The Full Catastrophe

Gene Nobles, John Richbourg, Bill “Hoss” Allen and Herman Grizzard caught a lot of heat from Whites and Blacks — White people who lacked an ear for “Black music," and Black folks repulsed by DJs who seemed to be exploiting Black culture — many listeners thought they were Black (radio is theatre of he mind.)  But as many others saw it, they were delivering, through music, an important American cultural exchange. 

There is another side of this story: it's about how in such a dynamic time, introducing White teens in Eastern Kentucky to the voices, the rhythms, the chord structures and the stories conveyed by the Blues, R&B and Soul encouraged them to think about Big Things, such as equality and justice. The power of music pried open young minds, exposing them to a wider world than they had known. 

It truly was life-altering. 

It's what soon inspired the formation of a twelve-piece Soul and R&B band called “The Students of Soul” — made up mostly of students from the university, about 50/50 White and Black. 

This was a time when Black students were first showing up on campus in noticeable numbers. Deeply serious about gaining their degrees and making meaningful differences in a rapidly changing world, and immensely talented, they gravitated to an opportunity to make music — and friends — with White people. The basement of our home directly across the street from the university's music building became the place where all of that happened. And in the bargain, the experience of getting to know these young, smart, thoughtful people gradually enlightened my WW II generation parents.  Often as the band rehearsed down in the basement, and would suddenly stop playing to make a change or a correction, we could hear my pianist dad upstairs playing along with us on an Otis Redding, Wilson PIckett, Etta James or Aretha Franklin tune! We came to realize that music is common ground where people discover that, in the big scheme of things, and as the great New Orleans artist Allen Toussaint observed, we're all connected.

Receptions to this big mixed-race band consisting of drums, bass, guitar, Hammond B-3 organ, four horns and four singers varied from a surprisingly wonderful, warm welcome at the high school in West Liberty, a town even smaller and more isolated than Morehead, to the sometimes openly racist treatment experienced when performing for certain fraternities on college campuses and for country club cotillions and debutante balls in cities around the region. It was those experiences, witnessing those affronts to the dignity of our good friends, that enlightened us to the realities and the cruelty of racism.

But the music! It was what introduced us to each others' hopes and aspirations and the realization that in many instances, they were the same.

So all of this is to explain why when today I sit down to a piano and start to play, what comes out usually is some mashup of the blues, jazz and Afro-Cuban music that have captivated me ever since that night in 1964, out back, laying on the grass under a clear night sky of constellations and the radio beacon of WLAC.

Since those days, I've been a member of a final iteration of Lexington, Kentucky's “Mag Seven," as well as the Washington, D.C. jazz-funk band “Arcturus”, the New York blues band “Juke Joint Johnnies," and, after returning to Lexington in 1995, “The City”, “The Patrick McNeese Band, and today, ”The Full Catastrophe." 

And whenever possible, I find immense joy in making music with my musician sons Jon, Ben and Ted in the family band,  The Printers. For us, music is the tie that binds and carries us through life's chapters of “The Full Catastrophe.”