[Dixielandjazz] Lurker's Bio

[Don Robertson]

Hi,

I've been mostly lurking since I first joined the DJML in 1995 or so, 
but have met many of you at various F2F's on the west coast.  I'm mostly 
a listener, but also a quasi-wannabe musician that gets to sit in once 
in a while.

I was born in 1934 and grew up in Long Beach, CA.  Curiously we lived on 
the same street, a couple of blocks down from listmate Jim Kashishan's 
family, but as I was 7 or 8 years older, we didn't know each other, and 
we have never met.

As a kid, I mostly listened to the popular mainstream music of the 
'40's, mostly big band, but also discovered Spike Jones.  When I was in 
Jr. High, the Firehouse Five + 2 became well known in Southern 
California and I was hooked on their brand of "dixieland".   In the 
early 50's I was at U C, Berkeley and discovered the various trad bands 
in the area, including Bob Scobey and Turk Murphy.  

Later, after marrying and starting a family, I found myself living in 
Costa  Mesa, CA and heard about a "dixieland" band playing in a pizza 
parlor in nearby Huntington Beach.  Checking it out, I found it was the 
1966 version of the South Frisco Jazz Band.  After hanging out there 
every weekend for about 4 months, I accepted a job back in the SF bay 
area, and moved to San Jose, CA

In the meantime, I had already been introduced to bluegrass music by a 
friend in So Calif., and enjoyed the similarly driving energetic music. 
 In San Jose I joined a folk guitar class and began to make  music 
myself, mostly playing rhythm guitar in bluegrass and "old time fiddle" 
jams.   Somehow the folk guitar class expanded, and I took my son's 
abandoned  violin and joined a fiddle class.  Old timey fiddle music 
being of the aural tradition was mostly by ear, and I found I had a 
pretty good ear and memory for tunes, consequently, I never exercised 
the discipline required to learn to read music,

Later through my son's current girl friend and her family in Sacramento, 
I  attended the 1986 Dixieland Jubilee and to my great surprise found 
the South Frisco band alive and well.  This rekindled my love of OKOM 
from my youth.  I discovered that all the classic OKOM and 30's/40's pop 
tunes I had heard throughout my life were in my head and I could play 
most of them on my fiddle,  which had now become a "jazz violin".  The 
biggest problem was that all my ear training was in sharp keys prevalent 
in country, old time and bluegrass, where the brass dominated OKOM is 
usually in flat keys.

My wife and I began attending many local dixieland or trad jazz 
societies and other gigs in the SF Bay Area, and frequented another 
pizza parlor OKOM band.  I was invited to sit in with  the band and play 
a few numbers on my violin, which didn't really fit in with the 2 beat 
Watters/Murphy style of the band.  Later I had the privilege of playing 
a snare drum with brushes and became a drummer in training (having been 
inspired by Bill Gunter's advice of "count to 2 and hit something").

After retiring and moving to Napa, CA in 1999, we continue to follow 
OKOM societies and festivals, and I play violin or drums occasionally 
with jam groups at society meetings.

Don Robertson