FIVE HISTORIES

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Forgotten Daddy

1.
I’ll bet you haven’t heard of Philip James, the ‘classical composer.’ Just about NOBODY has. Well here he is, my ‘Daddy.’ Daddy was an old, OLD man, with my Mom.

I cried and, unfortunately, for some reason I craved his death. Oh, he was a great old man, truly great, and funny…

but TIME seemed to pass away…

He died… and I was broken!

Ah, the old days! I am remembering a couple of things about him, hints about what it was like in the thirties and forties, Schuller, Babbitt, Herrmann…

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Gunther Schuller, Milton Babbitt, Bernard Herrmann – yes, some of the composers in New York.

Composer Gunther Schuller would have turned 100 – he died in 2015. He was a classical and jazz composer, a conductor, a horn player, an author… And he recorded with Miles Davis etc., and received a couple of Grammy Awards and a Pulitzer Prize and a MacArthur Award and and AND…

As a youth Gunther attended school in NY, the well-founded Saint Thomas Choir School. I wanted to read more about him, so I started reading his autobiographic book from 2011, Gunther Schuller: A Life in Pursuit of Music and Beauty. And WOW: it mentions my father on numerous occasions. For instance:

When we were handed a new piece, I could tell at a glance whether I’d like it or not by scanning the pages to see if it had lots of accidentals. If it was devoid of these, I knew it was one of those white-note compositions, and that it would be boring. Conversely, I got very excited when, occasionally, we were given highly chromatic pieces, even mildly atonal ones. I much preferred the more harmonically modern anthems and services of Philip James — especially his beautiful, poignant By the Waters of Babylon and The Lord is My Shepherd. 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 at the Choir School it was Philip James’s music. Alas, he is now virtually forgotten.

‘Alas, he is now virtually forgotten.’ 

OK, Milton Babbitt:

Milton was a brilliant NYU student of my Dad’s, who later won JUST what Gunther Schuller won: a Pulitzer Prize, MacArthur Fellowship, etc. I’ll put on a recording of Babbitt talking about Dad, in an interview with Charles Amirkhanian. Babbitt mentions James’ radio piece Station WGZBX – and I’ll talk about that later on. Meanwhile, ‘an extraordinary musician:’

OK, finally Bernard, or ‘Benny’ Herrmann:

Daddy led Benny’s first radio performance of his work, and they conducted each other’s pieces throughout the thirties and forties. Yes, Benny was Dad’s teacher in composing and conducting. Benny composed the music for Orson Welles’ Citizen Kane, and Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho and Vertigo, and Martin Scorsese’s Taxi Driver…

Or this, Christmas from Benny:

Bernard sounds, in music, a little like my Dad. For example here’s a romantic snippet by my father from Symphony #1, written in 1942:

And then this:

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Daddy used to limp around our ‘suburban house.’ He would sometimes be composing at the piano, or sometimes sitting in an armchair with a drink or two and a curious longing look. On the sleek plywood walls were autographs and paintings from the twenties and thirties, and medals from way back in World War 1.

He used to leave one of his many ‘scrapbooks’ around, full of articles from the past, the distant past. I sometimes read through them; they were strangely fascinating.

Or I’d maybe fix a cup of Ovaltine and listen to dozens of records. They were mainly old 78s, from the forties…

And to school I’d bring an album of Daddy’s music, Symphony #1, recorded way back in 1952. At least I was incredibly proud of him!

2.
HIS vacations – we went on vacation while he was still walking pretty well. Here he is at the beach, with Vivien – I wasn’t quite born yet:

Later my Daddy would say, on a Saturday or Sunday, ‘Let’s go for a drive!’ Mommy would drive SLOWLY – and nervously! We’d pass some fancy mansions and we’d end up in the beautiful village of Cold Spring Harbor, maybe buying candies, or a snack…

Then we started going on real vacations, Mom driving to Philadelphia, DC, the Amish, and the gorgeous Blue Ridge Mountains. She 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.

Or we’d drive up to Rochester, where the old Howard Hanson was conducting my Dad’s Symphony #2, written in 1948 but still a premier. My Dad sat there listening, listening… and I listened too. It was loud, and about wars. His eyes closed and his hands moved a little; the conductor’s arms flapped all over the place…

Or we’d visit his musical friends and distant relatives in England. Or France, my Dad’s old hangout. 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 – and I have to keep him from falling tipsy on the way back to l’appartement.

Or we wander into a fancy Paris record store. ALL of the records are of ultra-modern composers, Boulez, Stockhausen, Cage, and the customers are young, and smoking Gitanes and Gauloises cigarettes… My father seems somewhat sad, somewhat ‘out of his league’…

3. 
All right, history, HISTORY - and birth -

Daddy was born in 1890, in Jersey City, across the river from Manhattan. His father was Welsh – Daddy loved hearing Welsh melodies all day long.

His father was first a locomotive engineer and then, in later years, security guard at a chocolate factory. And his mother was German. I saw a photo of where they lived in those years – it was poor, but back in those days you simply WORKED…

Here’s where they lived, at 78 Railroad Ave…

And here he was:

He loved his ‘Ma’ and ‘Pa,’ as he put it. Daddy used to tell me about a boy who lit the gas lamps along the street every night – he didn’t use a ladder, but a long metal rod with a wick inside. And he loved how QUIET it became – no sound of cars, none at all.

He read a very popular magazine: St. Nicholas. We still have his old copies! 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 musical teacher to him, and she taught him to play violin and piano. Daddy always called her a ‘wonderful teacher.’ 

Here he is in a photo, and here is the very FIRST piece he composed, age 17, the fun Pensée d’Automne (played here by David E. Lamb):

He traveled by horse, by train, and by foot all around New Jersey and New York, giving performances on piano and organ – Mr. Philip Wright James. Notice how many ‘horseshoers’ there are:

Daddy had lots of teachers, in organ, in harmony and in orchestration. He 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.

Or he spent lots of time with Homer Norris, a well-known teacher who taught him the ‘art of counterpoint’ and the ‘practical harmony on a French basis.’ Homer also played organ for the tycoon J. Pierpont Morgan, and regularly. Organ was where it was at, until radio…

Daddy was listening to music all the time. I have dozens of programs from back then – for instance the celebrated Gustav Mahler, conducting one year, dead the next:

Daddy composed, at first, impassioned romantic anthems and songs. Some of them were Welsh-like songs, some of them were oh-so-popularly titled: Dearie, My Heart Is Like a Sweet-Toned Lute, Little Room o’ Dreams, A Million Little Diamonds, As Now the Sun’s Declining Rays… They were delectably sentimental – and early art deco:

He was just about ALWAYS working on music…

And writing: he kept a diary from 1910 on, until his death; yes, we kept them!

For instance, February 4, 1910: ‘My new frock coat and silk hat came to-day.’

Ha, ‘my new frock coat and silk hat’ – he kept them, and I played and played with them – way too big for me!

Oh history, HISTORY! The diary below, 1911: first a lesson, then meeting with somebody about conducting ‘light operas,’ then 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:’

How times have changed! That’s the firetruck used to battle the Triangle Shirtwaist factory… ladders will only reach seven stories high!

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Matinées were VERY popular then, especially for kids – and he loved them! He conducted Snow White and Prunella, directed by Winthrop Ames in 1912 – 1913. These plays were starring the ‘inimitable Marguerite Clark.’ Later, films would appear; she’d star in them as well.

The New York Times wrote in 1932:

Philip James was pianist in the orchestra pit at “Snow White,” a musical show in 1912. A road company was organized and James became the conductor. At the Boston opening and between the acts, an elderly man leaned over the rail and remarked to the young conductor: “If you can direct ‘Snow White’ as well as you do, you can do the same with ‘Die Valkyrie.'” Later James learned that this encouragement came from Dr. Karl Muck, conductor of the Boston Symphony Orchestra.

He composed several Welsh songs… and he composed his Méditation à Sainte Clotilde, 1915, a VERY romantic piece that still gets performed to this day.

He 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…’

Then there was ‘Miss Eady,’ as she was known, Miss Millicent Eady.

She was quite a bit older than he was. She was born in England and had a real 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 – yes, she’s kind of bossy!

And they got married at the local ‘Dune Church.’

His horse was named for Lloyd George, the liberal British leader:

And this was his very FIRST tag: a Model-T.

Then the two of them worked together on the house…

They stayed there 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, Eliot…

I remember the house, and the walks he would take: an old man walking slowly along the beach, alone, with the endless waves…

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He sat me down and talked to me – with a couple of whiskeys, of course. He talked about his time in the Army with one of his fellow soldiers, Lieutenant Albert Stoessel.

Albert was an excellent musician. He was the very first head of the NYU music department, back in the twenties. Philip became, at his behest, part of NYU, and Stoessel also hired the somewhat ‘avant-garde’ composer Marion Bauer. And Stoessel wrote a book on conducting called The Technic of the Baton: ‘This book belongs to Philip James and he wants it.’

Bernard Herrmann (Vertigo, Psycho, Taxi Driver, etc.) loved Albert’s stuff. And I only had a lesson or two on conducting, but he taught me what it was all about! I read textbooks on it, practiced conducting on my own… I waved my hands around wildly in pretend-play, like dancing, and it felt absolutely wonderful!

Now Stoessel had composed a piano tune called ‘La Media Noche’ in 1928. He showed it to my father, who wrote a totally fun organ part to it. Ah yes, walking, strolling around a lit-up plaza at midnight, perhaps smoking a cigar… Too bad Albert died of a heart attack in 1943, while conducting; he was only 48 years old.

And the ‘NJSO,’ the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra. As a youngster, age 30 or so, James had started it. At first he led a group of only 19 string players, 12 of whom were women… and then:

Or he talked about the ‘Broadway scene,’ for instance the inimitable Victor Herbert, who heard him conducting at an Army parade and hired him immediately as his musical director. Daddy led the orchestral songs and dances for Herbert’s My Golden Girl: ‘A Little Nest for Two,’ ‘Ragtime Terpsichore,’ ‘I’d Like a Honeymoon with You,’ ‘The Jazzy-Jaz Dancing Lesson,’ ‘What Shall We Do If the Moon Goes Out’… and of course ‘My Golden Girl.’ And the two of them, Herbert and James, went out afterwords drinking and DRINKING! Daddy told me that Victor Herbert was indeed a true teacher to him; unfortunately he died of cirrhosis in about four years.

How much did he earn on ‘My Golden Girl’? Yes, I’ve often wondered about the past… It turns out that he made $400 per month – that means about $7600 per month in today’s world. Not bad!

And this, a treasure: I just found it the other day, my father conducting the song ‘My Golden Girl’ in 1920. There were only two or three records ever released by my father; this one has the ‘Irish tenor’ Walter Scanlan, also known as Walter Van Brunt, who was a well-known bigamist:

As a boy I snuck up to my stamp collection just to see Victor Herbert –

Yes, there he is! And the other stamps: America’s five ‘Most Famous Composers’ appeared in 1940 – pretty damned old-fashioned! There’s 1-cent Stephen Foster, 2-cent John Philip Sousa, 3-cent Victor Herbert, 5-cent Edward MacDowell, and 10-cent Ethelbert Nevin, who was ‘known especially for Mighty Lak’ a Rose and Water Scenes.‘

Corny, old-fashioned, cheesy for sure: they weren’t Milton Babbitt, or Miles Davis, or Pauline Oliveros…

but so what!

And I LOVE stamps, for instance the Saratoga Springs Music Festival in the forties. These stamps are popular among collectors of ‘cinderellas‘, stamps not issued for postal purposes. They typically feature green-and-white designs with portraits of musicians and composers. Here are some of them:

• Monty Woolley: the actor, who recited in Philip James’ works;
• John Corigliano: the violinist;
• Vittorio Giannini: composer; and
• Philip James: composer:

This one has all different colors:

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Now Station WGZBX –

I knew he had a radio show way back when, but as I said I hadn’t really heard about it until recently.

Time Magazine wrote 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.

And Radio Guide:

NBC’s president Aylesworth then presented a check to James; $5000 was a LOT of money in 1932: it would be worth $118,300 in 2026.

This was a first ‘radio event.’ Here’s how the contest worked:

573 orchestral manuscripts were submitted anonymously by the public. The jury was composed of ‘famous musicians.’ Five works were chosen as finalists and were played, anonymously again, on an NBC broadcast. From there, 150 selected listeners sent in their choice by telegraph, and the single winning composition was played on the radio May 8th, 1932. (Phew!)

Leopold Stokowski (juror) sent Dad a letter:

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.

And check out what Daddy has to say about instrumentation. It’s pretty funny – orchestras used to be BIG:

Here’s are two very small sections of his Station WGZBX. The announcer says it all garbled like it USED to sound:

La. . . . And we are. . . a-. . . present. . . a. . . gram sponsored by. . . makers of. . .oomiak on. . . o. . . nat. . . o. . . poeia. . .triguiting. . . agent. . . . This concert. . . overture on. . . yaked composer. . . left the concert hall with. . . however changed the. . . in almost. .. will receiver a flacon of . . . domonium of. . . Floyd. This is sta. . . of the lymphold. . .speak of. . . .

Daddy conducted the radio’s Bamberger Symphony once a week for seven years. He also every week had ‘special guests’ – I searched for ‘philip james’ and ‘WOR’ and came up with the following:

Philip James made it a hallmark of his tenure to feature one American composer every week to promote domestic music. These composers often guest-conducted their own works or provided commentary.

• Aaron Copland: A frequent guest whose modern works were championed by James.
• William Grant Still: Known as the “Dean of Afro-American Composers,” he was a regular contributor.
• Morton Gould: Who later became a legendary composer and conductor.
• Paul Creston: Whose early orchestral works were premiered on WOR.
• Henry Cowell: Known for his experimental “tone clusters.”
• Howard Hanson: Director of the Eastman School of Music.
• Roy Harris: A major figure in American symphonic music.
• George Antheil: The “Bad Boy of Music” whose avant-garde works appeared.
• Nicolai Berezowsky: Violinist and composer of the era.
• Wallingford Riegger & Leo Sowerby: Pillars of early 20th-century American classical music.
• Gardner Read & David Diamond: Part of the younger generation of composers James supported.

James also hosted some of the most prestigious virtuosos of the century, many of whom were at the beginning of their legendary careers.

Wow! The guest artists were pianists I knew of, among MANY others: Artur Schnabel, Rudolf Serkin, Rosalyn Tureck… and violinists, Nathan Milstein, Joseph Szigeti, William Kroll…

AND he had for a radio show ‘American School of the Air’ – shades of Leonard Bernstein, only there wasn’t television yet. Read what he said about children:

Poor Dad: yes, radio was pretty much ‘dead’ when I was a kid. and commercial television was here to stay. Daddy didn’t think much of TV… Oh, he watched the soap opera General Hospital for a couple of years, and Perry Mason, and Ed Sullivan and Leonard Bernstein, and the news… but then he stopped watching it altogether.

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Now Wales:

I remember Daddy waking us up on St. David’s Day. It was a day FULL of smiles, and the Welsh symbol of daffodils and leeks. And of course we had the bright red Welsh dragon hanging in our hallway:

Well, I LOVED visiting Wales! Our family went to the village of Cwmafan – we had seen a photograph of Dad’s grandfather and his tiny row-house, in the 1840s:

And Daddy’s father was born right there, in 1850. (The actor Richard Burton was born a few miles away, to a coal miner; Burton spoke mainly Welsh while growing up.)

Daddy wrote some beautiful Welsh modal melodies: Gwilym Gwent, The Stranger, Galarnad, Song of the Miners, Cwmafon… And he composed Gwalia, the archaic name for Wales, a medley of great old folksongs likeThe Bells of Abertawe, David of the White Rock, Megan’s Fair Daughter… The melodies are oh-so-Welsh, of men marching toward the deep dark coal mines.

And this: I was named Philip Dylan James, after the Welsh poet Dylan Thomas. He had died of alcohol, just a month before I was born. My father absolutely loved his poetry and kept obituaries of him, stored within his Collected Poems…

Oh Daddy, oh Daddy: how I miss YOU!

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Memorable Mommy

Helga (‘Mommy’) was working toward a Master’s degree in musicology at New York University; my father was her professor of music. She was German, and Jewish. Her father was an obstetrician and a bit of an amateur moviemaker. He took this film of Helga, in which she is annoyed at her fuddy-duddy grandparents:

They had lived in beautiful Berlin, with just one child. Ah, the playful times, and young Helga! This shows what life was LIKE for her in Germany, until the Second World War:

Well, the airplane seems a bit ominous… and the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum had this to say:

Helga’s paternal grandmother Julie Bujakowski was deported by the Nazis 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.

[Helga] 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.

So Fritz and Else and Walter and Kurt and Dina and Steffi and Julie were ‘perished,’  i.e. killed by gas and bullets. So many deaths, so many deaths:

Helga and her parents 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.

Helga was married to a fellow NYU student, Bill Shank, from 1948 until 1951. Like Bill, she did NOT believe in killing, even Nazis. Bill 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 in Waldport, Oregon. Steve McQuiddy wrote a wonderful book called Here on the Edge, the Story of Waldport:

…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.

Finally he left Walport and ended up at NYU. 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 in Greenwich Village.

And she says Philip smiled at what she had composed for orchestration class, it felt sort of ‘Russian style.’ She laughed too, and he wrote at the top of the page ‘An Afternoon in Minsk.’

Well, she stayed married to Bill for a little while…

And Daddy composed and composed, writing his most brooding works…

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. Yes, he has been, like her, through ALL the wars, through ALL the suffering…

…and I would say they were deeply, DEEPLY in love.

When I was a kid we vacationed, by train, to Daytona Beach. That was where Philip and Helga previously had to ‘hide out’ for a few days in 1950 – there were three months away, required by divorce law. He had chosen that they spend a week or two at ‘The Tower:’

Here is the risqué part of a letter Philip sent her, back when he called himself a ‘husband’ even though he wasn’t. He almost always called her ‘Helgie,’ or ‘Helshin’ or ‘Helgala’:

Alas, Helga had to stay on in Daytona by herself after he had left. There were rats: they would chew and chew Philip’s love letters.

She sent Philip her pictures, taken by her neighbor. Always the same dress, always standing the same way.

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There was something broken in Helgs, a sad missingness, a loneliness… I saw it in her eyes!

She was ultra-shy, especially around people at cocktail parties. And nervous. And she was scared of heights, scared of uniforms… and she would very occasionally break down, get worried, and fall on the bed crying.

She despised Nazis, thought they were ‘stupid’ – 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… and neo-Nazis…

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 and sit down! [Pause…] Vash hands and sit down!

She mail-ordered a ‘Barber Kit,’ frequently sold in those days – but Helga did NOT really know how to use it. 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 humanly with ‘Seppel,’ our miniature dachshund. 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. 

Helga and Philip smiled together, too. And they played old four-hand piano pieces composed by Dvořák. I remember one time Helga felt VERY nervous about it, and Philip seemed somewhat annoyed…

But he gave her sentimental perfumes, jewelry, or someone’s autobiography…

And she gave him vests, with pockets to hold his gold chain and pocket watch. One of the vests she gave him was BRIGHT red, and he loved it!

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Going back a few years… Aargh! I was CONFUSED as hell: school, mother, hospitals…

I was 5 years old and drew this picture, and in 1980 or so I haughtily labeled it ‘untitled, 1959.’ 

It was definitely a She. And She either had humongous ears or angelic wings. I like to think of them as ears, hearing the subtlest of tunes…

‘She’ definitely has an unhappy look on her face, and ten fingers: are they grabbing at something?

Yes, that’s my Mom – Mommy – that’s who I have problems with! As I said before, there was something broken in her, at least at first…

I feel curious AND confused. I would come back to that mixed-up feeling over and over, even as an adult…

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At first the four of us lived first in a small but cushy apartment; our windows overlooked the Macy’s Parade. I couldn’t quite figure out what that last balloon was, an astronaut OR a deep-sea diver:

We had Thanksgiving guests over: Nancy and Ray and teen-aged Veronica, distant relatives of Dad. Ray and Dad talked and laughed, and Nancy – she was British – rode our hobbyhorse while singing ‘Ride a Cockhorse to Banbury Cross.’ Then we sat and ate, and we were poured a few drops of wine down the hollow stems of our wine-glasses. And it tasted great. I should have known that I would become a drunk.

Then they showed home movies, with their faint smell, and Ray would show slides… slides, slides, SLIDES, laughing…

Helga had the shyest of looks on her face, and she was pretty damn quiet while Philip Sr. and Ray blabbed and blabbed. I think she felt she would become a ‘whole person,’ if she could just take a couple of deep BREATHS…

That’s what Helga was like back then. She could be absolutely wonderful, and laughing almost hysterically, but then she’d be quiet, or even angry… or she’d get ‘palpitations.’

I felt like I had to IMITATE her, without ever understanding the behavior. One afternoon we were going to take the tourist ferryboat around Manhattan, and she suddenly threw a fit, refusing to go. And I threw a fit too… WHY?

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Now it’s Christmas. We’ve moved out to the burbs because of my Dad’s poor health. Our house has a bar inside; it’s pretty damn tacky. And unfortunately, secretly, I snuck tiny little sips from the bottles…

Helga was a non-practicing Jew, and Christmas didn’t mean a whole lot to her. But for Daddy: AH!!!! He LOVED Christmas! He had to make SURE that the kids got adequate presents: dolls, stamps, a weather station, even LPs of Dylan Thomas reading his poetry.

But Helga?

She’d go lie down after a while. Perhaps she had ‘signs of depression’… and headaches… and I, too, began to feel everything that way, just like her. I’m afraid I was always over-sensitive. I was changing from a child into a cigarette-smoking cynic.

And I’d go to my room and write: write write WRITE!

Aargh! I mean, what do you want? It WAS the sixties!

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After Dad died, Helga in a way ‘got real.’ She published the complex and extremely diverse catalog of Daddy’s musical works, trying to get performances of his pieces; and she hooked up with an old guy, Albert Shoenberg, who met her at a ‘dating club.’ He died a few years later, after the doctors had removed one of his legs…

…etc. ETC!

Oh, she was eccentric, for sure… and opinionated, for SURE…

…but she was ALIVE!

She lived till she was ninety-four years old, couldn’t hear or walk any more, but she sure could laugh about things.

I’ll write about it some day. Yep!

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. 

[My Dad kept the rose until he died; needless to say, it was a somewhat wrinkled mess…]

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.

[Philip returned to the United States and led ‘Pershing’s Own’ on a tour. It’s funny how he had gone to France EXACTLY a year ago… The tour was Pittsburg, Columbus, Cincinnati, Louisville, Indianapolis, St. Louis, Chicago, Detroit, Cleveland, Buffalo, New York City, Boston, Springfield, Hartford, Newark, Montclair, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Washington. The tour started on April 19 and ended May 13.]

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… 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… 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. 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.

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[OK, May 1: that was the first ‘Red Scare.’ It’s really worth checking out! There were two deaths, forty-plus accidents, and 116 people arrested:]

Thursday May 1 – 1919 – May Day in Cleveland, Ohio.

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 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.

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!

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A year and a half before he died he wrote a letter to the 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 single check in 1924 for the ‘World War Adjusted Compensation Act’ – $1565. Today it would be worth about $29,000 – but so what! My Daddy had followed the rules, seen and heard thousands of bloody deaths, of bullets and bombs and gas masks. And to me he seemed so SAD: yes, there’s always a certain sadness when he’s talking about WW1. ‘Washington is like an old mausoleum and the War Department clerks are so stupid.’

Oh, he received medals and ribbons, but much better were his elegant awards from France – there were many of them. France thanked and thanked and THANKED him.

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When will it be over, when will these wars be OVER? My father composed THIS, Symphony #1. about WW1: walk and be killed, walk and be killed, walk and be killed…

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Shakuhachi Journal

Phil Nyokai James: my middle name is Japanese, for the sea. It was given to me many years ago, when I became a sensei (SEN-say, or teacher) of the shakuhachi, that beautiful bamboo flute. Until then I was Philip Dylan James – named, after birth, for the Welsh poet Dylan Thomas.

I look up across the room: there it is, the shakuhachi; I used to teach it, before my stroke; now I have just one student.

But that’s OK.

The stroke came roaring through me, it snuck up like a DEEP powerful force, about 16 years ago…

Well, there’s just one thing I could do: play shakuhachi! Oh, it wasn’t perfect, far from it, just a note or two, but…

…happiness snuck in, little by little, little by little… HAPPINESS!

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1975: my Daddy was a ‘classical composer’ and an old man when he died. He hadn’t ever heard a shakuhachi playing, but he would have absolutely loved it!

Anyway, he left me 11,000 dollars – and I was elated! I was twenty-one years old and it was burning a hole in my checkbook. Hm, what should I DO with it?

Then suddenly I knew, oh yes, I KNEW:

I was eating at a macrobiotic restaurant in NY and saw a sign advertising shakuhachi: ‘Ronnie Seldin, shakuhachi lessons…’

Yes yes YES!

So I went out to Flushing, a long train ride and a long walk, twice a week. Ronnie was just back from Kyoto, where he’d studied shakuhachi with Kurahashi Yōdō I.

Kurahashi Yōdō I was born in 1909. In 1973 he established the ‘Mujuan dojo,’ or shakuhachi school, and he was director of the Kyoto City Cultural Society.

When Ronnie got back to America he was ‘sort-of Japanese.’ He basically lived it, at least at first. Here’s what Ronnie looked like then:

And here’s what a particular notation might look like:

Don’t worry, the notation isn’t all that difficult. But if you’re studying Japanese music, specifically the ‘honkyoku’ [HOHN-kyoh-koo] or beautiful old solo music, you might as well find yourself a teacher…

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Ah, the seventies in New York City, before shakuhachi had really come:

It was truly idyllic. I lived on the Lower East Side and paid $75 in rent; later it went up to $85. It was kind-of sleazy, but so what: it was HOME!

And it was FUN! You could just walk along the street and say hi to everybody, the poets, the artists – and I was starting to write back then, plays of all things, and a little piano music…

I moved in with Heloise Gold, a beautiful dancer. We started doing performances, on piano and weird homemade instruments…

And I was, admittedly, a part-time drunk: she changed that! Well, at least for a while.

The lessons, twice a week: Ronnie and I were sitting on the floor across from each other, with a short table between us. We’d start by bowing to each other. But I couldn’t really play the shakuhachi yet, it was all new to me…

One night we were doing a performance at a loft – that was how you did it, at a loft. Deborah Hay, the dancer who lived in Austin, was there that night. I didn’t know who she was, but she just about smiled the whole time. Afterwards she introduced herself and we traded phone numbers. Then a day later she called with a proposition: we would give a performance in Austin AND babysit her five or six-year-old Savanah, for at least a couple of weeks while she was away on tour. And we could find a place and move to beautiful Austin if we wanted…

Wow!

What about Ronnie? Well, we COULD bring the flute along… and the notation…

Yes! We said YES!

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The shakuhachi was becoming my life… Oh, it had to ferment, it had to take its time… but gradually: AH!!!!!!

And it’s hard to describe beautiful Austin, its magic – at least that’s what it was like in the seventies and very early eighties. I bought a used 1967 VW van, light turquoise and as hippie as you can get; I traveled all around Texas and New Mexico; I took odd, ODD jobs. I lived in a tipi for a while, I’d get with people and sing outdoors. I tried to teach them a little shakuhachi; and yes, I toured with Deborah, in New York, Washington DC, etc.

But, BUT…

Oh, there is joy, there is happiness – but I am somehow depressed!

And I kept it secret. I would get depressed and kind of fierce as well…

And I didn’t completely realize my unhappiness until I had a stroke, in 2010. Then I just studied it, the pain, the anger, the ‘illness,’ alone for years and years…

…and slowly, slowly I came back…

…back to childhood…

…and yes, to ADULTHOOD…

…and there it was, there was the secret beauty of the shakuhachi, howling YES to me!

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For the past few years I’ve been smiling YES – I am one of those so-called ‘stroke victims’ who has YES in his smile. And there is something wonderful about the shakuhachi: it doesn’t make a ‘Western sound’ at all, nope. But it curves the air, carves a realm, weaves a sound that is beyond anything I’ve heard before.

Yes, the shakuhachi IS my altar; it asks me for my ULTIMATE respect. And it sings sings SINGS!!

So it was the late seventies/early eighties: 

I drove my ’67 turquoise VW down to Big Bend, alone. It was the summer, no less, and the van had no AC – but who cares?? I was YOUNG then!

Needless to say, the temperature was sweltering. I had to fall asleep sweating in the 100-plus evening. But I felt incredibly happy, for a change. I loved being alone. And I loved PARTICIPATING in the sound of the shakuhachi: I played it late at night, and it went howling across the riverbed – and the trees were talking back to me!

I thought about what ‘music’ had been like as a young boy – how I hated practicing piano in front of this or that teacher, those bitter money-hungry men.  I would have to find my way into it. Yes, my OWN way.

So shakuhachi came to me! And Ronnie Seldin, like SO many shakuhachi teachers I later studied with (and continue to learn from) was as kind as they come. That’s what I felt at Big Bend. I was truly, truly happy. For a while!

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OK, Austin was great, but it grew up SO fast that I had to really think about it.

I met a fascinating woman named Kim. She was just becoming a midwife, and she was kind of a hippie, like me. So we got married. And here we are with our brand new baby, Sierra. Later on Aaron would be born.

We lived in a trailer for a while, across the park from a gun-toting manager. It wasn’t exactly an easy time, for ME anyway.

And we traveled around the US, stopping for instance at a commune near Spokane. I remember once leaving our cloth diapers by mistake out of town – we were just like that!

We decided to move. I had been reading about communes with available pieces of land, and for some reason I was attracted to Missouri. So we moved there, borrowing money from my mother. Yes, we were in a trailer AGAIN – a ratty old pink one. But the land itself was beautiful, the sun and moon – and we had eleven acres of our OWN.

And yes, I had my ups and downs, and my occasional angry depression. I realize NOW that it affected both Kim and Sierra, and maybe later Aaron…

I just found this old newspaper article, from 1986. It shows me playing shakuhachi in a vast field, and the headline is: One Man’s QUEST: Phil James finds happiness is simple.

YES! ALONE, and hearing that beautiful sound…

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The years went by. I was kind of a shakuhachi player, but really an ‘amateur’ as they say.

We bought a house in Columbia, MO. I started making money, lots of it, in the world of software. And I started writing technical books.

I traveled. I even learned to fly a plane! And I DRANK.

But it meant I could get plenty of lessons from Ronnie’s cassette tapes – and by listening to dozens of Japanese CDs, and TRYING to get the sounds by myself. Believe me, it was a struggle – one could call it a sweat – but one that truly SHINED, with a sunlike smile!

Ha, here I am with a sunlike grandson Josh, a long time ago:

OK. So I went to Japan with Ronnie, met with other ‘famous’ musicians… and Kurahashi Yoshio, later known as Kurahashi Yōdō II. Kurahashi Yōdō II was the son of Kurahashi Yōdō I, Ronnie Seldin’s old – and long gone – teacher. I’ll just call him Yōdō.

We became good friends. He was, and IS, a tremendous gift to me: I LISTEN.

Here’s a biography of him from 2017, in the Kyoto Journal:

Studying under Matsumura Homei of Nara, in 1976 he performed his first solo concert, winning the Osaka Cultural Festival Award. Four years later he became director of the Mujuan shakuhachi school founded in Kyoto by his father, and shortly afterward began touring throughout Asia, Europe, Israel, and the U.S. Since 1995, his annual intensive classes throughout the U.S. have become very popular. His sense of humor and generous attitude are well known to his students (who simply call him ‘sensei’), and to many others who enjoy traditional shakuhachi music. Today, because of his exceptional technique and a wide repertoire bridging traditions and cultures alike, Kurahashi Yodo II is sought by composers and musicians of many genres wishing to incorporate shakuhachi into their music.

Yes!

When I was in Japan there was a soda there called ‘Sparkling Beatnik.’ I kind of liked the name. So I started a record company called just that, Sparkling Beatnik. I even had a ’67 gold sleek sparkling Mustang, with the logo taking all of the back windshield:

And Yōdō decided to put out his first album on Sparkling Beatnik records. He recorded the album in one or two days at my studio, and he sat in our kitchen drawing the cover. The CD received from New Age Magazine the best ‘serene’ music of 1999.

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All right, here it comes, the reality: the stroke!

I was on vacation in Arizona, January 2010, with my new wife Lara; we lived then in Portland, Maine. I was giving shakuhachi lessons, lots of them, once every two weeks in Boston, at MIT. Lara was seven-months pregnant; I was driving us somewhere around the Grand Canyon. 

What was I feeling? Well, I somehow felt uneasy, like I was backing out of everything… it was just like it had been in the old days: that strange sensation of depression was clearly right here, right now…

And I got ‘the stroke,’ weaving around, the car SCREAMING, Lara screaming too…

I won’t bother you with the fevered event, it was pretty damn weird – helicopter, me talking gobbledygook, fainting…

But there is one thing that was absolutely significant to me during that long hospital time: the shakuhachi! Yes, I could actually play the thing, much to the complete surprise of the medical gang. Oh, after a few weeks I didn’t play all that well, but I PLAYED! And a deep, deep smile was passing through this bent body, a HAPPINESS smile! 

Yes, I’m an ‘expert,’ an expert at shakuhachi. I have thought about it SO deeply…

Damn,  sixteen years of ‘strokeness.’ It sure feels difficult at first, but gradually… 

If you’re really lucky, it feels like PEACE. People who have gotten the stroke talk about it in journals like this, and talk about it powerfully and honestly: Agnes de Mille, Ram Dass, Jill Bolte Taylor, May Sarton… ALL are experts,  BRILLIANT experts!

And I have eliminated a little at a time. I don’t have a car, or a license. I don’t drink – it’s been years. I rent an apartment, right next to the beautiful woods. I walk and walk, and I run, and I write. And yes, I play shakuhachi every day: AHHHHH!

It was a WAKE-UP CALL:

First, the stroke itself: it was a message to me. I needed to think think THINK… 

Second, the booze. I HAD to stop that habit, had to get off that lonely train…

And third, AGE: what a wonderful time! It GROWS on you, it SETTLES down… the colors are DEEP, and the sounds are CALLING…

Yes, a WAKE-UP CALL!

I feel PROUD. I was given a ‘Grand Master’ title this time around, by Yōdō himself. I know, I know, it’s just ANOTHER certification – but I don’t care, I feel PROUDER THAN HELL!