Outcast

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Many times during my career I felt like an outsider, an outcast in the eyes of the "real piano players." Here are some cases in point:

• Many looked down upon me because I was self-taught. 

•  I didn't play ragtime as written (I play everything by ear). 

• When I tried to trace the rhythms of ragtime back to Africa I found they all led to the dance rhythms of Scotland and Ireland. This was not in keeping with some of the major festivals. 

• People resented me because playing the piano was easy for me. I never had to practice. 

• I encountered those who presented themselves as "geniuses" along the way, but I could see right through them. They could fool the gentle ragtime aficionados, but they couldn't fool me. Some people resented me for speaking out and exposing these so-called "geniuses," but I could never stay silent in the face of braggarts, glory seekers, and those who presented themselves as being "above the rest of us." Some of them were good at what they did but in actuality no better than others in the field. I know what traits to look for in a genius, and I can count on one hand the actual number I've actually met. The ones I'm referring to were delusional frauds. 

I've endured rumor mongers who spoke behind my back with mistruths they'd made up about me. By the time I'd find out about these rumors they'd gone all across the country. An example was when a friend of mine who lived in Kenya in a chalet overlooking the Maasai Range invited Linda and me to visit him for two weeks, we went. The learning experiences we had were absolutely astounding during this time, such as when we learned that the Maasai people could sense the presence of a predator (lion, elephant, snake, etc.) long before they actually saw it. However, upon returning back home, we learned that the rumor had spread through an entire week-long ragtime festival that I'd gone there to prove that ragtime rhythms were not African but rather Scotch/Irish. So many branded me as a racist. I am not, nor have ever, approved nor disapproved of anyone based on the color of their skin. This story has haunted me for twenty years thanks to some unknown liar who spread these words about me. 

I was on the road for over 25 years, 1991-2020, playing between 200 - 250 concerts a year. So now the criticism changed to me being "greedy." I heard it all the time. I found myself having to explain that I was given the opportunities of a lifetime and that both Linda and I loved the challenges of finishing playing a concert and getting to the next one 500 miles away by tomorrow night. But even that wasn't enough for some. I used to hear the phrase, "How much is enough, Bob?," as if someone knew more about my life and what I was "supposed to do" than I did. "Why don't you ever take time out to relax, Bob?" was another one, coming from stupid people who didn't realize how much I enjoyed playing a thundering rendition of a tune that brought audiences to their feet. Yes, I've heard the phrases about "don't let these people drag you down," and I didn't, but I had to live with stuff like this regardless. 

When I was younger and playing in the Detroit area saloons and seafood houses I had a stalker. I won't use her real name, but the situation was similar to what Clint Eastwood portrayed in his movie, "Play Misty for Me." My years of this were nightmarish. Constantly looking across the room where I was playing and seeing beady eyes staring back at me. Same in restaurants where I'd go to relax after gigs. I was never alone. This went on for ten years before I finally was able to drive her away. 

The audiences I played for loved me and that's all I really cared about. Audiences can hardly believe what goes on behind the scenes. Audiences are very music savvy. They know what's good, what isn't good, and what is pretentious drivel. My job on the stage was to give them what they came to hear: piano playing that ranged from the slow moving, heart wrenching blues to the thunderhouse arrangements of tunes I used to make up.

Someone once asked me, "Bob, why do you play things that are so difficult?"  I answered, "If I don't play them, who will?"

But there were always deniers and resenters lurking in the shadows. A neurology hospital in Pennsylvania ran a series of tests on me over a period of several years and determined that I actually could audiate (hear in my head) four totally different symphonic works at the same time. No medical magazine would publish it, all using various excuses: "this belongs in psychology magazines; this belongs in ... (fill in the blank). The basic conclusion was that they couldn't understand it so stayed away. A radio podcast, Radiolab, did a segment on it. When a west coast well-known neurology doctor heard about this he told me to my face that what I'd done was not possible. I asked him why it was that I had all the right answers to the brain-busting tests and he said he couldn't understand that, but that he knew that I had either somehow faked the answers or some other concocted excuse he came up with to deny that I'd actually done it. I feel that I had done something that he'd deemed impossible in one of his many books and that now he was retaliating at me for doing so. I told him I apparently knew more about it than he did. The tests I took are explained on this website under the title "Brain Studies." 

Another thing that seemed to isolate me from the mainstream was that I hate jazz. I never hear the beautiful melodies heard in the classics, blues, or even in popular music of my era. To me, jazz too easy to play. It was just a bunch of non-harmonic notes played rapid fire, which I could do anytime I wanted but refused to. Jazz was just a contest to see who could play the fastest and the highest notes, which was a concept that went totally against my grain. I always told myself and told students, "Never try to show anyone how good you are, show them how good the music can be." Following a particular jazz performance I was once forced to listen to, I was asked what I thought of it. My response, albeit somewhat crude, definitely shared my feelings about it:

"It was a clusterf___ of notes, with attitude."

  I grew up as a French horn player, even being in a professional orchestra by the time of the 10th grade. When I went to the Eastman School of Music (1959-1963) I became ass't 1st horn in the Rochester (NY) Philharmonic. It was in the Eastman school that I first encountered "modern music" in the classical field. Being raised on Mozart, Schubert, Beethoven, Chopin, and all the great classical composers, I wondered aloud why were were suddenly playing these discordant, grating sounds masquerading as music. I was told that "times have changed, tastes in music have changed, and this music deserves to be heard." When I asked "why does this stuff need to be heard? It sounds like crap," I was frowned upon.

Then I went to the Baltimore Symphony as, again, ass't 1st horn. Here I encountered even more "modern music." This time, when I expressed disdain for it, I was told to "shut up," because the orchestra board makes the selections about what we're going to play, and since they also raise money and pay us it's best to "keep your mouth shut and just play it." That's when I decided to quit playing the instrument I had played and loved for ten years and find something else to do. I eventually learned that audiences don't like modern music either. I remember attending a symphony concert where the opening chords were "dark and ominous." The lady sitting in front of me put her hands on her head, muttered "oh, no..." and slid down into her chair. We all lasted through the first half and listened to the Mozart and Beethoven (the good stuff) on the second half. The people who program these concerts always put the junk music on the first half. Otherwise, once the good stuff was over, everyone would leave. 

I found that those who professed a liking for modern music were also of a certain political group, always finding "something good" in things that were long ago relegated to the sidelines because they were, well, not good. What defined it as "good or no good" to me was how willing the audience was to pay money to come to a concert of mine. I always gave them what they wanted, none of this "pushing the boundaries of new musics," as I sometimes heard it called. I got tired of hearing about "brave, new composers," because to me they were talentless pretenders. I pushed my own boundaries to always be better tomorrow than I was yesterday. I hope I succeeded at doing that during my career.