Music and the Mountains
Some people have a passion for music. While walking, I pass scores of young people with their ears plugged, cords hanging from their necks, oblivious to their surroundings, listening to who knows what. These same people attend rock concerts and, in the midst of screaming crowds, endure amplified guitar, drums and vocals at decibel levels that they’ll regret when their hair begins to grey. Another group, mostly older folks, sit glacier still in concert halls, glaring at any fellow attendees who make the slightest rustle, captivated by music written by European composers centuries ago. I belong to neither group. My feelings about music are complex.
I certainly enjoy opera and symphonic music. Growing up, I didn’t have much exposure to either art form. When I was young, my mother often played a scratchy 78 rpm record of Enrico Caruso singing Vesti la giubba from Paliagchi. It’s a beautiful and moving aria. As for symphonic music, in elementary school they assembled the entire fifth and sixth grades in the auditorium and forced us to listen to a few classical pieces. I still remember hearing Robert Schumann’s languid composition, Träumerei. A bigger hit was the finale from Rossini’s William Tell Overture, the theme from “The Lone Ranger”, a popular television series in the 1950’s. The entire auditorium would erupt with cries of “hi ho Silver” as the music played. But other than that I had heard only a smattering of high brow music during my childhood. Growing up in Brooklyn, I never attended classical music concerts. In fact, as far as I can remember, no one in my working class family even suggested going to the Metropolitan Opera or to the symphony.
But then I married Gail. Her father’s relatives were wealthy, and they had a box at the old Met. When Gail moved in with her uncle’s family for a year after she had graduated from college, they would drag her along to the opera (her uncle would slip out of the performance to watch cowboy movies at a nearby theater), and she grew to love the pomp and glamour of the experience. After we moved to New Jersey and our kids had left home for college, she convinced me to try attending the Metropolitan Opera at Lincoln Center. I grudgingly agreed. At first I found the melodies unfamiliar, some of the stories bizarre, and the acting stiff. But with time, I grew to enjoy it. In fact, I found some performances thrilling. Luciano Pavorotti was a superstar and a particular favorite. His high C’s in “La Fille du Regiment” were stunning and I loved his Nemorino in “L’eliser d’amore“. But even the performances that didn’t feature star tenors and sopranos were enjoyable, if not equally memorable. After I listened to a Verdi or Pucchini opera three or four times, like Aida, Tosca or La Boheme, the melodies became a part of me. In addition, the Met is a fabulous show place, with its enormous Chagall hangings and its crystal chandeliers that slowly rise to the ceiling just before the opening curtain. Attending the opera there, is a unique experience, both for the music and the spectacle. My advice to those who haven’t made the pilgrimage: It’s not to be missed at least once, even if you don’t care for the art form.
After leaving New Jersey for Austin, I’ve widened my musical palate. Gail and I have a subscription to the Austin Symphony and regularly attend concerts at Bass Hall at the University of Texas. On occasion, we’ve taken out of town guests to the Broken Spoke so that we can watch Texans two step to some authentic country music in a dilapidated venue that reeks of the old west. And at home we tune our sound system to KMFA or WQXR (New York’s classical music station). On occasion, I also enjoy listening to piano jazz especially when played by Erroll Garner, Art Tatum, or George Shearing. Music from the 40’s, the great American songbook, sung by Sinatra, Tony Bennett, Ella Fitzgerald is another genre that I’m fond of. And when I hear the music of my adolescence, doo-wop and rock and roll, I become transported back to my college fraternity parties. I picture slow dancing to tunes from 33 rpm records, making out in dark corners, and vague impressions of a succession of young and pretty girls, wonderful memories all.
But there’s a darker page in my musical ledger. When I was seven, my mother, the head of our household, decided that I must learn to play the piano. (My father used to say that he made all the important decisions in the family. It was up to him to decide whether to ban nuclear weapons, recognize China, and declare war with Russia. All lesser issues, including all the responsibilities of the household, were left to my mother. There was more than a bit of truth in his observations). A slightly used spinet was duly purchased and Mrs. Robbins, a buxom woman in her late 50’s who smelled of perfumed powder, was assigned the task of transforming me into the next Rubinstein.
It was not to be. For one thing, I had, and have, virtually no musical talent. Yes, I can sometimes tell when someone else is singing off key (although, as Gail regularly reminds, I find it impossible to carry a tune myself). And eight years of musical study have enabled me to read music, although with limited facility. The last few of these years, after Mrs. Robbins gave up in frustration, were with a young male teacher, Ronnie, who had the thankless task of trying to teach me to play “popular” tunes, rather than the Chopin waltzes and Beethoven sonatas that I had previously mangled. At the end of Ronnie’s tenure, I could play from a “fake book”, poorly, but well enough so that the tunes were sometimes recognizable. (For those who aren’t acquainted with it, a fake book, at least the one that I purchased in the 50’s, was an illegal compendium of hundreds of tunes, mostly standards from the 1930’s and 40’s, used by professional musicians to help them in their performances. Each song’s melody line was accompanied by the lyrics and the names of the appropriate chords above the staff ).
The Mountains
If I had just continued to play classical compositions, my musical adventures would have ended at that juncture. But during my junior year in high school, when I had just turned 15, a tall, skinny classmate, Ronald, somehow got wind of the fact that I had studied the piano and could play from a fake book. Apparently piano players were in short supply. I didn’t know Ronald well, and what I did know I didn’t like. He was a braggart and a bully, and not very bright. It turned out that he wasn’t much of a musician either. Nevertheless, when he asked me to join a band that he was organizing to work in the “Borscht Belt” in the Catskill mountains for a few months during the summer, I agreed.
The movie “Dirty Dancing” vividly captures the summer scene in the Catskills in its heyday. Centered about 100 miles northwest of New York City, the “mountains” were the refuge of mostly Jewish families who were trying to escape the heat and humidity of the city during July and August. During the Depression era, the area consisted of small farms and quiet villages. To accommodate venturesome visitors, a few enterprising farmers built small lodging houses. Soon, as the region’s popularity began to grow, larger establishments began to appear. At its peak in the 1950’s and 60’s, the “Borsch Belt” consisted of more than 500 hotels sprinkled around Sullivan County and its surroundings. There were several dozen luxury establishments, like Grossingers in Liberty and the Concord in Kiamesha Lake that were grand resorts, with golf courses and indoor swimming pools. They hosted famous entertainers of the day like Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis, Sid Caeser, and Eddie Fisher. These five star establishments also sponsored famous sports figures. Rocky Marciano, the heavyweight boxing champion, trained there, as did champions Ray Paterson and Mohammad Ali. Twenty piece orchestras would be on staff, as would tennis instructors, dance teams, golf pros, and entertainment directors. There was even one employee, the “tummler”, who was responsible for entertaining the guests during the day, organizing games and encouraging participation in the hotel’s activities. Danny Kaye began his career at that job, as did Mel Brooks and Red Buttons. Most of the hotels, however, didn’t reach this level of splendor. They were smaller, less fancy, and catered to a less wealthy clientele.
Ronald’s plan was to hire ourselves out to one of these smaller hostels. He assembled a four piece ensemble from among our high school classmates. Ronald played the tenor saxophone and clarinet. Turk, a slight, nervous, skinny kid, was to be our drummer. Tony was a good looking, baby-faced Italian, about 16 years old. He was to be our trumpet player. And I, of course, was the pianist. I was a little over 15. We rehearsed in my parent’s small living room. We were terrible.
The summer season in the Catskills lasts for ten weeks. On a sunny June day right after school let out, my parents drove me to Monticello so that I could begin my professional musical career. My mother later told me that she had only agreed to let me audition because she was certain that no one would ever hire us – after all she had heard us play. Nevertheless, with a worried look in their eyes, my parents dropped me off. I was on my own for the first time in my life.
Within hours, the band faced a crisis. Tony’s mother had reneged. She hadn’t allowed him to take the job. Apparently, she, like my mother, didn’t think that we would find a job. We were now a trio. Ronald called his folks back in Brooklyn and they posted a notice for a trumpet player at Sam Ash’s music store. Meanwhile, we had to function short handed. Luckily it was the middle of the week and early in the season. There were only a few old folks in the casino when we began to play. After a half hour or so, some new guests came in. One of them was an attractive young girl, about our age, who had been dragged to the hotel by her grandparents. Ronald’s eyes came alive. You could almost sense the pheromones being emitted and his hormones engaging. He began playing louder and with more spirit. Soon he signaled to me to take the melody. He gingerly stepped off the bandstand and on to the dance floor. He approached the object of his intentions and they began to dance, very slowly and very closely. After we finished our rendition of “Dancing in the Dark”, Ronald came back to his former position on the bandstand and he and Turk had a discussion that I didn’t hear. When we segued into “A Foggy Day in London Town”, our next number, Ronald was now playing the drums, Turk was dancing with the young lady, and I was still pounding away at my version of the melody. When would it be my turn? I was livid. When Turk returned and picked up his sticks, I stood up from my perch on the piano bench.
“I quit!”, I announced. “I’m going home. I’m not going to sit on my ass at the piano all night, getting calluses on my fingers, while you romance the guests.”
Ronald got angry. “Let’s step outside and settle this like men.” He sounded like he had been watching too many grade B movies.
“Not a chance,” I said, shaking my head, He was a foot taller than me, but I was so angry I was not intimidated. “That’s not the point. Why do you two get to romance the customers while I do all the work? No way. Forget it. I’m going home.”
I was in strong position. They couldn’t go on as a duo. Beating me up wouldn’t change the dynamics of the situation. They agreed to moderate their behavior. The rest of the evening could have passed without incident, except for the fact that Mr. F., the owner of the hotel passed away during the night. They said it was a heart attack, but I suspect that our playing contributed to his demise. In any event, we got the following night off.
The next day, a trumpet player arrived by bus at the Pine Lodge Hotel. He seemed very young, a dark, slight Italian with a sheepish grin. He told us that he been studying the trumpet for five years and had extensive experience playing in small ensembles like ours. We auditioned him. To my ears he seemed to hit the right notes at least some of the time, although there were occasional squeals and sour tones. “I need to warm up some more.”, he explained.
We had no choice. There weren’t any other applicants and he was hired. We later found out that he had picked up the trumpet for the first time six months prior to our engaging him and had never played in a band in his life. However, he proved to be a talented musician, and as the summer progressed he came to outdo us all.
Meanwhile, I was running into difficulties. The hotel had a “house” singer, a heavy set woman in her early sixties, who was the very picture of the fat lady from a Wagnerian opera. She was hired to sing mostly Yiddish and classical pieces on Thursday and Friday nights throughout the summer and I was to be her accompanist. We rehearsed. It went badly. She complained. There were more embarrassments. On Saturdays, acts of various kinds would come up from New York City to entertain in the hotels at night. They were a diverse group: dancers, singers, comedians, magicians, hypnotists, and jugglers. All required musical accompaniment. They would arrive on Saturday afternoon to rehearse. They would bring their arrangements and the house band (us) would be expected to accompany their show. They would hand out the music to the band members and expect us to do our job. If I had had two weeks to practice, I might have been able to perform as expected, but I didn’t have that luxury. Nor could I fake it, as a good musician might. The other band members tried to help out, but the piano had the major role. One week, it got so bad that an act refused to perform. I was ashamed and it has tainted my musical enjoyment ever since. Every time that I attend a concert, it brings back memories of my lack of musical ability. I imagine that I’m up on the stage, hitting the wrong notes. And the rest of the orchestra walks out.
You might think that I would have gained some insight from this experience, that I would acknowledge my lack of talent, the distress caused by my limited skills, and never manage to get into a similar situation again. Wrong. The next summer, and in fact for several seasons after that, I played with another four piece rock and roll group in increasingly smaller hotels in the Catskills (and for one summer at the Carol House bungalow colony on weekends). There was a difference. Andy, Les, and Jeff, my new musical colleagues, were my friends. I knew Andy and Les from high school in Brooklyn. They were talented musicians (especially Andy) who were aware of my melodic shortcomings and covered for me.
Les, was our band leader, and our alto saxophonist. He was well organized and arranged our bookings. But he wasn’t serious. In fact, among the four of us, he was known for his “Les jokes”, awful puns and worse wisecracks. We cringed every time he uttered them. In later life he was to become an architect who helped design parts of the basement of the Twin Towers, the World Trade Center in Manhattan, as well as Newark Airport in New Jersey. He recently retired from his job as a city manager for several municipalities in New Jersey. When I contacted him a few years ago, the first thing that came out his mouth was a “Les joke”. Some people never change.
Andy, was the brainiest kid in our high school. We knew that not only because of his sky high grades, but because he scored best in our school on the National Merit Scholarship and New York State Scholarship exams. He was very short with thick curly blond hair and pale white skin. His eyesight was awful, hardly helped at all by the thick, yellow tinted glasses that he was forced to wear. At the bandstand, tenor saxophone in hand, his face could be positioned only inches away from the music. He was to become a physicist.
Jeff, our drummer, was someone I hadn’t known in high school because unlike the rest of us, he was an upper class kid from Queens who Les somehow inveigled into joining the band. His father was a bigwig at Billboard magazine, a slick publication that focused on the music industry and is still a going concern. As such, he was able to supply us with free sheet music. Jeff had a steady girl friend, Judy, who would come up from the city to visit him on occasion. She was a delightful young thing, short and good looking, and they seemed devoted to each other. Unlike the rest of us, he didn’t try to fool around with the numerous girls who hung around the bandstand over the years. Some time after the band broke up, Jeff and Judy got married and had twins. The last I heard he had abandoned her and the kids, and had run off somewhere, possibly with another woman. I lost track of him after that. Despite the fact that I have a delightful grandson who is a percussionist, I’ve learned over the years to be wary of drummers. They march to a different beat.
The four of us were tight. We had fun on and off the bandstand. We stayed out late, laughed a lot and had some memorable experiences. There was, for example, the incident of the chicken dinners. One of the perks of being in a band is that you get to eat with the guests in the dining room True, it’s at a table way in the back. And the guests get first dibs at the best dishes. Most nights the fare was undistinguished, especially at the hotels we played at. But Sunday was supposed to be special. By tradition, it’s steak night. Everybody was supposed to be served steak, even the band. For six straight weeks, we had anticipated eating steak on Sunday and for six straight weeks the dining staff told us that they had run out, and we would have to do with chicken. That might have not been so bad except for the fact that, for those same six weeks, we had been fed chicken, not only on Sundays, but every other night of the week. On this sixth Sunday, we had had enough and revolted and went on a food strike. We announced that we weren’t going to eat at all unless we were served steak. The management was not impressed. They figured that with our considerable appetites, our not eating wasn’t a threat at all. The waiters came around and offered us chicken, but Les, Andy, and Jeff refused. I, on the other hand, was hungry. And despite a steady diet of it, I liked chicken. After the others matched away from the table, I slinked back to the table, gathered up their meals onto my plate, and feasted. My zayde would have been aghast. I was a scab, a strikebreaker. I had betrayed a trust. But I never regretted it. And I never worried about the other guys being hungry. After we finished playing they snuck into the kitchen at midnight and helped themselves to a refrigerator full of goodies. The next Sunday, when we finally did get served steak, it turned out to be overcooked and tough enough to dull our knives.
Another time we played for the a group of female impersonators at a hotel in Loch Sheldrake. When we rehearsed, the guys were dressed as men so we didn’t know the nature of their act. Near showtime, in the dressing room, they assumed their costumes. One of them had to go to the men’s room. Andy, with his poor eyesight, was already at one urinal. The impersonator saddled up to the other. Andy looked over and, astonished at the sight of a gorgeous “female” next to him, urinated over “her” high heels.
And then there was the incident with the kid on the pinball machine. We had a rule that while we were on the bandstand no one could play pinball: it made too much noise. But on this occasion, a bratty little prepubescent was ignoring it, interfering with our soulful renditions of 1940’s standards. Andy strode up to him and told him to stop. The kid wouldn’t and they began to argue. Andy, who was not ordinarily prone to violence, smacked the kid and he ran off crying to his parents. Meanwhile, during this distraction, Les decided to pull a practical joke. He placed a raw potato into Andy’s sax. When Andy got back, he couldn’t understand why he was having so much trouble hitting the right notes. When he found the potato, days later, Les blamed it on the kid. Andy never knew the truth.
As the summers slid by, our band progressed in experience if not quality, but the lodgings we played at got increasingly smaller and of lower standard. The last hotel we managed to get a job at was a run down affair near Liberty, New York. As the summer went on we noticed that the number of guests was diminishing, until, in late August, there were fewer than two dozen in attendance. The hotel manager called us in and informed us that he couldn’t afford our meager salaries anymore. We had expected it given the evident lack of patrons in the evenings. What we didn’t expect was the offer he made us.
“Boys, I’m going to have to let you go. Just not enough customers.” He spoke loudly even though we were at arms length. Then he paused for effect. “But I’m going to offer you an opportunity. You can spend the last few weeks working as waiters. Some of our staff have left. It’s $20 dollars a week. With tips, you’ll be making twice what you made in the band.”
Andy and Jeff declined, but Les and I accepted. That’s how I became a waiter. The problem was that I had no idea of how to do the job. It seemed pretty easy from afar. You ask the guests what they want; you give the cook the orders; you pick up the finished dishes from the kitchen; and you deliver the food to the patrons. Unfortunately, I had problems all along the chain. For one thing, I was easily distracted. As I’ve already noted, I’m a bit scatterbrained. If someone asked for a glass of water or an extra fork or napkin, I would go off and get what they wanted. But somewhere along the way, I would forget their meal orders. For another, I was clumsy with the trays of food, once lowering a fully loaded one on the head of an elderly lady. Then too, I had several arguments with the cook, a Polish refugee with a white hot temper who spoke with a heavy accent that I couldn’t understand. She once threw a clever at another waiter. Thankfully, her aim was as awful as her cooking. The most difficult meal for me was breakfast. We had to awaken while it was still dark so that we could set the tables. I was barely functional by the time the guests marched in to the dining room. Then they began ordering. At lunch and dinner there was a set menu, with a choice of two or three entrees. At breakfast, the number of options was enormous. Eggs could be fried, sunny side up, boiled (to various degrees of doneness), scrambled, and poached. There were numerous side orders and a dozen juice selections. I couldn’t remember who ordered what, and when I wrote it down I couldn’t read what I had written. Adding to my troubles was the task of making toast. The waiters were responsible for putting bread into the toaster which had no timer. You had to estimate the two minutes it would take to bring the bread to the correct shade of brown. My timing was way off. I burned three pieces of bread for everyone that was salvageable. But my biggest problem was with a guest with a heavy Yiddish accent and of advanced age who ordered a beverage.
“I vant tea wit’ ‘ot milk”, he would say. “
“Yes sir. I understand, you want tea with hot milk”, I had to repeat what he was saying to make sure that I had gotten it right.
“No.” He shook his head. “I vant tea wit’ ‘ot milk”.
This dialogue was repeated several times. Eventually, I got it. He wanted tea without milk. Despite these travails, I earned decent tips. Mostly because the guests recognized that I was hopelessly out of my league and took pity. I also sucked up a lot.
The band gave up on hotels after that. But the next summer we got a job at a different venue. It was at the Carol House, a large bungalow colony just outside of Monticello. Bungalow colonies were a unique kind of resort. They consisted of a group of a twenty or more one family cabins that were rented for the ten weeks of the summer. Shared amenities might include a swimming pool and a clubhouse. A typical renter would be a family of four with two young children. The wife and kids would stay for the entire summer, the husband would drive up for the weekends. Entertainment would be provided only on Friday and Saturday nights.
The Carol House had a reputation as a tough musical venue. The clientele was relatively young and hip. Bands would play there for a while, but be fired after a few weeks. We got a chance to try out one weekend, and we were a hit. I’m not certain why we were successful. My guess is that after several years together we had learned to play rock and roll music loudly and with enthusiasm. By the next summer, the demands of graduate school no longer let me have summers off. The band got a new piano player, a young lady, considerably more talented than I. They went on to play at the Carol House for three years after I left, popular to the end.
Time has stolen the glory of the Borscht Belt. By the 1970’s young Jewish families found that they had a wider choice of vacation destinations because they were no longer actively discriminated against. They also were more affluent and less religious than their parents. Kosher foods were no longer a requirement. It became easy to fly to the Caribbean, Europe, and more exotic climes than to pack the family in a station wagon and make the three hour drive to the Catskills. With time, the older generations started to die off. With fewer guests, the hotels began to shut down. Where there once were luxury resorts, there are now abandoned shells, “For Sale” signs fronting decaying buildings. Hotel owners tried luring new visitors by opening gambling establishments and a race track. But it didn’t work. Previously bustling Catskill towns reverted to their earlier sleepy existence. It’s was a sad demise for a glorious period.