Slouching Towards Harmotopia

My first guitar teacher was probably in his late fifties or early sixties. This short, stocky man had a semi-bald head, pale somewhat ruddy skin and a harsh autocratic voice that allowed him to speak in a crisp abrupt manner. He almost invariably wore a tie, dress shirt, freshly polished shoes. Something about his demeanor and sartorial style reminded me of male movie characters from the thirties, forties and early fifties.

His style of playing was also redolent of another era. One could hear echoes of Eddie Lang, Nick Lucas, Karl Kress and others. After all he did start teaching in 1927. I met him in the late fifties, a time when rock and roll was an acensive art form. In fact I remember when a young man sporting a DA strolled into the store and interrupted my lesson in order to find out how many lessons were needed to play like Duane Eddy.

The store was full of vintage color illustrations: cowboys and cowgirls playing guitars around the campfire; youngsters who looked like members of Our Gang and The Deadend Kids playing acoustic guitars or ukes while sitting on the stoop. Next to these pictures was a display case containing guitar picks, strings, pitch pipes and other musical items.

There was also a rack of sheet music, song folios and various guitar methods. Nick Manohoff, Mel Bay, Harry Volpe, Eddie Lang- these were some of the names that seeped into my consciousness after seeing them on page after page of different publications. Various guitars were on display in the window of the shop. The one instrument that always caught my eye was a sunburst Les Paul.

One of my early lessons centered around learning how to play Taps a melody that accommodated the standard tuning of the guitar in a manner that makes it relatively easy to play. My teacher never tired of telling me to tap my foot: one and two and three and four and; down up, down up, a quarter note gets one beat; a half note, two beats; a whole note four beats.

As stated earlier, normal speech for Mr.Shornack was little more than a slightly modified growl that implied imprecation. Once he actually hit my guitar due to frustration over my lack of musical alacrity.

I enjoyed music and wanted to play but was frightened and in the clutches of performance anxiety. Learning the notes below middle C was problematic. Consequently Reuben and Rachel was a melody I learned by rote simply because fear kept me from understanding the concept of ledger lines.

All hell broke loose when I was found out. My teacher’s face turned beet-red as he yelled at me.

My father had been showing me off to various relatives. On command I would go through my repertory of chestnuts culled from the Eddie Alkire Method.

Dear old dad was also dismayed when he discovered my subterfuge. For him this incident was yet another example of my lack of musical progress. Like my teacher he gave me the Buddy Rich treatment. My mother tried to dissuade him from yelling; it was to no avail. The whole scene provoked another one of my sobsister routines. I was crying; in fact I was always crying and men don’t cry.

My father told me I was acting like a little girl. He grabbed my guitar and tried to play it. He had played the trombone as a young man. Once I actually ran across a piece of sheet music with Tommy Dorsey’s picture on it in the attic during one of my childhood foraging exercises.

Eventually my father and my teacher had a stormy confrontation. My teacher opined in the most stentorian manner possible that investment in my musical future was a waste of time.

My desire to play music intensified despite my teacher’s dire prognostication.  Immersion in the world of music helped me contend with my parent’s marital discord and consequent divorce. It also allayed so many problems attendant to entering the hormonal hell of adolescence.

I saw a picture of Charlie Christian on a Columbia album cover, when I was around 14. Since I was something of a jazz nerd I was familiar with his name. In fact I had actually heard his recording of Honeysuckle Rose with the Benny Goodman Orchestra. It was fascinating. I wanted to learn how to play all those notes: in short to improvise, play jazz.

To be blunt about it I was also fascinated and surprised by the fact that he was black. So many plectrists of that era cited him as an influence but I knew very little about him other than the fact that like Keats and Stephen Crane he succumbed to TB at an early age. Later I was to discover that he had grown up with novelist Ralph Ellison in Oklahoma.

Maybe there was hope. Artists in general seemed to have immunity to the tedious rigor and banality of routine existence. They didn’t worry about  becoming a scout or receiving Communion on a regular basis. They had a stern discipline that saw them through the quotidian madness that passes for normality. In many instances they even modified the norm in a manner that was novel as well as amenable.

Reading Downbeat, Mad magazine, and listening to Lenny Bruce records only abetted this attitude. One could contend that this was the idealized attitude of a socially maladjusted fourteen year old but it’s still with me.

Read Bern Nix’s Iron Claw of Memory on Arteidolia