THE DAY THE MUSIC DIED

Don McLean exploded into my life when by chance, I heard his ballad "American Pie" on the radio. It was a complicated structure, almost a cantata, but it had a spontaneity that almost seemed improvised. But if you examined it carefully, a clear structure emerges but with touches of Christian revivals. 

I have called Don MacLean the "Shakespeare of Song." Even though, he was born in 1945, when I was nine years old, we have had strangely parallel careers. He delivered the morning newspapers in his hometown of New Rochelle, and he identified with country music. I delivered the morning Amarillo Globe, and identified with the music of Gershwin and Broadway. 

I discovered Don MacLean through his epic, The Day the Music Died, as I had attended Texas Tech and knew of Buddy Holly when he performed around Lubbock. My girlfriend Dorothy scheduled Holly to perform at Texas Tech. Holly grew up in Lubbock and sang western music as he was growing up. I grew up in Amarillo, always pursuing New York, Gershwin, and the musical theater scene. I wrote musicals every year through grade school, junior high, and Amarillo High School, where I edited the school newspaper, the yearbook, and wrote a musical show every year that I performed in, including "The Ballad of the Blue Rose." I cast my high school idol, Caroline Southwood to dance in the ballet.

But when I discovered MacLean's music, I thrived on his performances. No one has equaled his output. His lyrics are pure poetry, with intricate rhyme schemes and thematic metaphors. For me, he is the Shakespeare of the American Song.

THE DAY THE MUSIC LIVED

From my point of view, the day that Eddy Arnold appeared on the music scene, a new era for the American song began through the metamorphosis of Country Music to a pop style that spread throughout the world. This was the day the music lived. 

During that time I was writing music for my high school quartet, and musicals that were produced by my high school in Amarillo, Texas. Few people know my songs. They were written in private. The only songs I shared were Christmas songs that I composed and recorded each year to send to friends as Christmas Greetings. Those songs are on Spotify as The Twelve Songs of Christmas by John V Gilbert.

Country music had a dramatic impact on popular music, especially in the 1950s, when the influence of Nashville was shaped by Country Music singers in the Texas Panhandle. The most famous singer and song writer to emerge was Buddy Holly, whose fame exploded on the scene in Lubbock with his band, The Crickets. The Beatles took note of Buddy Holly's songs, and informed him that they had formed their group as a tribute to add their voices to a new direction for popular music that would become the international pop music scene.

But to understand what led to the development of Buddy Holly, some background of forces at play during that era may help to clarify this phenomenon. 

The music genius of Eddy Arnold not only dominated Nashville, but it nurtured the Country Music scene in the Texas Panhandle. The music activity in Amarillo and Lubbock developed a style that was perfect for the recording studios that were beginning to appear everywhere. Singers with guitars fit these studios perfectly. This is when Eddy Arnold began to dominate the airways. I remember his songs as I heard him on the radio. Listen to his recordings and you will hear a new style emerging in songs like "You Don't Know Me," which may be one of the most recorded songs by so many artists over the years. 

I was born September 5, 1936, and Buddy Holly was born September 7, 1937. Buddy Holly's The Crickets was active in his high school in the 1950s.

In 1948, at Butler College, the Four Freshmen began as a Barbershop Quartet. I followed suit in 1952 with a Barbershop Quartet that our music teacher, Mrs. Thompson, put together. That gesture on her part, changed my life.

The quartet in Amarillo focused more on Jazz as represented by the Four Freshmen. I would transcribe each individual voice in their recordings for my quartet and teach them the songs. I wrote several songs for our quartet that I have lost track of, remembering only the titles, "No More" and "Where Has The Simmer Gone."

When I went to Texas Tech, I formed a  quartet we named "First Impressions." We met with the Four Freshmen when they performed in Lubbock, Texas. I said we sang all their songs, they smiled and said that many quartets made that claim, but they were not accurate. We then sang "It's a Blue World" they said that we really nailed it. They then took out their instruments and we formed a circle and we sang through their repertoire. It was such a thrilling moment.Then we sang my song "Must You Go?". They offered to include it in their repertoire, but I foolishly said that I wanted to keep it for our quartet.

It is only now, that I understand how much Eddy Arnold impacted on my music, despite my focus on the music of George Gershwin.  

WHEN THE LEVEE WAS FULL

A long, long time ago, before "the day the music died," I returned to Texas Tech, my alma mater, to see a performance of The Marvelous Multicolored Maze, a musical I had written for an arts festival at Tech. At the time, I was a doctoral student at Columbia University, and so, coming back to Lubbock where I had graduated with degrees in Music and English (English Poetry and Drama) was a bit of a homecoming. Little did I realize I would somehow tumble back in time to my undergraduate days at Tech.

As a freshman, I had been a bit confused, although I had written a number of musicals throughout my days at Amarillo High School and had served as editor of the school newspaper and yearbook. My father urged me to become an English major, since I had won the Columbia University Award for best editorial writing. But upon seeing An American In Paris in Topeka, Kansas, where I was attending a conference on school newspapers, I was captured by my lifelong connection to music improvising and was determined to study composition at Texas Tech. In the end I pursued two degrees, one in literature and writing, and the other, music composition.

I found life in the dorm devastating, and on a rainy night in Lubbock, I was found collapsed on the top of a downtown parking lot. I awoke in the hospital on Thanksgiving weekend with my appendix removed. My parents visited me in the hospital, but I was in no condition to travel home, so I was doomed to spend Thanksgiving in the hospital.

A few days earlier, I had attended auditions for choir, and heard a most incredible contralto who was Norwegian. She was in her thirties, married, with three adopted children. Her husband was a salesman and was home only on weekends. When she learned I was recovering in the hospital unable to travel home, she insisted that I join her family for Thanksgiving. That was when I met the youngest child, Shelly, who was just three years old. I wrote a song for Dorothy, "Always Be My Sweet Little Girl," which became a hit with the local Lubbock audiences and eventually throughout Texas. Dorothy would sing this song to Shelly while I accompanied on the piano.

Things came easily for me at Tech. I had a vocal quartet that I wrote music for and took arrangements off the recordings of the Four Freshmen, so we entertained throughout the Lubbock area. I composed a musical, Something for Nothing, performed in a Coliseum that sat 5000 people in the audience.

My relationship with Dorothy deepened into an affair which lasted until I graduated from Texas Tech and left for New York to study musicology at Columbia University. My return to Texas Tech was the first time I saw Dorothy for several years. At the time of my return, Buddy Holly was wowing audiences at Texas Tech and throughout Texas and the Southwest. Dorothy had become the Entertainment Director at Texas Tech's Student Union and somehow was deeply involved with this rising star. Buddy's career in Lubbock paralleled my development in Amarillo. We were the same age, but his roots in country music and the emerging Rock scene attracted national attention. 

Dorothy told me that he had an apartment in New York and was recording for Decca Records. Decca dropped him when his singles sold poorly. He moved back to Lubbock and his recording "Peggy Sue" produced by Coral Records in New Mexico, sold one million copies. This led to a hastily arranged  tour to cover twenty-four midwestern cities in twenty-four days by bus, but special arrangements had been made for Holly to fly in a Beechcraft Bonanza. No one really understood that the pilot was inexperienced and the weather conditions were too severe to make the flight. The plane crashed two minutes after take-off.

The songwriter Don McLean immortalized that moment in his epic, American Pie, as "the day the music died."

I'M STILL HERE, EVEN NOW

Over the past several months, I have been in several hospitals fighting off attacks on the integrity of my Being. Such attacks undermine my energy and demand a spiritual resolution. It is difficult to understand the source of this spiritual energy, but I feel it rushing to my rescue even as I am dazed and confused.

Now I am home in the sanctuary of my office overlooking the fir trees on the side of Blue Mountain beside the Hudson River in Peekskill, New York.We have had record breaking snow storms this winter. The spring rain is washing away the remnants of the storms and clearing a path for Spring.

I must say a word about the magnificent doctors and staff at NYUI Langone in the heart of the city on First Avenue.They restored and revitalized me. But it is the steadfastness and positive support of my son, John Russell and his wife Nancy that have sustained my recovery, especially with the introduction of an exceptionally wise cat known as Lady. Lady talks to me with great sincerity and depth of feeling. She is constantly checking on me. 

I know it might seem strange, but Lady and I communicate in depth, and she comes to check on me at bedtime, and in the morning to make sure everything is all right. She is quite interested in the shower and goes in to explore and sit, She watches me while I shower.

Lady is a special Being. Each day brings new challenges and insights. Russell and Nancy said that she actually chose them when they were looking to find a kitten for me. She was persistent and persuaded them to bring her home to me.

So I am still here, but the energy of my home is different, alive and dynamic. It is an entirely new adventure as Spring unfolds with the promise of an abundant summer.

 

A FAMILY SAGA

When I was fifteen, I came across a box of photograph scrapbooks and daitries in my father’s  office. It turns out that these were records and documents for the Gilbert clan that were part of the lost tribes of Israel. The Gilbert clan was persecuted and driven out of Ireland. They fled to Germany for several generations. But they fled hostility and attacks, seeking refuge in America  specifically South Carolina. 

In 1889, my Grandfather lined up on the Oklahoma border and participated in the Land Rush. He managed to stake a claim in the Oklahoma Panhandle. His name was John Gilbert. He was a tall, strong man who created a farm and improvised on an old organ in the house. 

On Saturdays he would go into town and collect men who were passed out from drinking. He would bring them to his farm and feed them, and nurse them back to health. Many stayed on with him to work the farm and others went on their way, sober and grateful.

When I was about eight years old, my father came and took me out of school. We drove to Oklahoma to see my grandfather who was on his deathbed. When we arrived, he opened his eyes and saw me. He managed to raise himself up and stood. He hugged me tightly and kissed me on the top of my head. He passed away a few hours later.

Across the years I still feel his presence, and know that my own inclination to improvisation came to me through his passion for for making music in the midnight hours on that Oklahoma homestead. My father was the youngest and he was always given the job of shelling corn. For my father, shelling corn was his term for wasting time...so when people would ask my Father, "where's Johnny?" He would reply about my improvising at the piano as "He's inside shelling corn."