chicago Avenue, we saw no flood damage. But our family purchased acreage in Plain City/Union County, built a new home and by November, 1959, we had fled the Bottoms and flooding for good.

Tuesday, February 22, 2011

Frazier Community's Annual Pigroast and Family Day




Since 1984, the Frazier Community, Plain City, Ohio and Arnett Howard’s Creole Funk Band have met on Labor Day for a Pigroast and Family Day. As many as seven hundred people have attended this annual celebration from all over the world.

The pigroast started in 1984 as a celebration party when Arnett graduated from the Columbus Area Leadership Program. Art Yoho, of Yoho Foods, contributed the pig, Arnett contributed the music, the Leadership Program made up the guest list, along with the members of the Frazier Community.

The event was enjoyed by all and next year’s event was planned, expanding the guest list to include all friends of Frazier Estates. Friends came from Plain City, Columbus, Cleveland, Boston, Atlanta, Houston, Los Angeles and Munich, Germany, among other places.

There has been only one year that the event has not been held, due to drouth conditions in Plain City. For two years the pigroast was held at the Jerome Township Center in New California, but for the majority of the time the party have been held at the Charles and Virginia Davidson residence, the Eddie Abercrombie residence, the Howard/Bogart residence and the Arnold and Mevelyn Estis residence.

In 2011, the Frazier Community will be hosting its twenty-seventh Pigroast and Family Day. Photos through the years have been assembled and are on display at http://www.flickr.com/photos/59510425@N04/sets/72157625986802051/.

Tuesday, February 1, 2011

Fred and Howard's Studebaker Lark




Fred and Howard’s Studebaker

I was going through the New York Times last week (January 25, 2011) and I ran across an advertisement for a 1960 Studebaker Lark. The ad read, “The frumpy Lark nearly saved Studebaker, but few people saved Larks. It’s an ideal start to a collection of defunct brands. $10,000-$11,000.”

The photo of the plain automobile reminded me of a photo that I took back in 1996 of Fred Holdridge and Howard Burns in front of a Studebaker Lark that they owned. It was getting serviced at the German Village Shell station that was operated by the Vern Thacker family.

I don’t know the year of Fred and Howard’s pristine vehicle but I’m guessing that it was a 1960. According to a page on the Wikipedia website, “The Studebaker Lark is a "compact car" which was produced by Studebaker from 1959 to 1966. From its introduction in 1959 until 1962, the Lark was a product of the Studebaker-Packard Corporation. In mid-1962, the company dropped "Packard" from its name and reverted to its pre-1954 name, the Studebaker Corporation. In addition to being built in Studebaker's South Bend, Indiana, home plant, the Lark and its descendants were also built in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada, from 1959-1966 by Studebaker of Canada Limited.”

Studebaker-Packard was a full-sized car and the Studebaker Company celebrated its one-hundredth year in 1952. But the company was losing money and the Lark was introduced as a compact that would save the company. It sold well for the years 1959 and 1960 and had two levels of trim; Fred and Howard’s was the Deluxe.

It seems obvious that Fred and Howard had their Lark painted, if not restored, by the looks of it’s exterior and chrome. If I rode in the car, it was not more than once. They would get new cars every couple of years and the Studebaker was just a whim for them, but I remember it sitting behind their German Village apartment until 2001.

The car was sold after Howard’s passing in 2001 and replaced with an electric Gem Car.

Josephine Charles and Fred Holdridge, RIP





Well all have a life span. Some long, some short, some happy and some tragic. We are now grieving an Ohio family who has lost five members of their family in two separate accidents over the Christmas holidays. Tragic.

But the bright moment in the passing of a loved one comes between the announcement of death and the memorial service and that is reliving the years that you had together. All of the joyful memories come flashing by.

Josephine Charles was my mother, Delores Williams Howard’s roommate at Bluefield State Teachers College in Bluefield, West Virginia in 1949-50. Josephine married Otto Charles and they moved to Clifton Apartments in Columbus, where they raised Nickie and Cedric Charles.

The Howard Family was caught in the flood of January, 1959, spending the first night in Fire Station Number Ten at Glenwood and West Broad and the second night at the Marine Reserve Center on Sandusky Boulevard. The Charles Family then took us in and we spent the next three days with them before finally returning back to “The Bottoms,” as the Lower Westside was then called.

Nickie Charles was Otto and Josephine’s oldest son and Cedric, the younger, was born developmentally disabled. Nickie was a superb drummer, playing in the Billy Cobham school of fusion drummers. Unfortunately, Nickie acquired a drug habit, shot and killed a taxi driver and he has been in Madison County prisons for nearly thirty years. Tragic.

Josephine has spent the years petitioning parole board, attempting to get Nickie’s freedom, but to no avail. Otto passed away three years ago and Nickie was unable to attend his fathers funeral. It’s not likely that he will attend this one.

Josephine and Otto enjoyed the Frazier Community’s Annual Pig Roast and Family Day, held each Labor Day since 1984. They would bring Cedric and the extended family and we would celebrate each year. I will miss Josephine, but like all of the family, she will still be there in spirit.

When you speak of Fred Holdridge, you talk about Howard Burns. Fred and Howard were the proprietors of Hausfrau Haven, the German Village general store. I started going to Hausfrau in 1974, when Doug Dailey, a dear friend, moved to Columbus Street and we would go there on Sunday mornings for the New York Times.

German Village celebrates gay life and Fred and Howard were the most senior and celebrated of all of the Village’s residents. The Village grew from a place where you could buy almost any place for $10,000 to $20,000, into a neighborhood where million dollar homes, beautiful gardens and a house tour takes place each summer in late June.

German Village had a very light side to it, as illustrated by Void Villities. It was a show to lampoon Upper Arlington’s Vaud Villities and the characters in the show had to have a display of their untalented side. So in 1994, in honor of Fred and Howard, I dressed as Billie Holiday and performed two songs in drag. Afterwards, still dressed, the crowd went to Lindy’s Restaurant, the nicest place in town and had dinner. Howard said that I was elegant.

Fred and Howard never got any Father’s Day cards, so Aaron Leventhal and I started sending them cards in 1990 from New Orleans. I would occassionally send them a riske photo of me and my girlfriend from Jamaica and Fred would carry it around in his wallet. We had a fiftieth anniversary breakfast for them for Father’s Day, 2001 and Fred pulled the photo of me and Susan out of his wallet.

Memories will keep flooding for the days until Fred is buried, for he has reached the end of his lifespan, like Howard did in November, 2001. However, love never ends.

Josephine and Fred, I love you. Rest easy.