www.plectrumbanjolessons.com

Playing Since: 1946
Experience Level: Expert/Professional

Interests:
[Teaching] [Socializing] [Helping]

Occupation: entertainer/teacher

Gender: Male
Age: 93

My Instruments:
Richelieu Golden Eagle Ne Plus Untra Plectrum Banjo

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Profile Info:
Visible to: Public
Created 6/10/2009
Last Visit 5/19/2016

I was born in Holland in 1932. When I was seven years old Holland was going through a Hawaiian phase. That's when I got a ukulele and started learning some chords and playing some tunes. In 1940 Holland was invaded. That period was not much fun! I wrote a book (booklet!) about that called "Though A Child's Eyes". I've never had it published though. Finally, in May of 1945, our town was liberated by the Canadian Army! Soon after that we started getting movies from England at our local movie theatre. Some of those movies starred a banjo ukulele player by the name of George Formby. Now that guy could play! I especially liked his syncopated strokes. That was the first time I'd heard that "banjo" sound, even though it was a banjo uke. A year later our little family consisting of my mother, brother Willard and myself were able to get out of Holland and take a little freighter to the United States. We were able to get out that early because my mother was still a US citizen. We settled in Sacramento where I started Junior High School in the eighth grade. That was a daunting experience! I could speak English pretty well though, because in Holland my mother always spoke to us in English and we'd answer in Dutch. I also had English as a foreign language in Holland. Actually . . . . my English was better than some of my new school mates because I would help them with their spelling!! I was intimidated on the playground though because all the guys would huddle and discuss baseball scores, batting averages, football, basketball and baseball players names, etc. etc. I was thinking: "this is impossible, I'll never catch up with all this information so that I can be on equal footing with these guys!" In the meantime I had traded my ukulele for a banjo at a local hock shop. One day a student by the name of Burt Wilson came up to me and said: "do you have a banjo?" I told him that I had a banjo but that I only knew a few chords on it. He then said that he was starting a Dixieland Band and they needed a banjo player because they were starting to play some of the music by Lou Waters, Bob Scoby and Turk Murphy where the banjo was used for rhythm. I told Burt again that I only knew a couple of chords and he said that would be OK because he just knew a couple of notes on his trombone! Well, in short order we got the band going. We called it: Goodtime Pleasure Rag And The Front Street Levee Loungers! We started playing for the school assemblies and in the variety shows and I never had to worry again about what somebody's batting average was! I met my best friend, John Robinson. He played guitar and also some banjo. It was really fortunate because now we could learn to play the banjo together. It was a real friendly competition. He'd learn some lick and I'd go home and work until I could do it too. And he did the same thing when I came up with something new. I didn't know of any banjo teachers in Sacramento at that time until someone told me that there was a banjo player who owned a beer bar in a part of Sacramento called Oak Park. I was about 15 or 16 then, not old enough to be frequenting a beer bar! But, early one day soon thereafter I found the bar and met my teacher, Ray Ball. Ray had recently gotten off the road where he'd played the vaudeville circuit. He played the plectrum banjo and also did trick ropes like Will Rogers used to do. Ray agreed to help me with my banjo and he taught me for several years. I also learned to do some of his rope tricks. When I was still in Holland I wanted to be a cowboy when we got to America so I had been working on my roping skills. I got to be pretty good too. I could twirl the loop around myself and jump in and out of it! Ray taught me to do the Texas skip where the loop travels back and forth and you jump through it. I never got really good at it but I stuck with the banjo. Ray worked with me for several years and at one point I decided that I was ready to play a professional gig. I talked Ray into contacting his old agent in Seattle and sure enough he came through with a contract to play in Seattle for the local Elks Club. I had two weeks to get ready so I practiced like mad until I could play those tunes without a flaw. I then got into my 1951 Kaizer and drove to Seattle. It took me two days so I slept in my car. It was one of the first cars that had pretty wide seats! Well . . . I got to Seattle, found the Club with not much time to spare, was introduced by the MC, grabbed my banjo, sat on a chair and started to do my program. Things went wrong right from the start. It was like I was under water! I couldn't get any speed going! I was very nervous and embarrassed too. I started to sweat, my hands started to shake. I couldn't go on! I got up from my chair, grabbed my case, mumbled an apology and practically ran out of there, got in my car and drove straight home. I learned a very important lesson that day. Just because I could play my program flawlessly in my room for my dog that didn't mean that I could play it like that for an audience!!! From then on I forced myself to take every opportunity to play in front of anybody and gradually it became more and more comfortable to play in public. I learned that I had to practice playing for an audience just like I had to practice my banjo. My first real gig was at the original Shakey's Pizza Parlor at 57th and J street in Sacramento. Shakey Johnson loved dixieland music so he hired our band to play on Saturday nights. A short while later he hired me to play a couple of days week. It was mostly playing and leading sing-a-long songs. Pretty soon Shakey suggested I team up with a piano player. Eventually I got together with Willie Erickson. He was a great musician and a crazy cut-up to boot. We had a great time together. Willie got tired of just playing those sing-a-longs all the time. He told me one day, "You know, we could play some real music with the two of us." He then taught me things like a whole medley from the musical "Oklahoma". We worked up a medley from the opera "Carmen" that even included the "death scene"! We put together a beautiful medley from the operetta "The Student Prince". We even had an arrangement of Beethoven's Fifth! Willie had a very large influence in my playing. He kept spurring me on with "you can do it!" and "you've got all the same notes I have on the piano" and "that's got to be a G7 with a flatted 5th!!!" Willie and I were a great team. We had lots of fun. We played an average of ten gigs a week! Then, in 1960 I got a call from Fred Finn in San Diego. Fred had recently opened a club in San Diego called Mickie Finn's. It featured a six piece band with Fred at the piano and Red Watson on banjo. Red had sprained his wrist and was unable to perform so Fred asked me to come to San Diego and substitute for Red. When Red was able to play again Fred kept me on. Red and I would alternate sets and sometimes play together. Red was a great player and a real gentleman. He eventually left for Carson City, Nevada where he played for many more years. In the summer of 1966 Fred Finn got the band a 13 show engagement on NBC Television. It was called "The Mickie Finn Show" and came on every Thursday night at 9:00. It was a popular show and after we finished the 13 shows Fred got us booked into the brand new Caeser's Palace in Las Vegas. We were only the second show there after Jack Benny! We played Caeser's Palace seven nights a week and twice on Sundays for quite a few months. Then we did many of the other hotels on the strip. By 1974 I'd been with Fred for 14 years. It had been a great run but I felt that I was now ready to do a "single" act so I said good bye to Fred and the gang and became immediately unemployed! I finally got a job at Disneyland for a while strolling with the Banjo Kings. Then I hooked up with Jerry van Dyke and his band. In all my spare time I was working up my "single" act. Finally one day I got a call from an agent. He asked me if I'd like to do an act on cruise ships. That started my 23 year cruise ship career. Each ship had at least a 10 piece band to accompany the various acts and play for the dancing each night. That meant that I had to get "charts" so that the bands could accompany me. That was quite an investment because I had to hire an arranger to do that for me. On my first cruise ship job I was very lucky to meet a fellow entertainer by the name of J. C. Curtis. I saw his outstanding stand-up comedy performance that same evening. The next evening I did my show and it went over OK. When I got together with J. C. the next day he said to me,"I saw your show last night. You mentioned about being from Holland. If you're really from Holland than USE IT! He then spent the rest of the day with me "fixing" my show! I found out later that he was known as the "act doctor". I took most of his suggestions and incorporated them into my act. The next time I did my show I got a standing ovation!! I was very fortunate to meet J. C. on my first time out. I did the cruise ships from 1974 to 1998. I enjoyed doing the shows but I did not like all the flying that was involved. One day my wife, Carolyn, picked me up at the airport after a 24 hour flight from Sydney, Australia. While we were driving home she said to me, "yesterday your agent called. Tomorrow you're flying to catch a ship in Singapore!!" I took that cruise, but I quit not very long after that. Carolyn and I moved to Green Valley, AZ where I keep pretty busy playing the retirement, assisted linving and Alzymer facilities. Also the mobile home parks in Green Valley, Tucson and Phoenix. I'm sorry this bio got so long but the older you get the longer your bio gets too!