Dear Rozanne:

It's been eleven days since you passed away...and I still think about you. We had some great, great times together in the twenty-five years since we first met at the church you joined when you were little. Man, you touched bunches and bunches of lives...not just at church, but also during the years where you delivered flowers and all the years you brought "Omaha World-Heralds." You really brought the enthusiasm...especially at those concerts we attended. Didn't matter if they were RCTOS events or GPRS ones...or the times it was just you and me at the Pink Poodle Steakhouse. Rozanne, you set one heck of an example for the rest of us to follow. You stood tough. And I'm going to keep trying my best to live up to that example. So doggone glad for the privilege of being a part of your life...and I'm so doggone glad you were (and still are!) a part of my life. Thanks so much for everything! Sincerely, Jim

The 1980 National League batting champion

In a major-league playing career that ran from 1969 to 1990, he played in 2,517 games.

He totaled 9,397 at bats, scored 1,077 runs, got 2,715 hits (496 were doubles and 49 were triples).

Those 2,715 ranked him 66th on big-league baseball's all-time list.

This player smashed 174 homers and drove in 1,208 runs while batting .289.

In addition, he swiped 183 sacks and just about had as many walks as strikeouts. (He drew 450 bases on balls while whiffing 453 times!)

This star led the NL in two-base hits twice, getting 35 in 1981 (his All-Star campaign)

and 38 a couple of years later.

As a first baseman (he broke in as an outfielder), he led his league in assists four times (1982, 1983, 1985, and 1986); his 1,351 helps at first base got him 19th place on the all-time list.

He played in two World Series. 

Think of all the Baseball Hall of Famers who never got a chance to taste postseason action...let alone play on the team that won the Fall Classic.

And in 1980, when he was with the Chicago Cubs (the team that got him from the squad he broke in with, the Los Angeles Dodgers), he led all National League batters by hitting .324 (to go with his 41 two-baggers, 10 home runs, and 68 RBIs).

That's how I choose to remember Bill Buckner, who passed away three days ago.

Real Pain

These last sixteen days have basically been the pits for me.

I'm still in pain...even if it's not the physical kind.

First and foremost, I'm grieving the loss of a friend from my Adult Children of Alcoholics days, Rosemary "Billi" Whelton (12-24-1944/7-21-2016), who went on to become a Great Plains Ragtime Society member. 

Here's how she looked in 1963, the year she graduated from Omaha Cathedral High School.

 

I really loved Billi's sense of humor...and her generosity.

Next, I'm hurting inside over the consequences of a corporate, job-related decision. (I'll just leave it at that.)

And I'm still unhappy about how this year's Ragtime to Riches Festival went. Billi didn't get to attend it, because she spent the bulk of 2016 in hospice after being diagnosed with the cancer that ultimately cost the former smoker and recovering alcoholic her life. 

On the run-up to R to R 12.0 (in fact, an hour before the event's workshop got started), I took heat over missing this year's World Championship Old-Time Piano Playing Contest and Festival...the first one ever held in Mississippi after the previous 41 took place in Illinois.

My absence from this year's Memorial Day weekend get-together was labeled a "disappointment."

IT DOESN'T MAKE A DIFFERENCE THAT, FOUR MONTHS AGO, I SENT AN EMAIL ANNOUNCING MY IMPENDING ABSENCE TO THE VERY PERSON WHO WENT ON TO CALL MY NO-SHOW A "DISAPPOINTMENT!"

I emailed several other OTPP wheelers-dealers to tell them I couldn't make the trip this year.

To repeat: I'm to undergo cataract surgery in my left eye later this year (or early in 2017).

Before the surgery can begin, I need to pay the $165 I owe for the work done on that same left eye (12-14-2015) to repair its retina...and cough up an additional $1,500 before the clinic that did the retina work can touch my left eyeball again.

Yes, I've got health insurance through the place where I work...but it's useless in a case such as this.

It takes at least two weeks for people to recover from cataract surgery. I've got two weeks- ten working days- left here in 2016 to use as paid vacation time.

Because of the impending surgery, this year's personal paid vacation time is spoken and accounted for.

All of this on top of the University of Mississippi charging more than the Old-Time Music Preservation Association (the previous OTPP steward group) did not only to attend the contest, but also to enter its events.

Here's my question for those who've criticized my decision not to try to come to Oxford, MS, for OTPP 42.0:

GIVEN WHAT'S CURRENTLY ON MY PLATE, WHAT THE HELL WAS I SUPPOSED TO DO??!!#@*? 

You tell me. 

The Powerhouse from Alabaster, Alabama (Part 3)

Wendy Holcombe's effort to become an all-around entertainer hit a couple of huge bumps in 1981-82.

First of all, in the summer of 1981, the pilot the Alabaster, AL native did for NBC, the sitcom Wendy Hooper, US Army, didn't get picked up (America's TV viewers hitched their wagons to another Army-based comedy, CBS' Private Benjamin, which presented Lorna Patterson in the role made famous by Goldie Hawn in the previous year's big-screen hit of that name). 

Had Wendy Hooper caught on, Holcombe (then 18 years old) would've been one of the youngest to ever get top billing on a prime-time sitcom on American television. (Jay North was just seven in 1959, the year he landed the show that gave him his fame: Dennis the Menace.)

Bill's and Helen's multiinstrumentalist-singer-comic daughter got a sitcom anyway when, on 10-29-1981, Lewis & Clark premiered on NBC.

The same viewers who kept WHUSA from joining the Peacock Network's 1981-82 schedule stayed with L&C's biggest Thursday-night competition, CBS' Magnum, P.I. (That crime drama- the one that made a household name out of Tom Selleck- survived its rookie campaign, the 1980-81 season.)

Not even a pair of time-slot changes could save Lewis & Clark, where Holcombe played a server (okay, waitress) in the Luckenback, TX nightclub run by Gabe Kaplan and Guich Koock.

Even if many people couldn't get into Wendy Holcombe the actor, they still fell head over heels in love with Wendy Holcombe the musician. And some extra proof of that came in 1983, when Wendy, her hubby Tom Blosser, and their band traveled to Israel to play alongside bluegrass legends Bill Monroe and Mac Wiseman.

Not long after that, Tom and Wendy turned their 1983 travels into a world tour, focusing on Australia, New Zealand, and several Asian countries.

The closing act on that international tour: None other than Perry Como. 

Meanwhile, back in the United States, the banjo-playing wife and her bass-playing husband set up shop in Florida, only to move to North Carolina...to get closer to relatives. 

And a year or so before WLH and TYB set out for their overseas tour, Wendy Lou started performing alongside fellow banjoist Buck Trent.

Their performances set that twosome up for a 1982 Music City News Bluegrass Act of the Year award nomination. Later on, the Country Music Association nominated them for Instrumentalists of the Year.  

All this time, Wendy was performing despite a degenerative heart condition (first diagnosed at an early age). 

By the middle 1980s, that heart condition (technically known as cardiomyopathy; in lay terms, enlargement of the heart) wasn't improving. 

Several times, an ambulance would arrive at the Holcombe-Blosser house to pick Wendy up...but she'd beat the odds whenever they were stacked against her recovery. 

Then came that ill-fated Saturday...the seventh Saturday of 1987.

Country music's much the poorer because of Wendy's 2-14-1987 death. The Alabaster Kid strove for perfection in everything she did...including in her musical endeavors. And that pursuit of perfection showed whenever she appeared in front of any kind of live audience or whenever Wendy appeared in front of a set of TV cameras. 

Even if you and I can't go online and find Holcombe's acting performances (you'll strike out on www.youtube.com if you're looking for Lewis & Clark episodes), there's plenty of audio evidence (the posthumously-released CD "Memories of Wendy" is finally available...on www.cdbaby.com as well as www.amazon.com) and plenty of video evidence right here on the Internet that Cindy's and "Muley's" sister was a powerful musician.

And a powerful, energetic, enthusiastic influence.

Wendy, I'm glad you came along...and I'm glad you brought so many great things.

The Powerhouse from Alabaster, Alabama (Part 1)

For the last week and a half, I'd been thinking about a young performer who was a regular on a syndicated TV series called Nashville on the Road. She was a regular on this country music show from its debut in 1975 to 1981 (NOTR limped along for another two years afterwards). 

At first, the show's cohosts were singer Jim Ed Brown and comic Jerry Clower; every week, they'd introduce a guest or two (as well as the show's two regular acts).

That's right...I like almost all forms of music, and that includes country. 

One late Saturday night in 1976, I was flipping channels...and ran into Nashville on the Road, which, at that time, was locally (the Des Moines/Ames area) on WOI-TV, the Des Moines/Ames area's ABC station. 

I noticed this thirteen-year-old girl who was picking a mean, mean banjo and moving along to her own (and her bandmates') beat.

She hooked me...and things got to the point where, every Saturday night at 10:30 PM (Central time), I'd flip the station over to "ABC5" and check out Jim Ed, Jerry, the Cates Sisters (their successors, the Fairchilds, were replaced in 1977 by singer Helen Cornelius), and that young instrumentalist-singer-comic.

Instead of getting ready to blow out 53 candles this coming 4-19-2016, Wendy Lou Holcombe passed away on 2-14-1987.

At age 23.

Of a heart attack. 

At the time Wendy died, I was into my first stint of living here in Omaha...and working two jobs (I was an inventory specialist and a pizza-delivery driver at this time in 1987). I was coming back from my job at Domino's (that's right, THAT Domino's) when I turned on my TV, started flipping through channels, and I stopped at The Nashville Network...the forerunner of today's Spike.

When the news came on about the death of the most famous performer to ever come out of Alabaster, AL, I was completely flabbergasted.

Wendy Holcombe- that total bundle of energy- dead? At 23? Of heart failure? How'd that happen?  

Then I got to thinking about the fact that not one single sizable recording company offered her a contract. 

What stopped the record industry's Billy Sherrills, Owen Bradleys, and Chet Atkinses from having Holcombe sign her John Hancock to a recording contract? If not age, what? 

I still, to this very day, feel it all came down to dirty rotten, filthy sexism.

I mean, at a time when Dolly Parton, Barbara Mandrell, and Roni Stoneman (she of Hee Haw fame) were showing what they could do with five strings, the thinking in corporate boardrooms was (and, in too many cases, still is) that a banjo is a man's instrument. After all, Uncle Dave Macon, Grandpa Jones, and Earl Scruggs led the way. (Oops...I should've mentioned Earl first!)

A man's instrument.

That was the way it was supposed to work out in the house where Bill and Helen Holcombe were raising their three children when, sometime in 1974, Bill brought a used banjo home (it even came with an instruction booklet and an instruction record). 

Bill struggled for two months to be the next Roy Clark or, well, Earl Scruggs...but, in the end, he couldn't even get one tune down. Wendy begged for the chance to see what she could do with that banjo, only to get turned down by her father: "This banjo is too expensive for you to fool around with."

Wendy found an ally in her mother.

Helen let the then eleven-year-old pick around with Bill's pride-and-joy while Bill was off at his nine-to-five. By the time that afternoon session came to end, Wendy mastered "Mountain Dew" and other numbers her dad tried to learn.

And when Bill came home from his job, he was so impressed with Wendy's version of "Dew" that he let her keep the same banjo he'd struggled with.

Helen's and Bill's little daughter practiced on that banjo day and night; she'd take it out to the Holcombes' barn and try her music out on her cows, goats, and horses. 

It paid off, because Wendy went on to win $50 at a county fair talent show...and that led to her going to nearby Birmingham to appear on TV's The Country Boy Eddie Show. 

WLH's big break was just up the road...Interstate 65, that is.

After seven months of pickin', Wendy wanted to go to Nashville's Grand Ole Opry to celebrate her twelfth birthday.

Bill and Wendy couldn't get tickets (you needed- and still need- to get those ducats in advance), so father and daughter decided to hang around Music City for a few hours. At the first music shop they ran into, WLH saw a snazzy-looking banjo and asked for permission to test it out.

Holcombe's version of "Foggy Mountain Breakdown" attracted the bass player in Stoneman's band. He then took the young picker and her dad to a nightclub, where she played a few songs onstage...while "Billy Jack" met a promoter who said he could get the Two Holcombes backstage at Opryland.

That's where Wendy Holcombe met Roy Acuff.

Next thing she knew, she ended up backstage playing alongside his Smoky Mountain Boys, Jones, and several other Opry regulars. And that led to an appearance the next night at the "Midnight Jamboree" at Ernest Tubb's Record Shop.

And that spawned appearances on two other TV shows: The Porter Wagoner Show and Pop! Goes the Country. 

And then...and then...in the fall of '75: NOTR, put out by the same production company that came up with Pop! Goes the Country. 

Because of Nashville on the Road, Wendy Lou closed out 1975 by fulfilling her lifelong wish.

She performed at the Grand Ole Opry. 

On the main stage this time.

And what's more, Wendy Lou worked alongside Jim Ed at the Opry that night.

With Nashville on the Road becoming a hit, things continued to look up for "Muley's" and Cindy's kid sister, who went on to master the fiddle, the guitar, the mandolin, and the dobro...and topped that off by playing trumpet in her school's band back in Alabaster. 

All of that from a teenager who, at first, took piano lessons.

And as the 1970s started to morph into the 1980s, Wendy wanted to become a total entertainer. (She wanted to try acting...and in the process, follow Johnny Cash.)

Non-NOTR TV appearances began to mount up for the Alabaster Kid; they included turns on shows like Big Blue Marble, The Mike Douglas Show, and The New Mickey Mouse Club. And in 1979, she appeared on a Christmas special on ABC; the show was hosted by none other than Loni Anderson, of WKRP in Cincinnati fame; and Robert Urich, who was knocking 'em dead on that network's (ABC's) Vega$.  

Well, a guest shot on Hee Haw took Wendy's life in another direction...and we're going to look at that direction when we come back.

SHOUT-OUT TIME: A lot of this information came from an excellent Website, www.wendyholcombe.com. (Check it out whenever you get a chance!) 

Well, It's Just a Thought...

Things have been some kind of hectic for me thus far in 2014...and that's why I'm just now posting for the new year. (Just glad to be back!)

Hope this new year is treating you right thus far.

At this very moment, Winter Storm Leon is treating America's Southerners far from right. And it's also dogging people in this country's Northeast.  

I just got through visiting Wikipedia to do research for this post...and I found out that only The Weather Channel is naming winter storms.  

That's right...and that means that not even the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (whose National Hurricane Center has been giving names to that kind of disaster since 1953, using girls' names only from that year until 1977, when boys' names were added to the mix) wants to go along.

And AccuWeather isn't even in the game. 

In fact, 2013-14 is the second winter in which this division of NBC Universal Media, LLC has been giving names to winter storms. And that's only if the storms prove disruptive, according to TWC senior director Bryan Norcross.

The network gets its names from Greek, Norse, and Roman mythology. (Last winter, blizzards and near-blizzards were named after deities such as Athena and Gandolf.) 

When I first found out that the winter storms were getting their own labels, I got a crazy thought in my mind: 

"What if, instead of naming winter storms after Greek/Norse/Roman gods and goddesses...they named winter storms after brands of cigarettes?"  

Yeah, I know. It's a crazy thought.

But I figured that, first of all, cigarettes have been proven to be health hazards. (Researchers at the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities came up with the first evidence way back in 1926; the studies continued over the next 26 years before the doctors and the scientists found a way to make them public so that everyday people could dig it all. And even then, the research continued for years to come.)

And think of all the deaths winter storms have caused through the years. Matter of fact, this year's first major winter storm (labeled Atlas by the TWC folks) took eight lives.

Each winter, The Weather Channel comes up with 26 names for blizzards and near-blizzards. And that's the same number of names NOAA annually uses for hurricanes.

Now if you go to www.cigarettespedia.com, you'll find that enough brands of smokes have come out all over the world to cover A through Z. So you wouldn't have to restrict the labeling of winter storms to American brands- current and defunct alike.

Even so, you'd have more of a case if you used brand names that are the same as people's first names...like Kent or Carlton or Raleigh or Winston (or even Adam, a brand Liggett Group marketed for a little while in 1973).

Well...there are two strikes against naming winter storms after cigs (depending on your point of view, those strikes could be lucky):

First, this country's tobacco companies would object. You can imagine some industry spokesperson saying: "Our products give people pleasure! How dare you name winter storms after our fine products!"

And here in America, cigarette commercials were taken off TV and radio on 1-2-1971. (It could've happened on the first day of 1971 if the networks hadn't given the tobacco companies one last lick...that last lick being the chance to sponsor the New Year's Day bowl games.)  

Just remember: NASCAR's Sprint Cup, previously called the Nextel Cup until Sprint bought that wireless company out, was- for a long time- called the Winston Cup.  

Oh, well...this was just a thought. 

How do you feel about the network of Wake Up with Al giving names to winter storms? Is it helpful...or is it, as so many critics contend, self-serving?

I'm Jim Boston, and I hope you're having a ball here in 2014!

America's Favorite...and Second to None

That slogan was taken from a piece of sheet music written by Charles N. Daniels, one of the most prolific composers of the 1890s-1930s period, with songs like "Margery," "You Tell Me Your Dream, I'll Tell You Mine," and "Chloe." (That last one was one of the many he composed under one of his many pen names: Neil Moret.)

And don't forget that he published an 1899 Scott Joplin piece, "Original Rags."

The above slogan's also one that Charles' grandniece, Nan Bostick, adopted.

Nan was no slouch as a composer, either, what with winners like "Ragtime in Randall," "Bean Whistle Rag," and "That Missing You Rag."

I'm one of the many missing her, too. Recently, Nan lost her battle with lung cancer.

Nan was a veteran of many ragtime festivals nationwide, including California's Sutter Creek event (held every August since that get-together's 2000 inception) and that same state's West Coast Ragtime Festival.

She even performed at the Ragtime to Riches Festival, coming to the Omaha/Council Bluffs/Bellevue area in 2006 and 2007. (I remember when, at the 2006 festival, she jammed alongside another of that year's featured performers, Pat Boilesen.)

Nan Bostick really was second to none when it came to giving workshops; hers were some of the most entertaining workshops you'd ever attended.

One of her most famous workshops focused on the work her granduncle put together, starting in his Missouri/Kansas days...when Charles' "Hiawatha" touched off a brief craze for songs about Native American people.

Funny thing about it, "Hiawatha" wasn't about a Native American...it was about a Kansas town that bears said name.

I learned from Nan that during the 1897-1917 period, roughly 350 women composed at least one ragtime tune apiece.

And Charles N. Daniels got some of them published, too.

I've tried some of those pieces myself...and had a ball working on 'em. One of those numbers is "That Poker Rag," by Charlotte Blake. Others include Irene Giblin's "Chicken Chowder" and Nellie Stokes' "Snowball."

By the way...my favorite Nan Bostick composition is "Bean Whistle Rag." (You get to, as the sheet music says, ad lib...and have fun!)

She encouraged me to concentrate on giving workshops; Nan, somehow, liked the ones I'd given. (Well, to tell you the truth, I'd rather put giving workshops and performing together. But still...)

Nan was one of ragtime's best and most tireless researchers; it showed in every concert she gave and every workshop she conducted. I admire how she liked going to different schools nationwide to show children just what old-time piano's really like.

Nan...thank you for helping to show me (and plenty of other people) what old-time piano's really like.

Thank you for being part of my life...and allowing me to be in yours.

A Renaissance Woman

That's exactly what Burns Davis was.

Was rather than is.

The Monday before last month's Great Plains Ragtime Society meeting (held 9-25-2011), I'd sent the massage therapist from Lincoln, NE a copy of a flyer touting that September meeting. And it was all about trying to get more Lincolnites interested in traveling those 52 miles to Omaha to check out what GPRS has been doing to help promote old-time piano.

I was eleven days too late.

I received an email from Nan Bostick; she'd written to find out if I'd heard about what happened to Burns.

Opened up the link Nan sent with that email and found out...the unthinkable happened.

Burns Smith Davis passed away on 9-8-2011.

It happened- unexpectedly- at home. (She would've turned 64 on 11-13-2011.)

I found out that Burns wasn't actually her birth name. She was born Bonnie Jill Reimer...and the birth took place in Enid, OK. (The proud parents were Barney J. and Martha Louise Smith Reimer.) Burns went on to take her first and last names from a couple of highly influential piano teachers of hers.

In 1968, Burns received a Bachelor of Music degree from the University of Oklahoma...where she went on to, in 1972, earn a master's degree in literary science.

In previous posts, I'd called Burns a Californian-turned-Nebraskan. Actually, she was an Oklahoman-turned-Arkansan-turned-Washingtonian-turned-Californian-turned-Nebraskan. (Fresh out of college, BSD held down library jobs in Fayetteville, AR; Yakima, WA; and Red Bluff, CA. In Yakima, Burns went back to college...and got another master's degree, this time in botany.)

Burns Davis moved from Red Bluff to another California city, Cupertino, where she became a nursing home administrator.

In addition, she became a ragtime enthusiast there...to the point where she became active with a rag group and a local festival.

Her next city was Los Gatos, CA...where she got involved in business consulting and design.

And then, in the middle 1990s, Burns came to Nebraska's capital city; in Lincoln, she joined the State Library Commission. On top of that, she launched Davis Business Systems.

The Star City was the place in which Burns' life reached a real turning point.

In 1998, Burns decided to become a massage therapist...so, she enrolled at the city's Myotherapy Institute.

And that's where people found out that she had The Knack.

Not long after studying at the institute, BSD started her own massage therapy business, Ehaweh Arts. (The firm's name came from one of Burns' great-grandmothers, an Oklahoman known for her own ability to heal.)

Meanwhile, Burns began to land jobs as a substitute organist at a succession of Lincoln churches: St. Mark's Episcopal, St. David's Episcopal, St. Paul's United Methodist, St. Paul's Congregational, and Trinity United Methodist. (At Trinity, Burns served a while as its main organist.)

She even went back to Enid to attend Phillips University...and to intern on the organ at that city's Central Christian Church. The high point was a concert in June 2000.

Five years and one month later, I met Burns Davis for the first time.

And it wouldn't have been possible if it weren't for Gil Lieberknecht.

Gil gave me a list of performers he'd been playing alongside at different ragtime get-togethers nationwide (especially the Sutter Creek outing in his- and Nan's- native California). The list came in handy, because I was trying to find performers for the first annual Ragtime to Riches Festival, then held at a church in Council Bluffs, Broadway United Methodist.

Jim Radloff was on that list, too...and he and Burns answered the call. (So did two other performers I'd competed alongside at the World Championship Old-Time Piano Playing Contest: Marty Mincer and "Perfessor" Bill Edwards.)

Burns went on to play every last one of the R to R Festivals we've had thus far, from the first (where Gil was the guest of honor) to this year's event (the first held at Omaha's First Central Congregational Church).

She ended up doing the last Sunday concert at every R to R only because her Ehaweh Arts schedule and her work as a church organist in the Star City combined to leave her with the last Sunday concert...but last year and this, Burns got R to R Sunday (at least the afternoon part) off.

In fact, at the 2010 festival, Burns gave a workshop about Gil, the highly-prolific ragtime composer who moved, as a teen, to Nebraska in 1947 (his dad Henry was born here) and died in 2008 at age 76. 

And it was one heck of a workshop! (In fact, Burns' tribute to her old buddy- of "Goldenrod Rag" fame- was the workshop I could only hope to do about the man nicknamed "Gil Lieby.")

Burns' 2010 R to R workshop had the same thing her festival concerts had: A kind of quiet elegance that featured Burns' wit (who else would list CDs as some of her musical instruments?) and great analytical intelligence.

By the way, she was no slouch as a singer. In fact, one of her Ragtime to Riches concerts began with BSD singing and playing "Everybody Rag with Me." (Earlier this year, Burns- a new convert to Judaism- became a cantorial soloist. All of that after membership in the St. Mark's Episcopal choir.)

Massage therapist...librarian...business consultant...instrumentalist...singer...animal lover...ragtime enthusiast...Burns Smith Davis was no slouch as a person.

Burns, I'm glad to have met you.