Passing of Wally Rose
By Douglas Henderson
[ Douglas also sent a nice farewell to Wally Rose, which is extracted
[ here from a longer letter he sent to me today. -- Robbie
Did I tell you that Wally remembered a 'salute' to Elsie Janis as she went through the Panama Canal on the Grace Line, where he was a pianist on board in the early '30s? He also told me about Mme. Sturkow-Ryder (also from Oakland, as was he) playing piano solos when he was in high school; she performed Debussy and similar works like the many she did for QRS Rolls, with and without Lee S. Roberts.
(I recall hearing Mme. Ryder on KFRC radio in San Fransisco in the '50s, on the Don Davis 'live' Player-Piano programme, talking about doing the QRS duets with Lee Roberts. She did several radio broadcasts then, and had a brief period of popularity before passing away.)
I really miss Wally and can't put into words the real void his departure brings to me. Many people today don't know how inaccessible 'Classic Ragtime' was in the late '40s ... or how his playing stood out (along with the Watters' band) from the "ballad saturation" and the dreamy (and forgettable) "Hollywood" music of that period.
Then came live TV and afternoon-long programs featuring the likes of (bandleader) Del Courtney -- he'd come on KPIX and play a few numbers. I'd save my paper route pennies and buy a record of his music, on the Good Time Jazz label. It all seems like yesterday. ...
[I was _so_ disaapointed after getting my first player piano.] Those boring sheet music transcriptions and jerky 'hand-played' rolls were nothing like Wally's precise and metered playing. That led to getting a Leabarjan from Trebor Tichenor (one of the two here, which I still use today) and the rest -- for me -- is history.
Wally was such a wonderful person. His _music_ just "jumped off the keyboard" during those days of the '50s.
Douglas
ARTCRAFT Music Rolls |
(Message sent Sat 18 Jan 1997, 02:52:23 GMT, from time zone GMT-0500.) |
|
|
Mechanical
Music Digest™ Archives
