Fred Holdridge in Grant Hospital, Columbus

Dad,

Even though we miss you, you haven't missed much a' anything since you been in 'da' joint.' Terry Dickey's sixtieth birthday party was a real good time; her sisters came up from Dallas and they were not only very attractive, tall women (you know I'm a sucker for a pretty face and long legs), but they could shake it too. The bash ended too early; the old crowd don't party like we used to twenty years ago. But there were some mighty good meatballs; Dave, my bass player, took home the leftovers.

You did missed a lot of good music during Easter week. John Carter and I sounded real good together, although I blew the last three measures of a hard piece on Easter morning. I hope Barbara Zuck isn't too severe in her criticism of my performance.

Well, now that I think about it, you woulda' enjoyed the Cols. Jazz Orchestra last weekend. Their guests, Ken Peploski and Peter Appleyarn, brought back those good old Benny Goodman clarinet days when Lionel Hampton played vibraphone. They played Airmail Special and Flying Home and I never get tired of hearing those songs. Thankfully, we didn't have to suffer through another version of Sing, Sing, Sing, for the ten thousanth time.

The rich people over on City Park returned from boozing, whorin' and drugin' around Amsterdam and we did go see a strangely beautiful Israeli film, The Band's Visit; about an Egyptian Police band that gets lost in the deserts of Israel, in the town of Beth Tivah. Sorry, we didn't eat any popcorn in your honor; I been eatin' way too much of it lately at OSU basketball games.

Byron and Milli Kohn had their fifty-seventh anniversary last Tuesday, with lunch at Shaw's Restaurant in beautiful, Downtown Lancaster. We talked about you; I told 'em you was a mess but too stubborn to kick the bucket and too hard headed to heal.

Well, this is week two of my six week creative period; taxes are due in two weeks, so I guess I can't put in off no longer. One book is done and one more to go, as well as two compact discs. I'm too creative for my own good.

I play a party at Cooper Stadium, Friday. I'll get a box o' corn for you, after I finish the National Anthem! How many of them dime dogs you want?

Sorry, we're not havin' any real fun while you're on vacation. Maybe we can get the warden to give you a furlough; we can go put a cherry bomb in Greg and Catherine's mailbox and wheelchair like hell.

Bright moments from Creole Village from your loving 'sun'!

A

March 2008 Trips to Florida and Indianapolis

Florida Trip Report, 3/8/08

Greetings from Creole Village, where it is as quiet as it is gong to be this year. Ohio has just been through a thirty-two hour winter storm/snow blizzard. I woke up in Indianapolis, where we partied with the Indiana Department of Transportation’s Entrepreneurial Development Institute, administered by Linda McHenry, esq. and Dr. W.C. Benton.

Each year I write a jingle for EDI that is based on the conference theme and this year’s song, Innovate Indiana: Are You In?, was a masterful piece of jazzy, funky rap, that I whipped up in a whole four days. Linda is the song’s commissioner and I think she’s been sailing on a cloud since 2007’s theme song, Nothing Happens ‘Till You Decide (That the Future Is Now in Indiana). ”It kicked everybody in the pants real good.

Same results with this year’s song and the EDI Party Animals swamped the dance floor on the second selection’s opening rhythms, “Say Hey! Indiana! EDI want’s to know, ‘Are you in? (Are you in?)." The fellows in the band reminded me that we did three remixes during the evening, the last being a rockin’ reggae to finish the party like it started, with everyone in the call and response choir. Sail on Ms. McHenry and Dr. Benton; ya’ll pulled it off, storm or not.

I returned from Tampa/Land O’Lakes/Lutz/Kissimmee on Wednesday, after a week of serious sun worshiping/maxing and relaxing in the hospitality of Eve Feber, comedian, sexy senior naturist and, now author of Bare Naked Humor. Eve and I celebrated twenty years of our family as entertainers. We met entertaining at Hedonism II in Negril, Jamaica after 1988’s Hurricane Gilbert.

Eve is eighty-eight and still spoiled rotten. I played for her twice at Ukuleles Bar and a Sunday spiritual service around Moss Lake at her home in Lake Como Family Nudist Resort. I had come to 2008 Superbowl South, the annual nude volleyball tourney, that is Lake Como's welcome winter break for snowbird players from around the U.S and Canada.

Eve and Ed, her young eighty-three year old companion, invited me to join them in Clearwater Beach at the beautiful Ruth Eckert Hall, to see two old comic entertainers, Joan Rivers and Don Rickles. I had never seen either before, but Joan has the raunchiest act and the foulest mouth; she dropped a couple of f-bombs even before the curtain opened. In a non-stop hour-long set to open the show, Joan stalked the stage and whomever in the audience she could view and she abused every ethnic group possible, except Blacks; unless you call musician/aledged child molester, Michael Jackson, a Black.

Joan Rivers is a very bad but funny woman. Compared to her act, Don Rickles was pale, hardly as entertaining but he sang, “I’m a Nice Guy,” between his legendary sarcasm.

But the sun rose early on Saturday morning and I maxed my sun time in the company of a like minded community. I would just describe the experience of a nude community as exhilaratingly free; a soul can wake up and not worry about closing the drapes, garden au natural, throw a book, some money and a towel in a bag, go for a walk and greet everyone with a word or a wave. Breakfast was usually an hour at the Bare Buns Cafe for a short stack of banana, pecan pancakes and crisp bacon.

The opening weekend of games was on grass courts and teams played in threes and fours; mostly men, several coed teams and plenty of sun and temperatures as the balls and bodies bounced. There is nothing erotic about nude volleyball; players of all ages and sizes dig, set, bat, spike and chase the constantly moving ball, hour after hour, game after game.

The volleyball community that I have been a part of for five or six years, although I don't play, is a group of friends that I am excited to spend time with; they are a free spirited bunch who are way more fun than your typical, tight-laced, textile person, who always resorts to self-abuse when body freedom issues are topical. ‘Nuff said; fun is where you find it!

Lake Como has a perfect hot tub facility; clean showers and a large, 104 degree jet powered soaker, that, once you can get fully in, you don’t don’t wanna’ get out of. The Lake Como community also has horse shoe and pettanque courts. Pettanque is an international game, like bocci ball, but using a small and heavy ball to throw closest to the targeted "pig" and I was welcomed onto the court by Dennis 2 (there were two Dennis’). Eve played; we made jokes about retrieving her balls from the back seat. I enjoyed the play and should invest more time in the game of pettanque, because it’s not murder on the knees like volleyball.

Bob and Carla, Eve’s next-door neighbors got married on Sunday afternoon and the event was a fashion paradise. My senses haven’t gotten overwhelmed like that afternoon since my second visit to wood sculptor David and Susan Hostetler’s Athens, Ohio home in December, 2007. David would have been inspired for months, if not years (although Susan keeps him pretty inspired by herself).

Photographing activities at Lake Como Resort has well defined rules that I intended to follow. The road to hell is paved with good intentions and forgive me, for I sinned and took more than a few pictures of all of the friends that gathered to witness for Bob and Carla. I also took interior shots of the “Ho Tow,” the 1969 Airstream trailer that Bob plans to haul Carla around the U.S. in as they enjoy a honeymoon this summer.

Although I called Patty Wagstaff and Rob Lock while I was in Florida, I never got to get into the air with either of the two members of my aviation family. I did get to spend a night in Kissimmee/Poinciana at Sola Vita Resort with Arnold and Mevelyn Estis, part of my Plain City family. George and Ethel Ware, fellow Plain City folk, join us for breakfast, before I hit the road for an eighty mile trip back to Lake Como.

Curt Zeigler, a volleyball player from Columbus, met me and a few of us Cols. boys went to see filmmaker Spike Lee speak at the University of South Florida. Afterwards we found a serious Jamaican eatery called the Jerk Hut on Fowler Street, close to the USF campus; they had chicken dishes and I had escoviche fish, baked with the head on. Ital, righteous foods, good beer and an atmosphere feeling of the real island experience.

I didn’t want to dress for the airport Wednesday morning; long pants and a shirt replacing no pants or shirt, hard shoes are less comfortable than a week in sandals. But I covered myself, loaded my bags, turned in my well-used gate pass and aimed the rental car towards the cold Midwest via Tampa International Airport. I was scraping iced windows by 6 pm. Wednesday.

Maxxed, relaxed, brown, beautifully destressed, not depressed,

Yours,

A

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