Lee Cronbach

         As we drove down the last hill on the freeway before Baltimore, I burst out laughing.  I couldn’t believe my eyes!  The city was spread around the Chesapeake Bay, and rising proudly out of the center was a giant stone tower, like something from the Middle Ages.  In the middle of the tower was a huge clock, and what made it so absurd was that the words “BROMO SELZER” were prominently displayed on all four sides.        Indeed, Baltimore’s reputation for the strange and uncanny goes back as far as Edgar Allen Poe’s residence there, where he created the modern horror story in the 1850s.         Well, as we stayed in Baltimore and I read the local underground Press, it seemed to me to be the ultimate clown city.  I remember one article (since lost) where a column started with the line “As I lay drunk in the gutter, looking up at the stars…”.  ...

Smoke on a set break in our club. From left to right: John Kleckley drums, Huey bass guitarist,  Kenny bandleader and saxophone, Lee Cronbach aka 'Groucho' ("Don't get grouchy, Grucho!")      5. JOHN KLECKLEY and SMOKE   -  I ran into my last Boston teacher unexpectedly, when I got invited to join Smoke, an R&B band that was playing in Roxbury - one of the Black neighborhoods of Boston.  The offer came in 1975, when I was already thinking about leaving Boston for either New York City or Los Angeles.          I fell in love with Smoke, as I had with Tribal Rhythms and Boston Elevated Railway, on first playing with them.  What really made them outstanding was an incredibly tight and smoking drum and bass partnership.  John Kleckley, the drummer, had come from Philadelphia where he had played with the Gamble and Huff team, both in their Philadelphia International studio an...

                                                            Prof Norden: photo taken in April 1986 by Rav Avraham at Boston College campus            Now that I had found my jazz teacher, I needed to find a classical theory teacher (harmony, counterpoint, and so on).  I started browsing through books on music theory, and soon felt the same dissatisfaction I had with my music school tutor.  Again the focus was on what you couldn’t, shouldn’t, don’t dream of doing, laid out in the form of proscriptive rules.    One common rule forbade writing more than two consecutive thirds in the same voices in a row.  (For example, it was forbidden to write c/e - b/d - a/c, where the first note of each third was always in the Soprano voice, and the second always in the Alto. ...

    Curtis Jones and Charley  Holley MY FIRST FREE DRUM CIRCLE  – In my last years at Berkeley I had a lot of musical firsts, as has been shown in Part one, Interlude     My first realization of tone deafness and first attempt to cure it; my first Latin jazz lessons; my first lessons in blues theory and blues scales; my first lesson in how to listen; and my first lesson in bop melody.             To complete the history of my firsts, I have to add my first experience in a free drum circle, which was to have the biggest impact on my music education and career.  (In the interest of completing this blog, I am saving most of the drum circle info I have for the Appendix.   This info is just to give the background to me and the Cooperative Artists Institute).             Telegraph Avenue is one of Berkeley’s major a...