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Tom Clark–Tuba, String Bass<\/p>\n Tom Clark–Tuba, String Bass<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve been blessed . . .<\/strong> We came from very humble beginnings, but we had a lot of love in our family.\u201d<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n <\/p>\n My family wanted to hold up my birth so we could have a July 4 gathering but about 4 o\u2019clock the afternoon of the 3rd<\/sup> my Mom says, \u201cWe are going to the hospital.\u201d<\/p>\n I was born in Lafayette, Indiana in 1945 and at that point my family was renting part of a farm. \u00a0We moved in 1948 to Kentucky. \u00a0It was a one mile walk to the bridge that crossed the Ohio River to Cincinnati. The house we rented was built before the Civil War, a farmhouse that had been occupied by forces of both the North and the South. \u00a0We found things around the chicken coop, my brothers and I, little insignias of the Confederate army. \u00a0The house was a wreck. \u00a0The rent was $30 a month and it never went up.<\/p>\n My mother was raised in a Finnish community. \u00a0Her father worked in the iron mines close to Lake Superior. He was a dynamiter, the most dangerous job. \u00a0He had left a wife and kids in Finland and he took the most dangerous job because it paid the most. \u00a0In three years he made enough money to get passage over for his family and buy seven acres where he built a log cabin. \u00a0My mother did not speak English until high school. \u00a0It was all Finnish, Norwegian, and Swedish.<\/p>\n We came from very humble beginnings, but we had a lot of love in our family. \u00a0And we were always telling jokes. \u00a0I remember being sent to bed because I wouldn\u2019t stop telling jokes at the dinner table. \u00a0There was a lot of laughter. \u00a0We had very little money, but a lot of good humor.<\/p>\n My mother and her sister were musicians.\u00a0 My mother had played alto horn in the Hibbing Band in Hibbing, Minnesota.\u00a0 So in fifth grade when our band director sent out a notice\u2014\u201cIf you\u2019re interested in music, come down.\u201d\u2014I did.<\/p>\n I played trombone and baritone horn and tuba and I was studying with the principal trombone player of the Cincinnati Symphony. \u00a0About my fourth lesson I\u2019m playing trombone, and he says: \u201cKid, I gotta level with you, you ain\u2019t got it. \u00a0You have an incorrect embouchure, you have a raspy tone, and the only way to get over that is to stop playing for a year, and then come back and I\u2019ll retrain you.\u201d<\/p>\n I was playing tuba and trombone in a Dixieland Band and we desperately needed a bass player. \u00a0In a locker in the high school was a string bass and I made a deal with the director, \u201cIf I repair that, can I use it until I graduate?\u201d \u00a0So I made friends with a repairman in Cincinnati and got the bass put together and I took my first lesson with the principle bass player in the Cincinnati Symphony. \u00a0I played my first paying gig on bass two weeks after my first lesson. A friend from high school said, \u201cI hear you got a bass. Bring it down to the bowling alley; I got a gig for you.\u201d \u00a0It paid $8.oo.\u00a0 I could only play major chords, you know 1-3-5, but after the gig he said, \u201cThat\u2019s good enough.\u201d\u00a0 Within six months I was playing in five bands.<\/p>\n My bass teacher was an excellent jazz player, too, and he asked which way I wanted to go, so I said, \u201cI want to play jazz.\u201d \u00a0It just took off. \u00a0Bass was the instrument that opened a lot of doors. \u00a0I played one season with the Cincinnati Youth Symphony.<\/p>\n At one time I was in fifteen bands–Dixieland, traditional jazz, jazz festivals and clubs. \u00a0I was playing bass and tuba in those groups.<\/p>\n As a kid I heard almost all of the Big Bands and Dixieland groups and I had an open ticket to the Cincinnati Symphony. \u00a0I had the influence of Cincinnati.\u00a0 It\u2019s wonderful for art and music, great colleges.\u00a0 I\u2019d go to Cincinnati on the weekends and go through the museums.<\/p>\n When my parents died, my uncle moved into the house with us and helped bring us up.\u00a0 My first job was working in a hardware store with my uncle.\u00a0 I had a really good job with General Motors when I graduated from high school. They had a parts warehouse in Cincinnati and a friend of mine got me a job. \u00a0The pay was excellent but that ended in the 1964 strike when all the newbies were kicked out.<\/p>\n I went into the military. \u00a0I was in the process of being drafted so I told the local recruiter I would like to be a Navy musician and he said to take a test and they\u2019d send me to the Great Lakes Training Center. \u00a0I passed the test on bass but I failed on tuba. \u00a0They told me they needed tall people to play the tuba because the horn was huge. \u00a0They had 315 bass players in that class for 17 openings.<\/p>\n It was the Viet Nam war. \u00a0So I ended up working in navigation and I was lucky. \u00a0I went on a Mediterranean tour. \u00a0I was on the East Coast, but I wanted to see California, so I volunteered for a ship on the West Coast and I went on the battleship New Jersey.<\/p>\n All three of us brothers made it back from Viet Nam. \u00a0We were firing into the jungle and my brother was there and every time a bullet went over my head, I prayed, \u201cDon\u2019t let it be Harry.\u201d<\/p>\n When I got out of Viet Nam, I was released in Washington State. \u00a0It was my last week in the service so I got dressed up in my spiffiest uniform and I took the ferry up to Victoria, Canada. \u00a0Walking around the ferry I met this girl, a nursing student from Santa Rosa. \u00a0I told her that after I got out I was going to Southern California and she said, \u201cWhy don\u2019t you stop in Santa Rosa on your way down.\u201d \u00a0I did.\u00a0 We had some time together in California, and then I went home . . . and then I came back out in 1970 and we got married.<\/p>\n I\u2019ve been blessed. \u00a0My wife and I had two boys. \u00a0One is deceased and the other one is back with us again because of the 2017 fire. \u00a0He\u2019s a wonderful guy, also a bass player.<\/p>\n I had a good career with the phone company. \u00a0My main job was as a cable splicer. \u00a0I started climbing poles, doing hard physical work, but I kept going to college on the G.I. bill, either at night or daytime, and I got my degree in electronics at SRJC.<\/p>\n My wife was a nurse and I was making pretty good money so we were able to travel. \u00a0We went to Spain, Italy, Germany, and Scandinavia. \u00a0We have relatives in Sweden, Finland, friends in England, Germany. \u00a0We\u2019ve been to Australia and all over.<\/p>\n We had a lot of family time; that was really precious. And I have played music a lot. \u00a0I\u2019ve played Broadway-type shows in Petaluma in a pit band.\u00a0 I played at Sonoma High School in a pit orchestra for Fiddler on the Roof.\u00a0 I love that.<\/p>\n One day at the phone company my boss says, \u201cCall your wife, she\u2019s got a gig for you.\u201d \u00a0I call and she says, \u201cCan you get home and get in your tux and play for Cab Calloway\u2019s birthday at LBC?\u201d He was appearing and after that they were going to have a big party. \u00a0So they formed a band and I played for Cab Calloway.<\/p>\n I was involved in the Jazz Club called TradJazz and a guy named Kazoo, a retired professor from San Francisco who played bass clarinet, told me all about the New Horizons Band. \u00a0My wife and I were at the symphony sometime around 2000 and we met Lew Sbrana and Lew said, \u201cWhen you retire, come and see us.\u201d \u00a0A few months later I got a retirement offer from the phone company. \u00a0One of the first things I did was get a tuba out, oil it up, and come down and play.\u00a0 I retired on a Thursday and on Tuesday I was at Band. \u00a0There were two tuba players already but they liked having another player. \u00a0And Kazoo was there playing his bass clarinet.<\/p>\n Now I do a lot of gardening.\u00a0 I was president of the local Tradjazz organization. \u00a0And we\u2019re involved in a Scandinavian organization. \u00a0I volunteer at church. \u00a0And through these jazz organizations I do gigs at retirement homes.<\/p>\n I love being part of this Band. \u00a0I love the support, the friendship. \u00a0I like the people, their attitude; there is no backstabbing.\u00a0 It is a supportive community and as you know, in the work world it isn\u2019t always like that.\u00a0 And there\u2019s always something to laugh about, to smile about.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Tom Clark–Tuba, String Bass \u201cI\u2019ve been blessed . . 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