Birthdate: 2/3/43
Mother, Father, Sister—all play piano.
Third Grade: Age 9: My first musical instrument:
Trombone.
Fourth Grade: Age 10: I notice that trombone
players in a band play notes they don’t understand (harmony), but trumpet
players play notes everyone understands (melody). Girls hang around trumpet
players but not trombone players. I switch to trumpet, I play notes everyone
understands and some girls start hanging around me.
Seventh Grade: Age 13. I play trumpet in the
Easton High School Marching Band: Director: Harry Ivan Drendle. We drill
constantly. We learn to march as a military-style unit. We have colorful
uniforms. We march everywhere including up and down Northhampton Street—our
Main Street, around Town Square, and, of course, at football games and pep
rallies. We are good. We are held in high esteem by our community. I learn
how marching bands could be. I am the youngest member. I sit next to the
bass drum in the stands. I develop a love for the camaraderie, pageantry and
music of marching bands. I earn a JV letter in music.
My Sister plays Glenn Miller big band music on her record
player, and at her parties she and her friends sing songs that I now recognize
as singalongs—“Heart of My Heart,” etc. I am five years younger, but I am
privileged to sit and listen to my Sister and her friends having fun with
music.
I take trumpet lessons from Dick Dunn at Mel Bay’s Music
Store, on Jefferson Avenue. Mel himself sells me trumpet music, mouthpieces,
and valve oil, and treats me as an adult. I do not know then that he is the
Mel Bay of guitar music lesson book fame, and owner of The Mel Bay Publ/ishing
Company, one of the world's largest publishers of music instruction books.
I do not know that he is a musician’s musician and one of the most sought-after
guitarists and banjoists in the St. Louis area. I play in the junior high
school band. We do not march. We do a Spring Concert, and that’s all.
Eighth Grade: Age 14: My Father buys my Mother
a Hammond M3 organ for a Christmas present. Seven free lessons come as part
of the deal. I am fascinated by the organ and spend time trying my luck with
it. I get the seven free lessons. From Lloyd Bartlett, who later becomes a
good friend, and proves to be a musician’s musician, on call for big band
and show stuff in the St. Louis area, working with show business greats
such Frank Sinatra. I learn to play popular music on the organ, including
many different accompaniment rhythm patterns for different styles of music
including waltzes, fox trots, swing, and Latin music including beguines,
rhumbas, sambas, tangoes (Spanish and Argentine), and paso doblés.
I am exposed to swing, jazz, and Broadway show music. I learn to play four-to-the-bar
swing style walking bass lines on the 12-note Hammond M3 pedalboard. I get
my first fake books—the original brown Volume One and green Volume Two—a
thousand songs each. I am fascinated by all these wonderful songs and I learn
most of them. My Mother and Father have neighborhood parties, and I play
music for them. At these parties, Bud Gross, who is a former professional
singer, is able to sing most songs in the fake books in the original keys,
so I accompany him, and we have singalongs and lots of fun.
I develop a fascination for church organs and classical
organ music. Our neighbor is Bob Heckman, who is a masterful classical
organist, and is the organist at our church. He treats everyone as an adult,
and I spend time with him talking about music, listening to him and helping
him by turning pages when he practices and at his concerts. I am privileged
to be able to practice a four-manual fifty-four rank Wicks pipe organ in
our church. The walls of the church are concrete and brick and impart a marvelous
natural reverberation that sounds terrific in slow pieces but gums up fast
stuff. He teaches me to play classical music on the Wicks organ, but I am
better playing popular music on the M3. He also teaches me music theory
and how to analyze and write four-part harmony. I analyze and compose hymns.
I find myself composing music, popular and classical.
One song, “The Merrymeeting Waltz,” is written for Ralph and Mary Richardson,
who own a marina and real estate agency at Merrymeeting Lake, New Durham,
New Hampshire, where we spend our summers, and who are benevolent authority
figures for us summer kids, and is performed by Paul’s Melodiers—violin,
clarinet and drums—at a Merrymeeting Lake Association Dance in a summer whose
date I cannot remember.
My Sister buys me for one of my birthdays a recording
of Leonard McClain—“Melody Mac”—playing theatre organ. On his arrangement
of “Knightsbridge March” I hear him play field drums and trumpet fanfares,
I am fascinated by the fact that one man could control so much musical sound
and I am hooked on learning to play theatre organs and theatre organ style.
I get to meet Stan Kann, a Jew who is an organist at
a Methodist church, who plays in the mornings on The Charlotte Peters Show,
a local TV variety and talk show, hosted by local celebrity Charlotte Peters,
who plays the four-manual Wurlitzer theatre organ in the Fox Theatre in
St. Louis, between shows, and who later plays a Wurlitzer theatre organ
at Ruggieri’s Restaurant on Dago Hill (the Italians themselves called it
Dago Hill, so I understand “Dago” is not necessarily a bad term, unless you
are mad at Italians and intend to use it as an ethical slur) and runs back
and forth from Ruggieri’s to the Fox Theatre to cover the evening shows.
Stan is the world’s only vacuum cleaner collector—he has the original Hoover
among others. Stan later goes on TV talks shows such as the Johnny Carson
Show and the Merv Griffin Show, where, as a comic, he demonstrates fascinating
stuff like vacuum cleaners and cooking techniques but is so nervous he appears
to get things naturally screwed up. Maybe not.
I play in the high school marching band, but although
we do some marching we play only at home football games and never march in
community parades. Band members are not held in high esteem by fellow students
or by the community. This is not the way marching bands should be. Our director,
Burton Isaac, loves string orchestra music. He tells us “It is just as easy
to play the right notes as it is to play the wrong notes.” We don’t understand
what he is saying since sometimes we have a lot of trouble playing the right
notes and a lot less trouble playing the wrong notes. I don’t remember having
uniforms but am bored by the marching band scene at Kirkwood High School.
We do, however, play for graduations, where “Pomp and Circumstance” becomes
a musical stimulus for many nostalgic memories of friends moving on to other
phases of their lives and from whom we do not hear much but whom we miss
because they were a part of our youth.
I become impressed with the emotional power of music.
At our school Bill Bay, son of Mel Bay, has a reputation
of being a terrific trumpet player, in the style of great classical trumpeters
such as Rafael Mendez, but he plays in Burton Isaac’s String Orchestra and
those of us in Marching Band never get to hear him.
I get an invitation to play trumpet in the Howard Matthews
Big Band, run by Howard Matthews, a student at rival Webster Groves (Missouri)
High School. Bill Bay plays in this band, so I finally get to hear him.
I learn that there are “stock arrangements” of popular music that include
the original arrangements of Glenn Miller’s “String and Pearls,” “Moonlight
Serenade,” and “In The Mood,” among others.
I decide to form a big band, buy stock arrangements,
and have rehearsals that are fun but lead nowhere. I learn what life is like
for a bandleader. I make calls constantly, cajoling people into giving the
big band a try and arranging rides.
I can play by ear as well as read music. One day I get
a request from fellow high school students to try out for their dance band,
The Pioneers, named after our high school nickname. Their original trumpet
player cannot play by ear. I show up with my stock arrangements, just in
case. The band is not focused. I suggest trying the stock arrangements, and
the band clicks. We go on to our first paid “gig” at the AmVets Hall in nearby
Valley Park: $10.00 per man. We play other gigs including high school stuff.
We are competing with rock and roll, but during that time period our music
was the choice of most highschoolers. I become part of a jazz-oriented group
of students which includes one of the sought-after professional local guitarists,
John Rieble. Swing music is our “thing.”
Marching band becomes intolerable, so I quit.
I later form my own band, Music Inc. I learn that you
cannot use the term Inc. unless you really are incorporated, so I change
the name to the King’s Men Five. I do not know there is another nationally
known group called The Kingsmen. I am honored to be invited to provide big
band music for our Senior Class Prom. Sherry Moody, who later turns professional,
sings several numbers, including my composition, “Our Graduation Day.”
One of my band members is David Sanborn—a tenor sax
player, who later goes on to play alto sax with the Paul Butterfield Blues
Band, James Taylor, Carly Simon, and then becomes the David Sanborn.
I see him on TV on the David Letterman Show, and playing for the 1997 NBA
All-Star Game.
Another band member is Peter Link, who goes on to New
York City to take the male lead in the touring company of “Hair,” an actor’s
role in the TV soap opera “As The World Turns,” has a hit show on Broadway
called Salvation, has several touring companies doing Salvation, forms Westrax
Recording Studios, and who keeps me updated on the triumphs of David Sanborn.
One night, at Parkmoor, our local hamburger joint, now
a used car lot (Parkmoor is “Roomkrap” spelled backwards), I hear Ralph
Bryant, a fellow trumpet player and friend who later plays trumpet in symphonic
orchestras throughout the world, discussing psychology and the mind with
Philo Willetts, a non-musical friend who later becomes the only doctor I
ever knew who has never been sued for malpractice. For some reason or other,
“psychology” and “mind” stick with me.
At Washington University of St. Louis I am a chemical
engineering major although math/algebra/geometry were not strong high school
subjects. My Father was a chemical engineer, so, not having a direction,
I am a Chem E major.
I join the Sigma Chi Fraternity. Mike Peters, son of
Charlotte Peters, is a Sigma Chi Fraternity Pledge Brother and goes on to
become a Pulitzer Prize—winning political cartoonist for the Dayton Daily
News and the Creator of the Mother Goose and Grimm syndicated cartoon strip.
Fred Cotsworth does not tell us he has a stepfather, so one evening, as I
am walking through Fred’s family’s house, on the way to the pool, for a fraternity
rush party, a chair swings around and I get to meet Marlin Perkins, of Zoo
Parade and Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom, and who is the Director of the
St. Louis Zoo. I later try to sell insurance for Mutual of Omaha, for
whom Marlin Perkins is a well-known and well-liked spokesman, and am the only
salesman with a legitimate Marlin Perkins story—the other salesmen simply
line up to have their picture taken with him in thirty seconds at the annual
convention and make up their Marlin Perkins stories to impress their customers,
but I do not sell insurance and go back to music. At the fraternity, we experience
death on a personal level when Bill Koch, our Consul (President) is killed
when a car pulls out in front of his and he has no chance to stop.
I become a musical pest, playing the George Steck grand
piano in the living room whenever I can. But I do not have a strong socio-political
personality and therefore am not invited to collaborate with the chiefs
in fraternity musical activities but am, of course, invited be an Indian.
There are strange non-musical ideas that could be changed, but nobody listens
to me, I decide not to waste my time on what I perceive is not going anywhere,
because the chiefs will not listen to an Indian, and drop out. None of these
musical ventures goes anywhere.
Hell Week—the week before Initiation is so physically
demanding I decide that college football has to be a lot easier, so I try
out for football. I am a tight end, but later switch to quarterback. I learn
to lead a team. I am aware of the down and distance, I remember the scouting
reports, I improvise when I need to and thus follow Coach Puddington’s advice
to “Play football!” and adapt when game plans don’t work out. I get to meet
and work out with members of the St. Louis Cardinals NFL Football team. Charley
Johnson is one of the NFL’s top quarterbacks, a grad student in Chemical Engineering
at Washington University, who teaches me to throw like a pro—three steps
before the receiver makes his cut, spot passes low and away, so a defender
cannot defend against them. Charley can only throw the ball sixty yards.
That surprises me. I can throw the ball sixty yards. What I learn might help
Washington University. Charley is glad to have me around. We are throwing
passes to All-Pro receivers Sonny Randle, Taz Anderson, and Jackie Smith,
to Texas A&M Heiseman Trophy winner John David Crow, and we are defended
against by All-Pro defensive greats such as linebacker Bill Koman, safety
Larry Wilson and LSU Heiseman Trophy Winner Jerry Stovall. Charley would
have had a seriously sore arm throwing the ball to all those receivers if
I had not been around. I am treated as an adult by the pro’s. They tell me
their jokes, and give me football tips. I am fired up, but when I return
to college no one listens, no one learns to run patterns like the pro receivers,
so we are not as good as we could have been.
But from football I learn that I can think under pressure.
The coach gives me freedom to call my own plays, and I learn to lead men
into athletic battle.
I join the University Men’s Glee Club: Director: Peter
D. Tchach. And then the University Chorus: Director: Orland Johnson. I thoroughly
enjoy the magnificence of choral groups. Handel’s “Messiah” is a high point.
I take a high-level music appreciation course. My knowledge
of music and of four-part harmony takes me beyond what the course offers,
and I am invited to become a music major. I cannot play the piano like others,
and although conducting chorus might have been an option, I do not see myself
as good enough to play the piano to accompany any chorus I might be conducting.
Discretion may have been the better part of valour.
But I take Music 101, 102, 201, 202, Counterpoint. I
want to study the forms of classical music including symphonic sonata, minuet,
and rondo forms, so I could compose in those forms in symphonic style, but
the instructor has orgasms talking about contemporary music in which composers
call for percussionist to throw cymbals over their shoulders. I begin to
realize that once a cymbal leaves a percussionist’s hands he no longer has
control of the resulting sound, which, as uncontrolled sound is noise, and
which offends my definition of music as controlled sound. I decide I was
dealing with a loser and drop out, ending my music theory studies at Washington
University. You now can hear this guy’s avant garde music contemporaries
on programs such as PBS’s “Music You Love To Hate.” [I’m not making up this
title!]
I take classical organ lessons at Graham Chapel from
University Organist Howard Kelsey on the Möller organ.
I decide chemical engineering is not for me, and, wanting
to know why I cannot seem to get other people to do exactly what I want
them to do when, where and how I want them to do it, I decide to major in
Psychology. I find Sigmund Freud and psychoanalysis fascinating. I never
learn that Freud’s is not the only theory of psychology. I hear Ralph Bryant’s
words about “psychology” and “mind” ringing in my head.
As part of a Pledge Class Walk-Out I am honored by being
“captured” (kidnapped) by the Pledges. Their support, as Actives, becomes
important later.
I am given an opportunity to conduct Sigma Chi’s male
chorus in the IFC (Inter-Fraternity Council) Sing, a musical competition
for fraternity and sorority choral groups. I get this position by default,
because Dick Crawford, a Pledge Son, and a Music Major, who often consults
me for help with his four-part harmony assignments, is involved with the IFC
and is not able to conduct our entry, as he had in the past. For some reason
or other, I compose “By The Greenwood Tree,” a sad but passionate song about
a man who spends time singing to Marianne, his wife/lover, whose body is
buried by a greenwood tree. I have no clue if there is such a species as
a “greenwood tree,” but the phrase works in the song. The choral arrangement
highlights the tenor and bass voices in our group. But it is an original
composition, and some of my fraternity brothers want me to use “Dear Land
of Home,” based upon the tone poem from “Finlandia” by Jean Sibelius, also
known as the Christian Hymn, “Be Still My Soul.” The recent New Initiates,
who, as Pledges, captured me, support me. I am told by our Consul that the
decision is mine, but that it is important, because we had not won a major
trophy in six years. I find the combination of melody and lyrics more compelling,
more beautiful, in “By the Greenwood Tree,” than the melody and words in “Dear
Land of Home,” which, I conclude, suffers from hoky lyrics and does not highlight
our tenor and bass voices, as does my composition.
Tryouts. Risking all, we sing my song for tryouts, and
my Fraternity Brothers are stunned when one of the judges, Ron Jenkins,
a fellow music student, gives us high marks and what turns out to be sincere
praise for “By the Greenwood Tree.” ["By The GreenwoodTree": http://www.bobkwebsite.com/bythegreenwoodtree.mp3]
I am now leading men into musical battle.
The word gets around the fraternity quickly, and I get
nothing but support for rehearsals during the following week. Brothers who
are not part of the chorus drive back to school in the evenings to hear
us rehearse.
Finals. Mom and Dad are there. Pressure. But I am in
my element. Win or lose, I am happy.
We win.
First Place, Men’s Division.
Pandemonium among the Brothers.
Mom jumps up and congratulates me on my way back down
the aisle after receiving The Trophy on behalf of Sigma Chi. One of the
Final Judges (who did not know of my composition) made it clear that the
beauty of our tenors and basses caused her to judge us First Place, and
that remark surely was encouraged by “By The Greenwood Tree.”
I float back to the Fraternity House for the celebration.
The evening is blur. I am on a natural high. I am a celebrity among my Brothers
and around campus. I am quoted in the school newspaper. I am honored by
music students and by professors.
I am honored when the Pro Consul (Vice-President) says
something to the equivalent of “For years Bob tried to help us, guide us
in musical activities, and we didn’t listen, but when we gave him the responsibility
he helped us win our first first place trophy in six years!”
But then time passes. Our Fraternity enters a booth
and musical show in Thurteen Carnival. We do a parody of Hamlet. One of
the setup lines is “What would release his pent-up frustrations and inhibitions?”
The punchline used: “A box of Ex-Lax!” Too crude! I support an alternative
of “A Playboy Club Key!” Cute. Timely. Not crude! People do not listen to
me. I see the Friday night judges, a man and woman who sit near the piano
with their elementary school age son, laugh naturally often during the show,
freeze at “Ex-Lax,” don’t smile during the rest of the show, bomb us, and
even though the Saturday night judges love us we have to settle for Second
Place. History repeats itself.
I have used my skills and one of my own compositions
to help win a trophy. I am happy. I am proud.
Music and football teach me to think for myself, to
risk my own judgement and stand on my own two feet.
While in college I am fascinated by theatre organs and
popular music. I hang around music stores for a chance to play Conn theatre
organs. Salesman Henri Dekeersgieter asks if I want a gig. There’s a Chinese
restaurant, the Kwan Yin Village, in Sunset Hills, Missouri, with a Seeburg
organ (made by the jukebox people) and no one to play it. I audition for
Frank Lim, and, with no competition, I get the job. Thursday, Fridays and
Saturdays. Football and playing at night in an organ bar do not get confused,
and the coaches never find out, so I luck out. Later I find that Bud and
Clitis Gross, from my old neighborhood, become good friends with Frank and
Nellie Lim.
After college I am making more money than a graduate
engineer. I am tired from studying, and choose music instead of psychology
or law.
I play in the organ bars as a soloist. Stan Kann comes
to hear me play. We become friends. I follow him around his daily routines
with the Charlotte Peters Show, The Fox theatre, Ruggieri’s, the Fox and
Ruggieri’s again. Stan shows me his collection of vacuum cleaners including
the original Hoover and a Civil War hand-pumped vacuum. The handle on the
Civil War vacuum breaks as Stan is demonstrating it, just as it does on the
TV shows later on. And some of the other stuff doesn’t work any better at
Stan’s house than it does on TV, either. I’ve often wondered if Stan was
practicing.
I become friends with many of the top organists in the
St. Louis area including John Ferguson, who plays at Stan Musial and Biggie’s
Restaurant, Dick Balsano, who plays at the Sheraton Jefferson Hotel, and
who offers me a gig playing cocktail hours until he shows up to play from
nine to one, Bob Ellison, who becomes a good friend and who gives excellent
advice on how to survive as a solo organist, Ralph Winn, whose one-man band
show is augmented by his ability to play every brass and wind instrument
plus vibes and his sense of comic entertainment, and by Norm Kramer, who
is the organist for the St. Louis Blues NHL Hockey Team, who sets the trend
for hockey organists, and who gets his picture on the front cover of Sports
Illustrated and an article that hails him as the seventh man on the ice,
and support for the idea that whenever the Blues play at home his music inspires
at least one additional goal.
I become a hero when a college friend, Mary Schoenbeck,
hires me to play piano for her wedding reception. The wedding is to be held
in Graham Chapel, at Washington University. The Chapel is decorated with
beautiful white flowers. The ceremony is to start at 7:00 PM. The organist
is to be Howard Kelsey, my former teacher. At 7:20 Mary’s father walks down
the aisle saying, “The organist is not here. Is there anyone here who can
play the organ?” I look around. No one moves. It’s up to me. I know the organ—the
Möller. I quickly go to the office. I meet with Mary’s father and the
lady who is the vocal soloist. I sketch the chord progressions for her songs.
In my love for music I had memorized some of the traditional wedding songs
and therefore am somewhat prepared for an emergency such as this. I go out,
improvise classical organ music, for a processional I play from memory Wagner’s
Bridal Chorus from “Lohengren,” get through the accompaniment for the vocalist,
and for a recessional I play from memory the traditional Mendelsohn “Wedding
March” from “A Midsummer Night’s Dream.” Then I go on to the reception. Mr.
Schoenbeck gives me the check he would have given Howard Kelsey. I am, of
course, treated as a hero at the reception. I am worried that Howard is ill
or injured, or worse. But, as it turns out, he had been to a picnic, had
come home, showered, and taken a nap and simply overslept, for the first
time in his long career. He told me he was glad I was there to cover for
him, and to earn the money. All’s well that ends well.
Imagine a wedding without music! Again, I am seeing
the power and majesty of music.
I take more lessons from Lloyd Bartlett until I get
the impression that since Lloyd does not follow rock and roll that I will
have to teach myself what’s going on with the latest in popular music. Lloyd,
a private pilot, gets married to Lois, also a private pilot, in an airliner
chartered to circle over the St. Louis Gateway Arch. When they get to their
honeymoon destination of San Francisco, they find the local newspaper gives
them three front page columns while the Pope only gets two covering his
US visit.
As solo gigs become scarce I take a job in the Social
Service Department of St. Louis State Hospital, where I work five days a week.
I have a key to let myself out at night so I can go home. At the same time
I form a group with a “spotlight singer” (a singer who can hold an audience’s
attention), Bill Seago, and we get a gig where I play six nights a week.
We get a guest appearance on The Charlotte Peters Show. Between playing music
and working at State Hospital I do not know if I am moonlighting or daylighting.
Later I decide that I am daylighting.
I play in the Starlighters rock and roll band, one of
the top rock bands in St. Louis. One night we go to a black nightclub, The
Club Imperial, where, if I remember correctly, we hear Ike Turner’s band.
And I am told to listen to the loose “feel” of black music, which, I later
find out, comes from dragging the backbeats in 4/4 metre on the second and
fourth beats. Our lead guitarist, Dennis Linde, leaves and goes on to write
songs such as “Burnin’ Love,” which is a big hit for Elvis Presley and earns
Denny over sixty thousand dollars. One afternoon Carl Perkins, composer
of “Blue Suede Shoes,” joins us onstage at a jam session. We have a lot
of fun, but the band, although loaded with untrained but natural talent,
is populated with guys who are content to be local celebrities, and goes
nowhere.
But I learn rock and roll.
As time goes on I am in and out of bands, most of the
time having my own groups, and playing solo when group gigs falter.
One of my drummers is Billy Gayles, long time childhood
friend of Ike Turner, who was Ike’s lead singer before Tina, and who wrote
and sang “Tore Up,” the first international hit for the Turner band. Sometimes
Billy and I would have a laugh when we sit in a local pizza parlour and someone
plays “Tore Up” on the jukebox. I take Billy into previously segregated nightclubs
with no problems whatsoever. Billy keeps to himself, away from white women,
and people begin to realize that it is not a matter of “knowing his place”
but that he is being cool and not making people uncomfortable. At the Club
Marlborough, where at one end of the building there is a pool table, the
customers line up at break time and drag Billy off the bandstand to play
pool with them. Billy is a hit with everyone. I go on Saturday afternoons
to a black club North St. Louis, where Billy plays for a jam session. I
park my car at the front door. Someone meets me, lets me in, and then parks
my car. I am well-received as Billy Gayles’ boss man. And we have fun playing
jazz. When I leave I am escorted to my car. No one wants anything to happen
to me. There is a lot of racial tension in the area, and no one wants to
see anyone do anything dumb to me. I get phone calls from black musicians
who tell me the word among black musicians is that I am “cool,” and they
ask me to put their names and phone numbers into my “book” of musicians in
case I ever needed more sidemen. I am honored by these phone calls.
The racial tension produces strange happenings. I hire
a talented black drummer to play in a club in Gaslight Square. The club
is owned by a white man who also owns the club next door, where the drummer’s
father plays drums for a well-known black Dixieland band. Drumming is big
in this family, for my drummer’s older brother is one of the better-known
jazz drummers of his time. My drummer plays the first couple of sets without
incident, but then gets into a racially heated argument with the owner, accusing
him of exploiting blacks but overlooks the fact that the owner was also providing
employment for not only his father but also the other blacks in the Dixieland
band. The drummer packs up his equipment and leaves. The trumpet player and
I get paid, but we lose the gig. The drummer’s father apologizes for his
son. I am not angry, only puzzled at how crazy and senseless racial attitudes
can be.
Aquarius is a rock band I name after my birth sign.
We work steadily. We are hot. We play the hottest spots in the County and
set cash flow records. We are strong enough to be considered for being a
warm-up band to get audiences ready for national touring bands at Kiel Auditorium
and the St. Louis Arena. But one individual thinks he knows more about music
and the music business than I do, and the band breaks up. The drummer, Tom
Knowles, goes on to play for John Cougar Melencamp.
I begin teaching. I write music instruction books. I
find out Mel Bay is Mel Bay when he invites me to show a book to his son,
Bill, who is now running the family publishing business. He assigns me book
projects, and my books are published and sold all over the world.
My published books include: