Forgotten Daddy
a Tribute – by Phil James
There he is, Philip James: one of the many “Manhattan composers” in the first half of the 20th century.
The composers knew each other well. They wrote lots of letters to each other, saw concerts, read newspapers, and listened to the radio.
This is a biography of “my Daddy,” written very loosely. He was at the height of his career in the nineteen-thirties, one hundred years ago – it was a fascinating time!
I’ve put up some sound videos, mainly organ – most of the old orchestral stuff is too scratchy. Some of you might like the music, others might not; the early stuff “tends toward the romantic.” If you don’t like it, I’ve added a couple of recorded interviews, for instance one with composer Milton Babbitt. And yes, “World War One” was clawing at him, always… then my mother suffered in WW2… and WW3 is looming: watch out, watch out!
But this is a tribute to you, Daddy; and it is history, HISTORY, an acknowledgement of what life was LIKE back then…
_______
“Old man.” Every DAY my father is called “the old man.” The doctors told us to “take care of the old man.” Which we did. Well, I sort of did.
But now I think he wasn’t a typical “old man” at all. I don’t know why I’ve created that particular pattern. Gradually, over the years, I’ve grown to understand him.
AH! – I found it: an old tape, hidden away; you can hardly hear it. It was composed by my Daddy, Symphony #2 back in 1946. I remember going to hear it that day in 1966, live. It was rare that he had much of ANYTHING played!
I remember him that day, limping, and then just listening to the music, listening. His eyes closed and his hands moved a little, and the conductor’s arms flapped… they were bringing the music ALIVE!
Gunther Schuller said it ALL about Dad in his autobiographical book, A Life in Pursuit of Music and Beauty (2011). Schuller was a serious classical composer and French horn player, who played jazz with Miles Davis, Eric Dolphy, Ornette Coleman, etc. He placed my Dad’s music as “beautiful, poignant” and said:
I really loved these pieces, and if I had at this long distance to say which more or less modern music of the time I admired most it was Philip James’s music. Alas, he is now virtually forgotten…
“Alas, he is now virtually forgotten…” Yes, he IS forgotten!
But I’ll tell you what: spirit is what screams through him, SPIRIT!
When Daddy was a boy he grew up with the organ, and he absolutely loved it. He felt it was an altar; it felt sacred, and holy – it WAS spirit! And he was always working on his music… well, almost, until he was dying. I saw him sitting at his “architect’s table” and jotting his silent notes… unknown, unremembered… but it’s spirit, SPIRIT!
_______
OK, I am born in 1954, in New York City. My father is 64, my mother (Helga) is 30, my sister (Vivien) is one year old. Helga is German: Nazis killed her grandmother, young children, cousins – all seven of them. She didn’t tell us exactly about it when we were young – it wasn’t until I was in my thirties or forties.
No, I won’t bother you with Helga just yet… or Vivien… first HIS bio, or at least some of the early days:
Daddy was born in 1890, in Jersey City, across the river from Manhattan. Before cars, it was legs and horses that got you around.
His father was Welsh – first a locomotive engineer and then, in later years, security at a candy factory. And his mother was German; they both loved music. I saw a photo of where they lived in those years – and poor it was! And NEITHER of his parents would spank their kids – it just wasn’t in their cards.
Yes, he loved his “Ma” and “Pa,” as he put it. Later on he would write a song for her. And Daddy used to tell me that a boy lit the gas lamps along the street every night – not with a ladder, but a long metal rod with a wick inside. And he loved how QUIET it was – no sound of cars, none at all!
He read a VERY popular magazine: St. Nicholas. It was written for kids by great writers – Louisa May Alcott, Mark Twain, etc. – and it never “talked down” to them. It was an “adult-kids” magazine.
His sister Mildred became a sort of musical teacher to him, she taught him to play violin and piano. Daddy always called her a “wonderful teacher.” And he thought he’d try his voice out:
And he learned to play organ at his his church, and he learned to compose…
Two of his pieces have disappeared; I’ll put on the third composition, written for organ when he was just 17. Oh, for SURE it’s corny and youthful… but it’s vibrant, and I like it! Pensée d’Automne – “a thought of fall…”
[performed by David E. Lamb]
Yes, he was 17, and he traveled by horse and by train all around New Jersey, giving performances on piano and organ – “Mr. Philip Wright James:”
He started spending his time in New York City. His music teachers were considered “very important:” J. Warren Andrews, Homer Norris, Rubin Goldmark – Goldmark was Aaron Copland’s orchestration teacher, too:
Homer Norris taught his book “Practical Harmony: a Comprehensive System of Musical Theory on a French Basis.” J. P. Morgan highlighted Norris’s career, even bought a house for him up in the country. Unfortunately:
And my Dad wrote a letter about his “Bach teacher,” J. Warren Andrews:
The organ loft BREATHED the spirit of the atelier. Here were organists, not simply made, but moulded into artists; for Mr. Andrews was endowed with the rare gift of imparting the secrets of craftsmanship and the love of the beautiful in music. In every student he tried to see the potential artist, and all were received not so much as students but as fellow workers.
Plain spoken, modest, he preferred whenever possible to expound his theories by example. When I first met Mr. Andrews I played for him a rather over elaborate and tawdry French composition. On the completion of my performance, without any comment, he sat down and I listened to his performance of the Bach ‘Passacaglia.’ This simple incident was worth many lessons to me, and many wasted moments of discussion, argument, or explanation.
They looked oh-so-dapper, so MALE, so carefully mustached:
Philip was listening to performances just about all the time. I have dozens of his programs from back then – for instance the celebrated Gustav Mahler: conducting one year, dead the next –
Or this, the great lyric soprano Alma Gluck – notice that she performs two songs by Charles Seeger, 1911, father of Pete Seeger the folklorist:
Or the young Educational Concerts, by his friend the “Futurist” Leo Ornstein:
But Daddy didn’t write “wild dances” like Leo Ornstein – no, he instead wrote impassioned, romantic anthems and songs. They were oh-so popular, de rigueur at the times: Dearie, My Heart Is Like a Sweet-Toned Lute, Little Room o’ Dreams, A Million Little Diamonds, As Now the Sun’s Declining Rays…
or simply Evening…
He was just about ALWAYS working on music…
…and occasionally he’d just RELAX!
And writing: he kept a diary from 1910 on, until his death:
Or this diary entry below: a lesson; a meeting with somebody about conducting “light operas;” performing a service at St. Mark’s Church in the Village; and then seeing the famous Triangle Shirtwaist factory burning down a few blocks away, the “most awful fire” and “400 girls killed:”
_______
Matinées were VERY popular then, especially for kids – and he loved them! He conducted Snow White and Prunella, with an orchestra, directed by Winthrop Ames in 1912 – 1913. The plays were starring the “inimitable” Marguerite Clark. Later, films would come out; she’d star in them as well.
Philip traveled to London, and then Paris, learning, studying, composing. He studied with the noted composer Alexandre Guilmant, and he composed the Méditation à Sainte Clotilde, a VERY romantic piece that still gets performed – well, occasionally. Sainte Clotilde:
[performed by David E. Lamb]
He came back to America, started spending his time with the opera singer “Miss Celli.” His diary repeatedly says something like “Miss Celli called in the eve and stayed quite a while…” And there was ANOTHER one, Miss Edith Sullivan, who played piano and also stayed much of the “eve.”
Then there was “Miss Eady,” as she was known.
Miss Millicent Eady was quite a bit older than he was. She was born in England and had a sense of humor – Philip often called her “witty.” She had a partially-built summer house in Amagansett, NY, along the ocean – here’s a NY Times article mentioning Millicent, from 1914 – ‘she will not have her view obstructed:’
The two of them worked on the house – together they built a natural stone chimney. And they got married at the “Dune Church,” with the sound of the waves and gulls.
They stayed at the summer house for years, and then she died, in 1945. And he kept the house, until I was a little kid…
He used to tell me how she became “bedridden,” and how he’d read her Victorian novels every evening, Trollope, Hardy, Elliott… and he dedicated a sad beautiful obituary to her, called Galarnad, Welsh for “lament:”
[performed by David E. Lamb]
I remember the house, and the walks he would take: an old man walking slowly along the beach, alone, with the endless waves. He must have remembered the days a long, long time ago…
_______
Now it’s WAR, now it’s America, or Germany, or WHOEVER: the war machine, the twentieth century, “the male stuff,” the airplanes, submarines, bombs, and poisonous cars on all the roads, the whole WORLD getting noisier and noisier…
He was drafted in October of 1917. He mailed a Christmas card to friends: Blow, bugles of battle, the marches of peace; east, west, north and south, let the long quarrel cease…
He studied with Master Sergeant Oliver C. Miller, the Bandleader at Camp Upton, on Long Island. The diary:
He told me that if I would apply myself to my own instrument (he suggested tenor saxophone or clarinet) he would give me lessons and have me attached to the band… The entire days would be devoted to practice and learning the instrument.
So he learned to play tenor saxophone, on a good instrument he christened “Baby” – Millicent had picked it out and brought it to him:
Miller says my saxophone is a good one and easy to play. He showed me a lot and had me practice in the band barracks… At the end of six hours I had mastered the fingering… Miller gave me a lesson and was most encouraging. He tells me that in a week, after I can play the ‘Star Spangled Banner’ he will make me a regular bandsman. As such, I will have no kitchen duty, no guard duty, no terrific hikes and above all no carrying a gun. Sounds unpatriotic but I don’t think I could kill any man no matter how sinful his country.
I like that: ‘…above all no carrying a gun. Sounds unpatriotic but I don’t think I could kill any man no matter how sinful his country.’
His diary, small enough to fit in a shirt pocket, has a few printed pages, preparing a soldier for an unknown France:
And sure enough, he was sent there – the ship took off April 6 and he arrived in France April 21. He started getting headaches, almost every day. He kept a detailed diary full of soldiers, the “bandsmen,” the “doughboys.” It is a truly remarkable – and ugly – document; you can read an ADDENDUM for WW1 at the very end of this article, but for now a few of the entries:
April 10, 1918: To-day marks the closing of my first six months in the Army. Quite rough, cold and penetrating. We were nearly frozen. About 50% of the boat are sea sick. I have felt very well although at time a grinding spell comes over me due to the awful conditions of our sleeping quarters. Men packed like sardines on the deck… some of them vomiting all about…
The dishes and table linen are filthy. Where we sleep is below the steerage (the old baggage hold). Water, dampness, smells, foul air and rats ever-present. At night about 12 a drunken soldier, dirty as an ocean can be, slept next to me and nearly vomited in my face. Coughing, spitting on my pillow until I threw him over on his side…
At 6:30 we played Retreat and gave a little concert: a despondent fellow committed suicide by jumping over board… The sky met the water and the horizon was a harmony of green and pink, the sea is beautiful, not rough and choppy but broad and sweeping like Beethoven’s Eroica or the mighty Fifth.
I was put on deck until nine… In the foam of the sweeping ocean the phosphorus was wonderful. I felt as if I was drifting in a fairy boat, the most lovely clouds and twirling stars…
And then at last land:
It is interesting to note how we get the facility of telling the difference between shells, bombs and planes by the sounds. It may be a musician’s ear.
I notice the youngsters here all sing our popular songs in English such as ‘They Go Wild, Simply Wild Over Me,’ ‘Over There,’ ‘Darktown Strutter’s Ball,’ etc., but they sing them so quickly and with such rhythm that it makes them sound like old folksongs of France. These children are certainly born with rhythm.
Much of the rest of the diary talks about death:
We had been ordered to bury the dead which are still remaining here, and there are hundreds of bodies which have been left for weeks without burial. Sanitation squads have been overworked as well as all the chaplains… About 8:00 in the morning we started in digging graves, making and marking crosses and then burying the men who were principally Germans. I hope I shall forget the horrible sights. Nearly all were in bits from machine gun fire and we had to collect them in blankets, some rotted, some almost skeletons, find their identification tags with long nippers of pliers and finally bury them with prayers etc. The stench was horrible to say the least.
Playing music and digging graves, that was what you spent the year doing. Yet another one:
General John Pershing firmly believed that WAR without MUSIC was virtually impossible – and finally he allowed the musicians to be simply MUSICIANS – no more digging graves:
Glenn Watkins wrote a book called Proof through the Night: Music and the Great War:
In April 1919 Philip James returned to the United States as conductor and commanding officer of the Allied Expeditionary Headquarters Band, now known as “General Pershing’s Band.” He led the band on a nineteen-city tour… James’s concerts were wildly received as emblematic of America’s contribution to final victory in the Great War.
Here they are, marching away – youngsters who buried soldiers in France and played their instruments well:
He looks so sad in the last photo, wearing his “Sam Browne” belt…
So what exactly did he conduct?
Well, the song “Madelon,” and also the fantasy “The Evolution of Dixie,” and the medley “Sunny South,” and the solo for cornet “Smiles”… and of course the invariable “There’s a Long, Long Trail:”
…and even HIS composed marches:
a portion of PJ’s ‘Colonel Averill – March’
So that’s what it seems to say to the soldiers, a cheerful “C’mon boys!” But I don’t know: Daddy wrote the article “Heroes Who Know It Not:”
It is quite true that the bands were the source of inspiration, comfort and amusement for our men in camps, but at the front a new dissonant note crept in… the song of booming guns, shrieking shrapnel, whizzing whiz-bangs, whirring shells, and terrifying gas…
He would wait thirty years and then write from the heart, a picture of the utter devastation he’d gone through. Here’s a small portion of his Symphony #1; it’s old and scratchy, but it may give you an endless feeling of war – kind of like TODAY. I can’t think of many composers who have written about the war…
[Vienna Symphony, F. Charles Adler conducting; Internet photos]
At age 80 or so he often poured himself a drink, then sat slowly down and asked me to “come over here and talk to me.” Well, I spoke a little, told him all about school – I was probably in third or fourth grade… but then he talked about composers and especially “World War One.” He talked about Pershing a lot. I think he liked him, in spite of the War. He talked and talked… and talked… and I listened. And it was pretty damn interesting. I mean, with a couple of drinks he could smile, and gab, and talk ALL about soldiers and composers… and then he would have another drink…
He talked about the “Broadway scene,” for instance the composer Victor Herbert, who heard him right out of the band and hired him immediately as conductor and musical director. Daddy led the songs and dances for the musical “My Golden Girl:” A Little Nest for Two, Ragtime Terpsichore, I’d Like a Honeymoon with You, The Jazzy-Jazz Dancing Lesson, What Shall We Do if the Moon Goes Out… and they went out afterwords, drinking. Philip claimed that Victor Herbert was indeed a true teacher to him. Unfortunately he died of cirrhosis in about four years.
He pours another drink, apparently thinks back on the sea and waxes idyllically: “Ah Napoli! Have I ever told you about the beauty of the bay in Naples?” And he falls asleep, snoring LOUDLY in the beat-up old naugahyde chair – it has a variety of rips in it…
I go out to the garage. I jump on my pogo stick, one hundred jumps; or I ride like CRAZY on my too-small red Schwinn bike.
No, we weren’t in New York City any more, we’d moved away, we decided to “try it in the burbs.” We lived in the slightly higher “middle-class” realm, in a tacky split-level house… and kind of alone out here…
The quiet, QUIET Oaktree Lane. Our yard has an old oak tree, which I climb with a library book, and read and read…
And an electric garage door, it goes noisily up and down on its OWN…
And our fifties bar: cheesy, wood paneling. And paneling in slats below the bar, hiding the TV – you can just barely see it:
Ah! Old yellowed photographs of musicians, “famous” autographs hanging on the wall; or his World War 1 army medals, displayed, and the “Sam Browne” leather belt – too big for me! It was all the 1910s and 20s VERSUS the 50s… It felt somehow sentimental…
But some of the ancient stuff I really liked. We had a “cedar closet” full of old clothes which I tried on secretly: tails, or complicated white vests… and there were Mommy’s fancy dresses, too, from back in the forties – I remember a silky blue chiffon one – and I actually tried it on.
And I liked the clock: Daddy waddled or limped twice daily toward the old-fashioned mantelpiece that he’d owned forever. He winds it slowly, in three keyholes, with a huge brass key… and all day and all night long, it’s click – click – click…
And the romantic artwork, that I kind of liked too. Daddy loved to hang old paintings of places, of flowers, even cats. Ah, the lushly romantic 19th and early 20th century, hanging on for dear life to the 1950s paneling – each painting looked confused!
And he kept an “artistic” ceramic bust of himself. I used to mischievously carry the heavy pink head around the room, laughing and smiling and being careful not to drop it…
So anyway: what really happened to him, to my Daddy’s big fat orchestral pieces? I mean, the symphonic events seem to be GONE now… we’re alone in the suburbs and really GONE…
The great conductor Leopold Stokowski sent him a letter on October 26, 1934:
I enjoyed conducting your work and hope you will let me conduct another some day. I especially enjoyed the great beauty and depth of feeling of the third movement and the plastic quality of all four movements. It is a pleasure to find an American composer who has freed himself from the academic dogmas of form and has the power to create his own forms.
Gone… or this, the “cowboy style” of the thirties:
…or his beautiful 1937 Suite for Strings, which won the Juilliard Prize: gone, gone…
Or conducting himself, way back in the early twenties: he founded the New Jersey Orchestra. He didn’t have a main venue yet – but virtuosic stars like Pablo Casals or “Miss Sylvia Lent” showed up at the Montclair High School Auditorium:
Gone, all gone… So what the hell HAPPENED? OK, so maybe the doctors told him at least not to conduct…
…and here he is, 1936, my Dad conducting the orchestra in the ONLY recording I have of him, Henry Hadley’s syrupy (but pretty!) October Twilight:
By the way, Henry Hadley was one of my Daddy’s best friends. He was ultra-conservative, and my Daddy seemed to put up with his somewhat negative outlook. Hadley had been at the height of celebrity, then faded away quickly – sort of like my father!
He remarked in the New York Times, gloomily, about my Dad:
Ha! But Henry Hadley loved dancers, and he included them sometimes as part of a performance. Anita Zahn, of the Elizabeth Duncan School, became a good friend of my father’s. She danced and DANCED, with Hadley and Daddy conducting:
That was in 1930. While I was around Dad was writing only shorter pieces, or church events, for fewer instruments. I don’t know: he seems a bit sad – as if the “latest composers” were what was happening now, right now…
Well…
Well, that’s who Daddy IS. I see him now as a WHOLE being. He’s a sentimental dreamer, who laughs and who cares. He couldn’t walk much toward the end, limped slowly around the quiet neighborhood with a miniature dachshund (“Seppel”) on a leash… and he sometimes wore a ragged coat, and a beret, and carried a gnarled ‘shillelagh’ cane… but… but…
But he was OUR DADDY!
_______
There are two things that gleamed through our house: my Dad’s music and him playing piano. I especially loved our sleek concert Steinway with its roaring noises and tiny unreal sounds… My father used to wear his glasses, grab a pencil and paper, and sat at the piano, improvising. To my young ears it was WONDERFUL! I used to play imitations of him, just like him. Well, kind of like him. And we had sheets of music kept alphabetically. At first it was just trying, from composers Albéniz to Zabel, and with some “pop” musicians as well. I played it all rather badly, I’m afraid, but DAMN, I loved it! Time wasn’t even there any more!
I loved to play the eccentric (and I mean eccentric!) Percy Grainger – it was terrific music! My Daddy knew him well. I used to help him file the “Grainger letters” – lots of them. I got a quarter, or maybe even a dollar.
Grainger was a “superstar” in Australia and ended up moving to New York; he had what the NY Times called “amazing skill, personality and vigor.” Bernard Herrmann, the composer of Psycho and Vertigo, considered Grainger THE premier composer, and experimentalist Henry Cowell ended up as his secretary. But Grainger became very depressed. Toward the end he was working with Burnett Cross, a young physics teacher, on what he called “free music machines.” The first of these was “a simple device controlled by an adapted pianola,” whatever that means. Next they made the “Estey-reed tone-tool,” a form of giant harmonica which in 1951 would be ready to play free music “in a few weeks.” A third machine, the equally strange “Cross-Grainger Kangaroo-pouch,” was sort of completed by 1952:
But Percy always wrote kind words to my Dad – ALWAYS. For instance, about Philip’s composition By the Waters of Babylon:
By the Waters of Babylon was about war – he finished it right after WW1, over a hundred years ago. ‘By the waters of Babylon, we sat down and wept’…
[Elizabeth C. Patterson, conductor]
_______
I must have been eight years old. My father asked if I would like classes in “harmony” now. “Sure,” I responded eagerly, not knowing exactly what it meant. He would write a melody and show me how to harmonize it. He always found my mistakes – “woops, watch for that parallel fifth!” He’d smile as I was writing; I felt like a genuine COMPOSER – real tunes were coming through me, and in a way they were screaming yes, YES!
Another time: I was fifteen and improvising at the piano. I even jotted notes on some music paper – but when I came back later it was gone. I figured it must have been thrown away. Then two weeks later it appeared on the piano again, only instead of my messy notes it was beautifully drawn by an old student of my father – and it proudly proclaimed that this was music by me, Philip Dylan James!
And I only had a lesson or two on conducting, but he taught me what it was all about. I read textbooks on conducting, practiced on my own… I waved my hands around wildly in pretend-play, and it felt absolutely wonderful! I was learning on my own!
And that was Daddy! He really believed in freedom of spirit. This picture is from a few years before I was born, but it didn’t matter. He was made of spirit. Yep, I see him smiling every day.
_______
I fall back into memories… New York City was what I loved, NOT our tacky suburban home. Ah! The people, the traffic, ALL nationalities… hearing the history… that’s Central Park!
Once my Dad and I stopped in some tiny street store (78th? 79th?) where he knew the owner, who offered me a glass of dirty-looking water. “Don’t tell Mommy,” Daddy whispered. Or we’d stop on the East River, watching the tug boats pushing ships ashore. He told me of a song he’d written about tug boats, years ago…
We had a very small but “fashionable” apartment, looking out on Central Park. On Macy’s Day the giant balloon Mickey passed by our window: I could almost touch him.
Daddy played piano, the ‘Pop, pop, pop goes the corn’ song, or he’d croon like radio Rudy Vallée:
Down in Havana there’s a funny-looking boob-a / He plays the rhumba on the tuba down in Cuba….
Or I’d be playing checkers with him, for what SEEMED like hours, both of us smiling…
Or he’d put on accents as he read the comics to us – he said that Mayor Fiorello La Guardia used to recite the comics every Sunday on the radio. And oh yes, I remember laughing as he picked up the ringing phone and shouted in a fake German accent: ‘Campbell’s Funeral, nierenstein und blasenkranker…’ – that meant ‘problems with the kidneys and liver.’
In my early days he would also have parties – loud laughing, fancy dresses of the 1950s era. They were all musicians, and all real characters. I would fall quietly asleep, hearing bursts of laughter at my Daddy’s partially-drunk jokes.
_______
But Daddy wasn’t always “smiling and singing.” His first wife (Millicent) died in 1945, and he married his second wife (Helga, my mom) in 1952. That space of seven years was a sort of growth for him. For instance he wrote his second symphony without even a trace of humor. And the dying “dirge,” called Requiescat in Pace, rest in peace. Same thing for many, many serious pieces during that seven year time period.
So here’s Pastorale, from 1949. Yes, he LOVED the mysteries of nature, and the smell of flowers, the beach plums and lilies of the valley, and the LIGHT –
[performed by David E. Lamb, photographs by me]
He spent his summers at the MacDowell Colony, the rural home for artists and composers. Three meals together at the same time, discussing what you’re working on… and where he lived, MacDowell’s Kirby Studio for about five years:
He once again took up writing Welsh-based tunes, beautiful modal melodies: Gwilym Gwent, The Stranger, Galarnad… and Song of the Miners, a review in Scranton, with its large population of Welsh-Americans (worth reading):
He even wrote Gwalia, the archaic name for Wales, a medley of great old folksongs like The Bells of Abertawe, David of the White Rock, Megan’s Fair Daughter… and I remember we’d go to church and take a quick look in the hymnal: there were two hymns in the hymnbook, both by Philip James. One was named ‘Tregaron’ for the place in Wales where his grandfather was born, and ‘Cwmafan’ for his father’s Welsh birthplace. The melodies sound oh-so-Welsh, of men marching toward the deep coal mines…
And I remember that he’d wake up on the Welsh ‘St. David’s Day’ FULL of smiles, reminding us that it’s the symbol of daffodils and leeks… and of course he had the bright red Welsh symbol hanging up in our hallway:
Besides Wales he learned, in the forties, about America: the jam-packed people who just LOVED this country. He wrote a canon (like ‘Row, Row, Row Your Boat’) that was “…to be sung and enjoyed by any group of intelligent amateurs in school, college, or home.” Or he wrote a somewhat “jazzy” Our Town for beginning pianists (I loved playing it!). Or the song Home Over the Hill, which could be sung in any classroom.
But mostly he taught at Columbia and then at New York University. He had worked there from 1923 to 1956, and in 1933 he became NYU’s “Head of the Music Department.”
And he kept an old pipe at NYU, the same old pipe for YEARS. I used to play with it as a kid.
Here’s the captured feeling of NYU at the time:
He taught composition, orchestration, and conducting – lots of great students over the years, and great teachers. He hired musicologists Curt Sachs and Gustave Reese, composer Marion Bauer, teacher extraordinaire Martin Bernstein, conductor Fredric Kurzweil… and on and on…
So what was a music department like then? Well:
And what does Daddy sound like? This is his voice, some time in the late forties, giving us a college lecture about timpani. Ah, his voice: I miss him!
The great conductor Jonathan (“Johnny”) Sternberg had this to say, at the Brooklyn newspaper (1941) :
And Milton Babbitt, an extraordinary NYU music student at age 16, who later on won the Pulitzer Prize and the MacArthur Fellowship – he would talk about how exciting everything had been. I’ll put on a recording of Babbitt talking about Dad, in an interview with Charles Amirkhanian. It’s totally fascinating – and I’m actually proud! He mentions the radio station and ‘WGZBX’ – I’ll get to that later in this article. Again, I didn’t know much of anything about his radio show, until he’d been dead for years…
Milton Babbitt talks a lot about conducting, and the importance of it. Daddy’s orchestral Song of the Night became the very FIRST New York Women’s Symphony Orchestra prize, $500 in 1938, conducted by Antonia Brico. Brico led the way for women conductors; Judy Collins wrote a film about her, and several authors have written books.
A few years later Helga showed up at NYU:
Helga was working toward a Master’s degree in musicology at New York University. I meant to make this a whole other story, calling it perhaps Memorable Mommy. But… all right, I’ll tell you a LITTLE:
Her family was German and Jewish. They lived in beautiful Berlin, with just one child. Her father was a gynecologist/obstetrician and a bit of an amateur movie-maker – ah, the playful times, and young Helga:
Skating, skipping, swimming – EXCEPT for that ominous airplane that shows up, right before the war… and except for this:
This photo shows her happy on her school birthday:
But the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum had this to say:
…she attended German public schools until Jewish students were expelled. She left Germany in August 1938, with her parents [Hans and Augusta], then sailed to the United States and arrived that September.
Helga’s paternal grandmother Julie Bujakowski was deported to Theresienstadt on June 17, 1942; she perished at the age of 83. Hans’ brother Fritz, with his wife Else, and young son Walter were deported to Auschwitz where they perished in 1943. Another brother, Kurt, who had worked as an editorial assistant fled to Vienna in 1936 to escape the Nazis. He, his wife Dina and daughter Stephanie (“Steffi,” b. 1937) then immigrated to France after the Anschluss; from there they were deported to their deaths in Auschwitz on September 9, 1942.
So Fritz and Else and Walter and Kurt and Dina and Steffi and Julie were “perished,” i.e. killed – probably by gas. So many deaths, so many deaths.
Here’s Steffi “being born:”
And her parents, Kurt and Dina:
Steffi is attending school, second row, sixth from the left:
And that is the last photo of her.
Helga and her parents made their way out of there, the last boat to New York. They moved to Freeport, a suburb of New York. Her father changed his name from Hans Adolph Bujakowsky to Henry A. Boyer – he copied the actor’s name, Charles Boyer. And she became Helga Boyer, too.
Hans, or Henry, always seemed “sad beyond sad” to me, lonely, with yellowing tobacco fingers. Oh, he had “German hobbies” – photography, train sets, violin, sightseeing – but he was dead at age 67, in 1964. Here he is in the twenties, with Helga – he’s even smiling!
Helga’s mother, Augusta or “Gushi,” was on the other hand a wonderful lovable character. She knew how to bake (almond cookies!), how to play tennis and golf, how to get together for coffee with new-found friends. I could go on and on. AND she was known to smash up cars – one at our house. That’s another story!
Helga married a fellow NYU student, Bill Shank, from 1948 until 1951. Like Bill, she did NOT believe in killing, even Nazis. He wrote:
I really had made up my mind that I was not going to go into the Army, that I had a philosophical objection to war, that I felt that war was immoral, that I thought it was futile, that I thought it was evil, and that I just didn’t want to have anything to do with it.
Bill had been to the “conscientious objector” camp at Waldport, Oregon, during the war. Steve McQuiddy wrote a wonderful book called Here on the Edge, the Story of Waldport. The cover reads:
There, pacifists and political objectors to World War II spent their daylight hours planting trees, crushing rock, building roads, and fighting forest fires—fifty hours a week, for no pay. At night, they published books, produced plays, and made art and music… They called themselves the Fine Arts Group at Waldport, and their focus was not so much on the current war, but on what kind of society might be possible when the shooting finally stopped.
More Bill Shank, first Waldport and then NYU:
To hear these works it was just such a thrilling and inspiring thing for me that I became very deeply and profoundly interested in music and some of the people there who were musicians guided me. One person gave me piano lessons and I was able to sit in on rehearsals and this became an important part in developing my career. When I started going to college and wasn’t sure just what to do, I started taking music courses and eventually became a music major and eventually became a music librarian.
And that’s when it ALL started, with Helga. They were both taking music classes, were both music majors at New York University. And they got married. I haven’t the slightest idea where they lived; it was DEFINITELY poor. She always spoke of restaurant jobs, laughing and getting fired, and cold-water apartments, tiny places on Bleecker St. or MacDougal St.
The poet Kenneth Patchen lived in NYC at the time, with his wife Miriam. Helga and Bill would go over there on Sundays to hear him read poetry.
He’d have to lay on his back when he read, his back was SO bad. Sometimes it would be a poem written just for Bill:
for Bill, with the warmest good wishes of Kenneth Patchen –
O the lions of fire
Wait in the crawling shadows of your world
And their terrible eyes are watching you
The lions of fires
Shall have their hunting in this black land
Their teeth shall tear at your soft throats
Their claws kill
O the lions of fire shall awake
And the valleys steam with their fury…
Or:
Helga got her Master’s (from Philip), and she took ANOTHER orchestration class. She says Philip smiled at what she had composed “Russian-style.” She laughed too, and he wrote at the top of the page “An Afternoon in Minsk.”
And she divorced Bill. And married Philip.
There are many speculations about how it happened, but nobody really knows. I don’t think it was for money – that wasn’t what she was like, that wasn’t her. I think it’s because she was falling in love, in genuine real love!
Before they were married she went to Florida, getting her three-month “Daytona divorce” – it was somehow required. There were rats in her tiny apartment. They would chew and chew his letters.
Here is the “risqué” part of a letter Philip sent her. He almost always called her “Helgie,” or “Helshin” or “Helgala”:
Helgie –
After dinner we had some music and then your father showed me his German movies. In the former was Mlle. Helgala: Helga in her bath, playing with the boys, chasing bees, Helga on her first ice skates and all accompanied by oohs and ahs of the audience.
Today I addressed about 200 envelopes for Christmas cards as I am going to get them off as well as my presents before I leave for the south and my Queen.
I am so anxious to get down to you and am nearly crazy awaiting the day of departure. I just long to undress you and undo all those strange mysterious buttons, zippers etc. before unfolding to my ecstatic touch and gaze your most beautiful body which you have given me. Darling – what a life is to be ours for evermore.
_______
Helga was like NO other woman, a truly unique being. She was smart, oh my God, YES! But however smart she was, there was also something broken in her, a sad missingness, a loneliness… I saw it in her eyes.
She was ultra-shy, especially around the composing “famous men” at cocktail parties. And nervous. And she was scared of heights, scared of the police, scared of uniforms… She would occasionally break down, get worried, and fall on the bed crying.
She hated Nazis, but strangely she was NOT afraid of them. One day my father decided we’d eat at Lüchow’s, a German-style tourist restaurant. We’d only been there a few minutes before my mother started arguing with the waiter. He was a tall old German man, and he yelled at her “I am NOT a Nazi!”
“Yes you ARE!” she shouted back, and loudly. Well, she knew he was a Nazi. They never quite died away, those Nazis. They ALWAYS crept in, crying Heil to their leader… and Congress is loaded with them!
Then there is disease, she was ALWAYS getting some slight disease. She usually showed “palpitations,” whatever they were. And I guess I got sick a lot too: mumps, measles, “the croup”… But I actually liked it, being sick. My Mom brought me new toys and lots of books, and she smiled at me WONDERFULLY.
Ah, the way she’d loudly sing on three notes, singing that dinner was ready: Vash hands und sit down! [Pause…] Vash hands und sit down!
Of course dinner being ready was pretty damn lame: liver cooked and COOKED, and lamb chops cooked HARD, showing off their disgusting bones and fat…
She ordered a “Barber Kit,” frequently sold in those days – but Helga was NOT an artist. I was embarrassed as hell, looking like a weirdly irregular mop. I even was called into the principal’s office, where he asked me how I’d gotten the haircut. I said it was at a barber shop in another faraway, faraway town…
I remember Helga loving animals, absolutely LOVING them – dogs in particular. I remember her smiling almost humanly with “Seppel,” the miniature dachshund in our funny family. Once a minister came over, I don’t know exactly why, but Seppel LEAPT at him and furiously humped his arm, to which we all (including the minister) cracked up.
And Helga and Philip smiled together, too. They talked. They played four-hands piano, composed by Dvořák – he loved the old work! He gave her sentimental perfumes, jewelry, someone’s autobiography, whatever…
And she gave him vests, with pockets to hold the gold chain and pocket watch, and BRIGHT red… he loved them, too!
_______
At the same time as getting married, Philip was ALSO making a record, his very first commercial one, with conductor F. Charles Adler and the Vienna Orchestra: Symphony #1.
F. Charles Adler had studied conducting in Vienna with Gustav Mahler, and he served as chorus master at the premiere of Mahler’s Eighth Symphony. A program note, on one of his recordings:
London born F. Charles Adler was the fourth of Mahler’s distinguished protégés, and spent much of his career both in England and the Continent. At the end of WWII he joined in the effort to re-introduce Mahler’s music to the world. The present recording is among the earliest ever made, and it had an influence over generations of conductors, who embraced Adler’s broad approach to this music.
He also promoted lots of modern music in the “SPA Music Festival,” Saratoga Springs in the early 1950s. These records are few but stellar: George Antheil, Darius Milhaud, Charles Ives, and yes, Philip James – all composers he KNEW.
Now Charles Adler couldn’t afford to make records right away, so he asked around. Finally Norman Fox, a highly successful businessman in Saratoga Springs, leaped at the chance:
Fox would lose lots of money on records, but he didn’t care a whole lot. He put out Daddy’s “postage stamps” of the SPA participants in 1949 – I don’t know exactly HOW they worked this out, but it was supposedly to make money:
And Charles also couldn’t afford cover-layouts, he had to draw them as an “amateur artist.” The shapes and colors were – well – DIFFERENT.
Now World War One, even Two, with its passé classical music – nobody would really want to listen to it. But the third movement of this particular Symphony is the agonizing pain that he knew – and Adler GETS it!
Charles and Philip wrote and wrote to each other, letters full of intricacies about Daddy’s symphonies, and stories about other artists as well. They are all clowning and smiling, and Philip called Adler “Charlie.” And there WERE lots of sellable records being made by Coplands and Stravinskies and Bartóks, but they were quite different: the “sleek elite.”
That’s OK. My Daddy had Charles Adler and music music MUSIC.
And he had Helga.
_______
First there was Vivien…
…and then me:
I was named Philip Dylan James: Dylan stood for the Welsh poet Dylan Thomas, who had just recently keeled over dead drunk in New York, age thirty-nine. My father ADORED him, no matter how drunk he was. He brought home records of him reading, in a loud booming Welsh voice that seemed to go on and on with NO sense of time. I loved it.
Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light…
AH!!! This was what I chose to BE when I grew up, a writer!
_______
All right, I guess I’ll write about what I was like as a kid. I think Daddy wants to know who I WAS.
At private school I became a geek, a nerd, a dork, a dweeb… a very smart one, but still one of those weird guys. I’d improvise piano pieces, or collect stamps, or do magic tricks… once I even SANG for you, Daddy, a song by Tom Lehrer, the “politically-correct” pop singer. The slick athletic boys would sometimes laugh and sneer at me. I didn’t care. And POETRY! I held the pencil in the air, thinking, trying to get it RIGHT… I know that you liked the poems, Daddy… and I IMITATED you:
Courtney and Bruce were two friendly nerds, in about third grade. One of them, Courtney, carried a briefcase; the athletic boys would laughingly steal it and hang it from the ceiling, calling him “double-o-seven.” We’d go outside in the bright sun, we ran and ran, carrying branches that represented the guns of Nazis and the US, shouting loudly as bullets – eh-eh-eh-eh-eh. My father called us “The 3 Stooges” and that’s exactly what we were, three damn dummies!
[Courtney worked for NASA and became good friends with President George W. Bush. And he went to jail for three years, serving “his own financial interests” and making false statements to investigators right and left. Sigh – another damn dummy!]
Anyway: I used to go to evening dance-class, all dressed up in my Brooks Brothers suit. I learned to DANCE: the Lindy, the Tango, the Bunny Hop, the Twist… and I LOVED IT! The girls loved it too, with their white gloves charging across the room, towards ME! Once we wore costumes; I put on several bedsheets, the “sheik” that kept falling off of me. And I won “the Twist” together with “Dino,” that tall mysterious girl dressed as a popular dinosaur.
Ah dancing class! I put some Brylcreem in my hair, oh so carefully – “a little dab’ll do ya.” And maybe a little Vitalis. And on the wall, that is one of Stokowski’s OLD autographed photos, dark and looming… I am in a way caught between two worlds, between two worlds…
At private school there weren’t any good music teachers, nope. But there were excellent English teachers, and history, and wood-working, and art… and I became friends with the colorful playwright John Ford Noonan. It is very weird that he taught here, at the Buckley Country Day School, in his somewhat ragged clothes. He taught us Latin, in seventh or eighth grade, amo, amas, amat – but not really. He stood halfway in the hall with a cigarette, then suddenly he would say “Would you like to hear some of my play?” Sure! He sat down at his desk with the notebook called, tentatively, The Year Boston Won the Pennant. “Do you like the title?” he asked. Sure! Then he read the dialog – high for the women, low pitch for the males, searching, discovering – his expressions would get stronger, every piece of dialog would have a secret. “Whad’ya think?” he asked sheepishly. “Is it all right?”
Oh YES it’s all right!!
And he read Faulkner to us, and Chekhov…
I won’t lie to you, Daddy: first I was kind of sensitive, and I knew it whenever something went wrong… then I started to drift away from the old-fashioned musical “you,” and toward youthful Noonan… and I started getting cynical, with Vietnam and Nixon and long hair and cigarettes and marijuana and you name it. I even went to a 10th grade boarding school – Exeter – for a total of six or seven months before getting the hell out of there. I was feeling nervous… and you, Daddy, were old old OLD, couldn’t drive any more, and your teeth squeaked and clacked when you ate…
Noonan moved to California; he dressed now as a hippie, and in a year moved back to NY. He came to our house once. I think my parents were trying hard to find a connection between cynical me and cheerful Noonan. Daddy kept him full of liquor.
I kept in touch with him for years and years, even made a film with him. For a while he became a stage manager at the Fillmore East, and I’d go with him occasionally, meet some musicians. Once the music started playing Noonan would dance wildly, like I’ve never seen anybody dance!
Noonan and I drank and drank – especially at a bar called Jimmy Ray’s, filled with drunk actors, many you would recognize. In a way he WAS my Daddy: he LISTENED. We laughed, we smiled… and I tried acting, tried writing plays. Off-Broadway theater was “funny” at the time – I tried to be “funny.”
Basically I was a mess. And it’s too bad about all the drinking Noonan did, and I did. He died not so old, at an old-age home for actors.
Oh Daddy: I finally realized that you WERE my Daddy, and Noonan was NOT. You were simple, radiant, sunlike… and even when you were close to death I’d talk with you…
All right, Daddy, we’re going to go back now, go back…
…to sunny happy VACATIONS!
_______
Well, they weren’t really vacations: my Daddy would say, on a Saturday or Sunday, “Let’s go for a drive!” And I’d love it. Mommy would drive SLOWLY; we’d pass those fancy Brookville mansions – fancy boys were “sort of” schoolmates of mine – and we’d end up in the beautiful village of Cold Spring Harbor, maybe buying candies, or a snack…
I remember Helga once getting on the Long Island Expressway, the “LIE.” She was nervous as usual, and a cop stopped us for slow and erratic driving. She didn’t understand tickets: “But I don’t WANT one!” she argued with the cop. “Take the damn ticket!” my father yelled loudly. It was rare that he yelled.
Then we started going on REAL vacations: Philadelphia, DC, the Amish, and the gorgeous Blue Ridge Mountains. My Mom would be worrying about the stove being left on, and my Daddy was sitting on the passenger side, peeing in a chosen Mason jar. My sister and I were in the back seat, staring in wonder at the ice melting down the mountainsides… Or we’d laugh about how blueberry pie – popular in those roadside days – was leaving a blue stain on my Mom’s teeth.
And then we went on vacation to England, and a couple of years later to France. I didn’t much like England; and Daddy had his small old fashioned movie-camera stolen by of all things a tourist peacock. But we spent a wonderful afternoon in England with the pianist Harriet Cohen:
My Dad had been a conductor of hers in the United States. She had all kinds of people composing and dedicating their stuff to her, from Vaughan Williams to Sibelius to Béla Bartók… and she told the TRUTH about Nazi horrors, even played a concert with Albert Einstein on violin. But she had an accident in 1948, some sort of permanent damage to one of her hands. We went to see her, and she was truly delightful, had a BEAUTIFUL smile across her youthful face – and actually TALKED with us kids!
Or France – I LOVED France – when I was maybe 14 years old:
Marcel Dupré was a French composer who’d been a friend of Philip’s since the 1920s. He’d been a teacher of the well-known composer Olivier Messiaen, and he played at the St. Sulpice organ pretty much every Sunday since 1934. He usually played improvisations, made-up on the spot. I sat with him on his bench – my father couldn’t make it up the winding rickety stairs – while he played and PLAYED, on an exquisite Sunday French morning. The organ CRIED, cried its loud wailing – it was beautiful!
Memories! Daddy and I went into a brasserie in Paris; I am 14 but it doesn’t matter that I drink. We are talking like REAL grown-ups, all about the old composers. I have to keep him from falling on the way home…
Or we wander into a fancy Paris record store. ALL of the records are of modern composers, Boulez, Stockhausen, Cage, and the customers are YOUNG, and smoking Gitanes and Gauloises cigarettes… My father seems somewhat sad, “out of his league”… but I love it, LOVE it!
_______
Each morning Daddy would read his friends’ obituaries. There were more of them every day! And he almost always turned on the radio, a dark portable Zenith. WQXR was the only all-time classical radio station, and it was… well, it was boring. But he was ALL about it, all about LISTENING.
I knew he had a radio show way back when, but as I said I hadn’t REALLY heard about it until recently…
Well, just about EVERYONE was on the radio, even:
And advertising: Adam Hats, Carter’s Little Liver Pills, American Safety Razors…
And the radio stations hired full orchestras – it was the ultimate crème-de-la-crème. You’ll remember Milton Babbitt talked about it earlier; well, Time Magazine wrote about my Dad in 1932:
Radio gave U. S. music an added puff last week. Philip James of Manhattan won $5,000 for ‘Station WGZBX,’ a midget symphony which ingeniously describes lobby confusion at a studio, interference, ‘static,’ a slumber hour, and microphone hysteria.
Check out this program note, written by my Dad – he was having FUN while he worked:
It’s not a good recording of Station WGZBX, but here is at least a few seconds of what it sounded like on the radio:
Or this, the semi-popular melody he wrote, “A Slumber Hour” (part of Station WGZBX): someone is tired, it’s seven o’clock; they head home, relax, turn on the radio and listen to the slow evening music; they fall asleep… It gets more and more corny as time goes on, but I like it:
Thomas A. DeLong’s book, called Radio Stars, had this to say:
James considered radio work the finest school, technically, for the embryonic American conductor and orchestral musician. ‘We must look to our radio stations, unorganized and inconsistent as they are in many cases, for an American school of conductors,’ he said in 1936. He became conductor of WOR’s orchestra in 1929 – the first chamber ensemble to broadcast weekly. He made it a point to present one American composer each week.‘
And then even later, in the early forties, he was creating radio for KIDS, for MY age group. Again, I knew nothing about it:
or this:
Oh dad, oh DAD: it was clearly a career that burst with tremendous energy – and then it quickly went POOF – dead.
No, radio was no longer “the shining light,” not any more…
So we got a TV.
I watched Hogans Heroes, My Three Sons, Bewitched, you name it… and Bernstein… I’d fix a glass of Ovaltine and watch and watch…
And my father rested, he lay down on the guest-room bed and watched the TV soap opera General Hospital. I think he thought a lot about his time in the hospital. And he filled out the crossword puzzle in the TV Guide – it USED to be called the Radio Guide. He was always needing to ask about the modern stars: ‘Let’s see, its second letter is P, who is that?’
_______
Toward the end of his life the Repertoire Recording Society (organists) decided to put out another record of Daddy’s music. Once again, it WASN’T the slick Copland-Stravinsky-Bartók type LP. Instead it looked like an old ornate organ wannabe, straining for attention… and it included a twenty-minute piece written just for Helga, called quaintly Variations on a Theme by Schubert (it WAS beautiful, though.)
I don’t know, it felt SO old-fashioned, and somehow sad. There were hardly ANY performances lately, except maybe at a local church… or even later, 1990, “sophisticated” music in a slightly tawdry art-deco way: Fête (festival) by my father, in the early twenties:
And I am completely sad again, about his on-again / off-again alcoholism…
Yes, sometimes – though only rarely now that we lived out in the quiet burbs – he had guests over. They’d talk music, and become pretty damn drunk. Then they’d go home, and he’d fall asleep… and snore loudly…
Or in the afternoon, he’d limp toward one of two antique armchairs, re-covered with smelly “new car” white plastic. He’d pour himself a drink, usually whiskey, and start talking, and pour and pour and pour…
Worst of all, I’d be at a neighbor’s party and had to help him walk home, fully intoxicated, singing World War One songs, Over There and Keep the Home Fires Burning …and FALLING! That only happened three times that I remember. I was deeply, DEEPLY embarrassed – and he wasn’t ever asked back.
I remember I was about seven years old and Daddy was sober for a while; the small church in Douglaston, NY, was singing my Dad’s recent anthem God Grant Us the Serenity – a real teetotaler! And I listened to it – and it was genuinely good! An article, much later, calls it “…an example of a rare use of polytonality, accessible to amateur choristers. A fine setting of the oft-used AA prayer.”
Ha! If only they knew what his life was like: on-again / off-again / on-again…
And I was hooked on alcohol as a child! I was sneaking tiny sips from every bottle, with other-worldly mysterious tastes…
…and Daddy had NO IDEA that I had a problem…
I could have been strong, I could have resisted, I could have said “No Daddy, none for me, or you either.” I could have been good to him, and to me. Such is life. Such is addiction.
In spite of his alcoholism, however, I began to remember his magic: how to write powerful, POWERFUL music, how to TEACH, and how to awaken the SPIRIT. Yes! I realize now that he was one hell of a teacher! I’ve started to remember those deep smiles of his. I’ve begun to feel his growing dedication.
_______
As my father lay dying I was faced with “music” in one of two ways: it was either “uptown” or “downtown.” My Daddy knew the “uptown” stuff so well: he wore the right ties, he bowed deeply… and the fancy Lincoln Center was being built. But he didn’t know what was just beginning, the “downtown” stuff:
…the loft scene in New York City’s soho, Prince St., Spring St.: there the musicians started PLAYING! Audiences were small, and tickets were inexpensive – Philip Glass and Pauline Oliveros and Don Cherry and – well, they ALL played, played and played! And I got to know them – Pauline stood before us with her accordion and let it SING, and Sun Ra in golden costume, and Cecil Taylor’s BRILLIANT piano, and Steve Reich, and… AH!!! It was like the wind coming toward you, lifting you up, screaming, laughing – yes yes YES!!!
At home it was the old dressed-up stuff: faded autographs on the wall, old-fashioned conductors, ancient composers. Oh well, that’s OK, Daddy. It really is OK. Your spirit is deeply, DEEPLY inside me…
I graduated high school. Helga and Daddy and Vivien moved out to a small house about an hour away, near the woods, on a GLISTENING bay. I took the train out there a couple of times. I remember a dancer came along with me; she had a nice talk with him, all about an old dancing friend of his, one named Agnes de Mille…
I don’t think Daddy knew about it at the time, but de Mille had a very serious recent stroke, and then he had one too, a couple of months before he died. And I’d have a stroke too, years later – but that’s another story. De Mille was a brilliant writer, and she wrote a book ALL about it, about her stroke:
By the way, other writers have written about the stroke, about what it’s LIKE: Ram Dass, Jill Bolte Taylor, May Sarton… all of them brilliant writers.
Daddy’s stroked face was distorted now, his speech was hard to understand. He would get down to 140 pounds, then 130…
By that time he hardly got any mail – the letter-writers were mainly dead now. Oh, you’d get mail-order catalogs, for kitchen gadgets, and garden contraptions…
…but he was fun, FUN! You just KNEW it when he laughed internally.
He was dying with a St. Christopher medallion around his neck; he asked me in a way I could barely understand: am I going to die?
I replied embarrassed, ashamed: I don’t know, I don’t know…
We had a church funeral – it was really a concert, with lots of Daddy’s organ music. And the organist played Sortie at the end, the very last work he’d written – French for “goodbye.” It was a corny JOYOUS piece.
I miss him.
Bernard “Benny” Herrmann wrote the following in 1965:
Yes, Daddy was his professor of composition and conducting. Benny wrote the music for Orson Welles’ Citizen Kane, and Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho and Vertigo, and Martin Scorsese’s Taxi Driver… Philip led Benny’s FIRST radio performance of his work, and they both conducted each other’s works throughout the thirties and forties. For instance, this concert by Herrmann includes premieres by Henry Cowell, Charles Ives, and Philip James:
My Daddy loved ALL kinds of music. Let me give you a small section of conductor Howard Hanson’s tribute at the American Academy of Arts and Letters, written just after Daddy died:
…Over the years I have conducted many of his works but I came to know him best through a performance of his latest symphony. He was already, as I remember, in his eightieth year, when a former student brought me the news that this work had never been performed. I asked to see the score and immediately arranged for a premiere at our next Festival of American Music. He came, with his charming family, for the rehearsals and concert and it was for me a delightful and rewarding experience.
Philip James was a scholar but he was also modest, generous, humane. I hesitate to use the word, but he was a sweet man, in every sense a gentleman. It is not difficult to understand why his students had for him such esteem and affection. He must have been in every respect that unique individual, a great teacher.
YES!
_____________
I started this article with what Gunther Schuller wrote about Dad:
Alas, he is now virtually forgotten…
A composer in Manhattan for the first half of the 20th century: remembered, oh yes, remembered – and then completely forgotten. The “old man” is gone, gone on his way.
Well, it is because of him that I have become a true musician: I listen, and I listen, and I listen… I listen to the SPIRIT!
When my father died I didn’t know what to do. Then suddenly I saw a notice on a bulletin board advertising shakuhachi lessons. I’d heard a recording of the beautiful flute sound – what people called the “haunting” sound. I found it very, very beautiful.
So my Daddy has never heard shakuhachi, but when I play it’s like my Daddy is playing ME. Yes, he taught me what it was all about: how to allow melodies that carve their OWN WAY… and how to become FREE.
And Helga got busy after he died: by 1981 she had already published A Catalog of the Musical Works of Philip James, full of Germanic subcategories like “Biographical Sketch and Selected Chronology.”
And by 1986 Huntsville decided to put on a week-long festival of my Daddy’s music:
But sadly that’s about all there was, his music just went away… it seemed a relic…
Well, Daddy IS music, through and through. It’s not “goodbye Daddy.”
It’s HELLO, Daddy.
Hello hello HELLO…
____________________________
ADDENDUM – WW1
‘Sounds unpatriotic but I don’t think I could kill any man no matter how sinful his country.‘ – Lieutenant Philip James
Daddy was drafted in 1917. He had shirt-pocket diaries that he could carry with him:
Here is just SOME of it, in the later years of the War, when the War was gradually over. The YMCA, or “Yhuts,” provided a place for much of the music; General John “Black Jack” Pershing was the American WW1 leader, with the AEF – the American Expeditionary Forces… and the diary is absolutely fascinating!
Tuesday January 14 – 1919
A big day for Chaumont, for at 10:00 o’clock Marshal Pétain decorated the AEF officers with the decoration of Commander of the Legion of Honor… General Pershing was also present and battalions of French and American soldiers passed in review at the finale to the accompaniment of a poor French band, but after the ceremony our own band gave a fine concert of an hour in length…
Friday January 17th – 1919
…While at the grocery shop in the evening such a pretty little girl of four sang for us, Madeline, Marseilles, and other “chansons populaires.” She had everybody in convulsions and was as full of confidence as the most professional opera star.
Friday Jan. 31 – 1919
…Near one YMCA Hut we played at night to an audience consisting principally of officers. There is a large prisoners’ camp of Germans and they assisted us in building and fixing scenery etc. They were all very happy and cordial to the Americans. It was funny to watch a German truck filled with Germans and Americans.
Tuesday February 11
Busy day. At night I had a dance job for enlisted men at the YMCA, the riotous kind! Good sized orchestra. Piano was too high so I had to transpose everything. Worn out when I got back to barracks…
Wednesday February 13
Prince of Wales was to have been here today for some decoration but General Pershing’s aide-de-camp (Col. Boyd) died suddenly in Paris and all ceremonies have been called off.
February 16th 1919
The Prince of Wales here this morning for guard and he seemed to be very much impressed, especially by one drum major, and he seemed to like the other band as well. Orchestra played this afternoon and night for him, at Pershing’s Chateau. Boys told me later he shook hands with them all… he is fond of ragtime and jazz and is a regular fellow.
Monday Feb. 17 – 1919
Rehearsal in afternoon for this evening’s show after which I had to arrange a song for the evening, “Dimples.” In the evening was the big time, for at 9:00 PM there was a special performance for the Prince of Wales and General Pershing. Generals galore! The Prince sang, whistled, smoked black cigars and enjoyed the show immensely as well as General P. The Prince said it was the best army show he has ever seen. He has certainly captivated the heart of the AEF and I meant to say he is the most democratic army officer I have ever come in contact with.
Tuesday Mar. 11
Up at 6 to get ready, clean up etc. by the big inspection of the entire post by General Pershing, which took place at 8:00 AM…
Played in the band on my much polished sax and was in three different moving pictures… At night I played in the YMCA auditorium for enlisted men’s dance over which there was a fuss as the YMCA woman in charge stopped the French girls from dancing with them. Ross, the Drum Major, gave YMCA a piece of his mind.
Thurs. Mar. 20
…Pershing’s Chateau, a beautiful place in such a fine estate. We played for an afternoon reception to the King and Queen of Belgium, at which time many were decorated… then played for the King’s dinner.
Heard lots of rumors about this band leaving for concerts in the States…
Fri. Mar. 21 – 1919
King and Queen of Belgium present at Guard Mount this AM. I am arranging some new music for the special show which rehearsed in the afternoon for this evening, a special performance for the King and Queen at night…
Saturday Apr. 5th
Going home!
Just as Gen. Pershing was making his wonderful address the crowd around us was madly cheering with the band as they came in the gate. When they saw me they gave one wild cheer and rushing from the ranks and circled me with handshakes and congratulations.
Saturday April 19 – 1919
The good old Van Steuben arrived in New York Harbor in the morning and we disembarked about noon. After many photographs and moving pictures the entire band of 125 men was taken to the Hotel Pennsylvania so as to be near our special train…
The cars of our train are all Pullmans and given to us by the New York Central. Captain Fisher [he is also a musical conductor] and I have the drawing room “Orlando”…
April 22 – 1919
Pittsburgh, PA. In the morning we had a parade and after a concert in the afternoon we had a swim in the big town Natatorium. In Pittsburgh the Chamber of Commerce gave me a room to rent in and dress and they also placed at my disposal a fine Locomobile car with flying flags. I am sure the citizens thought I was old Black Jack Pershing himself!
Wednesday April 23 – 1919
Arrived in Columbus, Ohio in early morning. A Mr. Charles Janes, President of the Athletic Club, placed a Ford car at my disposal…
The people out here are wonderfully patriotic. This morning as Fisher and I drove in a car preceding the band, men stood with uncovered heads and instead of a victory arch they have huge embankments of flowers at all the main crossings in memory of those who fell in battle. Our concert at night in Memorial Hall was a great success, over 5000 people who were turned away and there must have been that many in the hall. It was about the most enthusiastic audience I have ever seen. We did the Tchaikovsky 1812 overture and as there was a large organ in the hall I played along and it was especially effective for the old Russian National Anthem theme at the close of the work.
Thursday April 24 -1919
Cincinnati.
In the afternoon we opened the baseball season at the large field here and were given seats of honor for the game. However there is a great pro-German population here and we did NOT get an enthusiastic reception such as Columbus says. The chairman of the local Victory Loan was most obnoxious and took out Possell the flutist and Ross the drum major and got them terribly drunk. A parade at night and “tout suite” to the train!
Saturday April 26 -1919
Indianapolis. Captain Fisher and I were entertained royally at the Columbia Club. This was in sharp contrast to Louisville, where we could not be entertained at the club because Fisher is a Jew and they would not invite me without my Superior Officer. Indianapolis is a wonderful city and the position of the Columbia Club is ideal for it overlooks a most wonderful circle larger than our Columbus Circle or anything we have in New York…
They’ve given us a great welcome, about 60 automobiles met on our train and took us sightseeing. I was the guest of General Smith who took me in his Packard to the huge auto race track about four miles out of town. At night I conducted the concert before an audience of over 3000 people. Fisher has given me a good share of the concerts to conduct…
Wed. April 30 – 1919
Such a busy day in Detroit, MI. I conducted two concerts… After this we had a panoramic photo made of the entire band.
Thursday May 1 – 1919
We arrived at the Hotel Statler, Cleveland in the morning. After I cleaned up I started to go to the Armory to arrange for the concerts, as Captain Fisher has left us to go to Washington DC where we shall meet him later. However in leaving the hotel in the AM a pot of flowers was thrown at me from above. The pot just missed me but I was covered with dirt. I was hissed by persons on the streets and one woman stopped me and asked if I knew knew why we fought Germany. “President Wilson had better get back to the US or we will have a red flag on the White House.” In the afternoon things got worse and the town was placed under the protection of the State Militia. Tanks were used in the streets and I actually saw one woman ground to pieces by a tank. In the midst of the rioting I received an order from the Commanding General of the area to give up the concerts and leave town at once which we did under the protection of the Militia, so we got on our train and started east.
[note: there were two deaths, forty-plus accidents, and 116 people arrested]
Monday May 5 – 1919
Boston.
…After this I rushed back and then started our parade preceded by mounted police instead of my marching band – they provided an open car for me to ride in at the very head of the line. We reached the State House and I was presented to Governor Calvin Coolidge and a State Senator… We played to thousands and thousands at that spot and after some more marching we stopped at the City Hall where I was presented to Mayor James Michael Curley who, among other remarks, made some uncomplimentary ones about Governor Coolidge.
Tuesday May 6 – 1919
Checked in early to the hotel Kimball in Springfield Mass. In the morning the local Victory Loan Committee gave me a sort of breakfast-lunch attended by the entire committee. There was much drinking and one of the men expressed regret that they could not include me, as Massachusetts is very strict about giving liquor to men in uniform. However they said that they would give me a highball glass of ginger ale. When I started drinking it I noticed a task not at all like ginger ale and discovered that they had poured me a highball glass full of straight bourbon whiskey.
Sunday May 11 – 1919
Working my head off getting a payroll for the men and issuing passes. The payroll is difficult for it involves insurance and allotment. Washington is like an old mausoleum and the War Department clerks are so stupid. Saturday I went to a special meeting in the Congress where they were debating and discussing “Shall the soldier be issued one shirt or two and should he wear one while the other is being washed in an exchange laundry or should he have but one and wash that when he can and thereby making use of the 1/6 of the unconsumed portion of the cooks ten-day ration of soap…”
Friday June 15 – 1919
End of Word War 1 Diaries. Glory be to God!
____________________________
A year and a half before he died – May of 1974 – he wrote a letter to the United States Veterans Administration. It’s similar to letters he’d been writing once every decade, since WW1 was over: where are all the benefits?
He’d received a check for the World War Adjusted Compensation Act: $1565. But so what! My Daddy had followed the rules, seen and heard thousands of bloody deaths, of bullets and bombs and gas masks. Once he spent all night listening as “987 shell explosions” were counted… and to me he seemed sad, SAD: there’s always a certain sadness when he’s talking about WW1. Yes, ‘Washington is like an old mausoleum and the War Department clerks are so stupid.’
Much better the elegant awards he received from France – they loved him, and he loved them!
[PHIL JAMES was known as a ‘computer geek.’ Now he is a pianist, composer, and shakuhachi-player, known as PHIL NYOKAI JAMES.]