The record changer (Mar-Dec 1947)

By CHARLES RICHARDS J There was a pianist in Texas a few years i-ago about whom a legend seemed to be form.e »ng. Bill Riddle in Baltimore had heard a I let about him. Orin Blackstone in New Orleans had met him. Dave Stuart in Holly;rwood had corresponded "with him. Jack Tea-garden heard him on two occasions in Fort J Worth and tried to hire him. So did Paul jj (Whiteman. By 1941 he was famous in the Southwest is a young virtuoso, something like a J prodigy. To musicians it was a paradox : a hot pianist from the hillbilly bands. The musicians who heard him admired his finish id and technical excellence. Even the so-called squares were struck by his arresting virtuosity. His name — Knocky (John W.) Parker. W hen he appeared in Hollywood as a solo pianist at Mr. Dee's Bar about three years ago, he proved to local jazz addicts that every thing people had said about his red-hot, two handed piano playing was true. Knocky's background is considerably richer than the average pianist's of his generation. His first music lessons (which began at the age of four) were from the itinerant Negro workers on his father's cotton farm in Palmer, Texas. He knows as many blues and Negro folk songs as the erudite Lomaxes — and he knows them first-hand, from his childhood. By the age of six Knocky showed more than a casual interest in the piano, an interest stimulated by pedaling the parlor player, and by hearing the Negro pianists "■■ who played to amuse him. The six-year-old Knocky began elaborate experiments with the player piano. Pumping the pedals slowly, he followed the pushed down keys with his fingers in an attempt to teach himself to play what the player roll played (Knocky says that accounts for the unorthodox fingering he still uses). This was regarded as musical precociousness by his family and little Knocky was given a few formal music lessons. "Before he was eleven," says Knocky's sister, "he could play 'Bluin' the Blues' and all the piano rolls just like the player, just as good." Knocky lost interest in the piano rolls when the Parkers got the wind-up phonograph. Every Saturday Knocky's father would take him to Whittle's Music Store in Dallas, where, at the record counter, he would buy the one or two piano solo records that the salesgirl had set aside for him. These he took home to play over and over jntil he had memorized every note, shade and inflection. Then he would work at the piano until he could reproduce to perfection with his own playing what was on the record. "I learned dozens of records that way," said Knocky, "lots of piano solos like Pinetop's 'BoogieWoogie,' Clarence William's Wildflower Rag' (that was my big number). Jelly Roll Morton's 'Seattle Hunch,' and 'The Pearls,' and Cow Cow Davenport's I'Chimes Blues.' There were also James P. Johnson's 'Carolina Shout' and 'Snowy Morning Blues,' and a whole stack of Roosevelt Sykes records. I still have them." Knocky still plays them all on the piano as well as the phonograph. His first public performances were at camp meetings and revivals around Palmer, Texas. On occasion, he played professionally with dance bands during high school and his vear at Trinity University in Waxahachie. Before he could begin his second year at AUGUST, 1947 Trinity, an overwhelming Weltschmerz took him off on his own to Dallas where he found a piano playing job with Blackie Simmon's six-piece "Cowboy" band. "It was a barnstorming outfit that chased all over East Texas and Oklahoma in a beat-up bus. We played Dixieland tunes renamed with titles like 'Foot Warmer.' The instrumentation was hillbilly and we played in 'hillbilly' keys like 'A' natural, 'E' natural and 'B' natural." After gigging in Dallas for a couple of lean years with more than one six-dollar weekly pay check, Knocky decided that a career in Dallas was all too speculative. The opportunity came to join a hillbilly band in Fort Worth and he took it. It was a flashy "fiddle-band" called "The Lightcrust Doughboys" which was organized by ex-Texas Governor, hillbilly politician W. Lee O'Daniel. The band recorded for Vocalion and did daily broadcasts under sponsorship of a big flour mill. Most of what they played was shaped by concessions to the leader, the sponsor and the hillbilly audience. One of the fiddlers was a graduate violin student at T.C.U. and all were first rate musicians who liked to play jazz. "A lot of our numbers were 12-bar blues at various tempos. I did a lot of pretty good duets with the banjo player," says Knocky with a grin. Several recording "hillbilly" bands used the Doughboy musicians, among them Bob Wills and Bill Boyd's Ramblers. This accounts for Knocky's excessive recording activities in the hillbilly field. He is featured on some Doughboy Vocalions like : "Gin Mill Blues," "Blue Guitar Stomp," "Little Rock Getaway," "Knocky-Knocky," and "Pussy Pussy Pussy," and with Boyd and some of the others on Bluebird : "Dill Pickle Rag," "Careless Love," "South" and other similar old tunes. During the three years with the Doughboys, Knocky worked in other dance bands with the group of Texas musicians that Ray McKinley, Clyde Hurley, and Dave Matthews belong to, trie Texas counterpart of the Chicago gang. Knocky's first important job was at Billy Rose's Pioneer Palace at the Fort Worth Centennial where he appeared as a solo act on the same bill as the revived Original Dixieland Jazz Band. He got to know and to play with Daddy Edwards, Larry Shields, Nick La Rocca, J. Russel Robinson and Tony Spargo. When Knocky resumed his education at Texas Christian University on a piano scholarship in 1939, his professional playing wasn't seriously interrupted although he quit the Doughboys altogether. Apparently his activities as a jazz musician didn't interrupt his studies either, since he got his B.A. in one and one-half years. In school he still found time to go often to Lala's Cafe to accompany T-Bone Walker or to play an occasional week-end dance date. Through years of disciplined ear playing, Knocky developed an instrumental technique without a long struggle through the student repertory of etudes and the other calisthenics of piano pedagogy. Knocky says that he is still a poor reader in spite of all the "written" music he has been obliged to play. At his concerts he played Scarlatti, Bach, Mozart, Beethoven and Lizst that he couldn't read. Many of these pieces were learned by "ear" from the records of Casadesus, Giesek ing, Rubinstein or Landowska. When he was a student at T. C. U., a piano student of Keith Mixson, he gave ambitious recitals whose programs included long works like* the Schumann Piano Concerto and Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue, all of which were "ear" learned. Concurrent with these concerts were jazz piano recitals which he performed for the "legitimate" concert audiences and which were well received by them. With literary clubs and faculty organizations as his sponsors, Knocky gave more jazz concerts, all of which were received with intense interest and approval by "un-hip" audiences. These successes gave his local fame such a boost that he was given two T.S.N. (Network) Radio Shows, both solo piano, one jazz, the other jazz and classical. The radio programs and concerts all contributed to his becoming firmly established regionally as something approaching a celebrity. His new fame caught the interest of Interstate Theatres. For that theatre circuit he organized a jazz band, which was billed as "Knocky's Gate Swingers." This bit of vaudeville was sandwiched in between newsreel and feature pictures, and was enormously popular in spite of the fact that the band played jazz (save for accompaniments to the vocals of ex-Paul Whiteman singer, Durelle Alexander, who did commercial blues and the other things that girl singers usually do). Cody Sandifer (who took Bauduc's place in the old Bob Crosby Band) was on drums, "Snuffy" Smith (from Jack Teagarden's Band) on trumpet and the bass, clarinet and trombone were other local Fort Worth hot-men. Then the war nipped Knocky & Company in the bud. Knocky soon found himself playing first Glockenspiel in the Air Corps Regimental Band at one of those spacious, out-of-the-way, Texas Camps : Victoria, Texas, near the Mexican border. After a lucky transfer back to Fort Worth, through the auspices of an Air Corps General's wife (who liked violin), he got a special services job on a radio show in a soldier dance band, one of those Army Air Forces Public Relations Projects. At his new station (the 8th Air Forces Headquarters), the big Air Corps Band and the coast-to-coast weekly radio show company were forming. All the drafted, big-time musicians and actors were being sifted out of the ranks to be assembled there. The Band's conductor was Harry Bluestone and the show's M.C.'s were movie stars, William Holden and Burgess Meredith. Knocky got the piano chair and some Sergeant's stripes. Just when Knocky was beginning to feel triumphant over unfortunate circumstance, a taxi, in which he, his wife and two-year-old son were riding, was demolished by a speeding passenger bus. All were badly injured, especially Knocky, who suffered a concussion and skull fracture, not to mention a broken rib which pierced his right lung. The injury led to his discharge from the Army. Since that time he has been in California, gained his Master's Degree in English at U.S.C., and is now leading an academic life in Reno, teaching English at the University of Nevada. Knocky's playing struck the discerning ear of Madame Alice Ehlers from the hall outside where she happened to be passing during the piano student auditions at U.S.C. So impressed with what she heard of Knocky's approach to the Bach piece was she, that she (Continued on Page 15) 11