by Mike Morris
My mom invited them in and had me play my drum set for them. Usually, when I played drums in Maryland, people seemed impressed, but Mr. Carruth and Cavin didn’t seem impressed in the least. When Mr. Carruth found out I couldn’t read music, he was disappointed, but invited me to join the band anyway. Even after I blew him off, he explained that the first show would be Friday night in the college stadium at the end of the first week of school. He said I should come and sit on the 50-yard line up by the press box. I said, “Yeah, yeah, sure...”
I had already met some of the drummers from the high school band. It had been slightly humiliating. After hearing drums coming from all over town, bouncing off the hills that surrounded Jacksonville, I had finally pinpointed the high school section practicing only a few blocks from my house. I went up to watch them and even though it wasn’t the entire section, I was tremendously impressed. I thought they were far funkier than the funkiest drum section I had heard in Maryland, and funky was important to me. When they noticed me, they all came over and began talking. They already knew who I was. I was acting “Mr. Cool” – something I was pretty good at. However, after they showed me some things they played, they asked me to show them something that I played. Quickly and brutally, it became cruelly crystal clear; I was light years behind them. In this little bitty, hillbilly town, there were at least 30 guys who could drum rings around me. It also hurt, because after my “Mr. Cool” act, some of them were happy that I, an arrogant Yankee, was a bust, and their smug attitudes speared my already lonely existence.
Since football wasn’t going to work out, I decided I would check the band out. The fact that Mr. Carruth had made the effort, coming over and giving me a special invitation, stood in stark contrast to my meeting with Chewey and Spewey. Friday night I headed for the college stadium.
The shock of going to a small town high school football game in Alabama jolted me into some other dimension. Cars were parked everywhere. Where did they all come from? Who were all these people? The college stadium was packed ... packed for a high school football game. Cheerleaders were leading the total throng in cheers. Massive lights lit the field, and all eyes seemed to be glued on the game. Wow! This was incredible. Strangely though, after watching the football teams for a few moments, it appeared to me they weren’t worthy of this whole extravaganza. I didn’t understand what all the fuss was? The teams seemed slow and boring. I looked around.
I was searching for the band but didn’t see them. It was during the second quarter that they appeared, coming into sight, filing into the stadium. A slight breeze was ruffling the plumes crowning their shakos, and their satin shirts waved and fluttered as they glided toward their destination. Bell-bottom uniform slacks, their cuffs split and filled with matching satin, flowed over white bucks. Under the stadium lights, they were kind of magnificent.
Nobody seemed to be watching them but me, and I was mesmerized. Although all the well-trained and devoted eyes were on the football game, the unnoticed members of the band presented perfect lines, in perfect step, silently gliding down the side lines. As each band member reached his/her spot in the end zone, he/she snapped into the parade rest position and didn’t move. No one seemed to be watching but me. Still, they didn’t move. Only the satin material, the plumes, and the color guard flags flapped in the breeze. Who were these guys, I wondered. I didn’t remember seeing any of them in school. They seemed too big – too powerful to be high school students. Maybe they were the college band.
I began to feel impatient, waiting for the football teams to get off the field. Finally, they exited toward their locker rooms and the audience began to get up and move toward the refreshment stands. I guess they weren’t too interested in the band. They had to get their hotdogs and prepare to watch further puny play from two weedy football squads. Maybe the band was even worse than the football team. No way could that be true; just watching them get in place disproved that premise.
Eventually, the field was cleared of the substandard super stars and I moved up to the 50-yard line and sat leaning against the press box, waiting. Through the noise and the people moving around, I strained to take in what was happening on the field. Then, from the other end of the turf, I saw Zorro, or at least what looked like Zorro. It was Cavin Dunningham in black satin and a cape, the drum major, galloping from one end of the field to the other ... toward the band. When I say galloping, I mean he was running ... but gliding at the same time ... sort of floating, but his legs were kicking out in front, kind of like a goose step.
Reaching the 20-yard line, his feet stopped, and for a moment his upper body swayed toward the band, then like a pendulum rocked back, then for a blurred second, wavered to and fro. Once still, standing daringly erect, he called some command, his voice cracking the stadium air. Under the flash of bright lights, the entire band, one giant life form, snapped to attention – horns dazzling, chrome drumsticks blazing, flags rippling, and barking something staccato, sounding like, “One, two.”
Wow! They were awesome, already. Normally, I would say yelling “One, two” was kind of corny, but the way they did it ... so precise ... so striking ... and so powerful. I was impressed.
The drum major slapped his hands on his legs and chest and bam! Horns and sticks burst out, ready to play. I think I stopped breathing for a moment, and my focus returned to Zorro. Leaping into the air, he seemed to hang there forever; but when his feet hit the ground, I heard a sound that sent chills up and down my back and stood me up, right out of my seat. Never had I heard such a fat, warm, sonorous, vociferous sound ... a chord that soared through that Alabama valley, riding the thick humid air, bouncing off the surrounding hills and floating into the Alabama night. I imagine that sound still, floating around down there.
When the opening fanfare finished, the cowbell and timbales exploded into a Latin, rocking pulse; gut snares cut through the night; the rudimental basses and tenor drums pounded out a rhythm that still pounds in my heart; the contra basses throbbed, their bass line thumping; and the high brass let rip with the melody of “Trumpets Ole.” I felt like I was in a dream. I had never seen or heard anything like it. I stood through the entire show awestruck, completely captivated.
In retrospect, it is amazing to me that the people down there at that time seemed oblivious to this amazing thing they had. When the show was over, the people were back in their seats, perched to watch two weak football teams sluggishly budge about. They had just missed a rare moment of extreme beauty ... a highly disciplined, excellently taught, inspired marching band that had to have been in the top 98th percentile in the world. But these people were content to soak up the sludge – two sloppy, slow, and at best, mediocre football teams holding sway over parts of northern Alabama.
But, I made my decision. I would do anything to be part of that band. As they moved into the stands to suffer support for the sloppy sludge, I made a bee-line toward them. All the coolness had left my being; I just wanted to be a part of what I had just witnessed.
“Man, you guys were great!”
The drummers looked at me like I was speaking a different language, probably shocked at the transformation in me. I wasn’t being cool; I wasn’t holding anything in reserve. I was sincerely blown away.
“I mean you guys were unbelievable! I have never seen anything like that.”
Some of them sort of smiled and didn’t seem to know what to say.
“Can I play in the group? I’ll play anything.”
They were much moved. I don’t think anyone had ever acknowledged them, appreciated their greatness, and now standing before them was a Yankee from Washington, D.C. unabashedly bursting forth with fervent praise. The section chief stepped up and introduced himself. His name was Rolf New, a unique looking guy, kind of like Mayberry’s Barney Fife of the Andy Griffith Show.
“Only openin’ we got is cymbals. We only got us one. If you wanna be the other’en, you kin be it.”
And so, I made that decision – a very uncool one. Not only was I not goi
ng to be a jock, a form of holiness in those parts, I was going to be a member of the band – an assemblage improperly perceived as a sort of droning drudge of the neighborhood. And, not only was I going to be a member of the droning drudge ... I was going to be a cymbal player in the drudge. I didn’t know at the time, but that branded me low man in a second class division in a very clique-riddled southern town.
49
Striking Out
So here I managed to survive, hanging out with an African American, playing cymbals in the band, talking funny, and wearing weird clothes. Man, this new kid, this 11th grader ... 11th grade, when a lot of these hillbillies were getting married or engaged and settling into the twilight of their lives ... this 11th grader ... Mo Mickus, was starting brand new ... as low man on the totem pole – a real loser.
Ronnie Overton left Jacksonville shortly after the school year began, heading north and leaving me friendless and alone. In a way, I felt like a fledgling forced out of the nest to face the reality of flying solo. Confronting this new reality, I found most everyone in Jacksonville dripped with syrupy affability. I deemed this yucky and threatening, and I did not like it. However, there was no one to fight. Being a counter puncher by nature, I needed someone to throw the first punch. Other than Chewey and Spewey, all I encountered were friendly facades – facades hiding shifting and mysterious intentions. Smiles and friendliness disarmed me. Lacking trust of strangers by nature, I felt especially uncomfortable around grinning, welcoming suspected assassins – assassins who were dedicated to destroying individuals like me who dared appear in their secretly structured world – assassins dedicated to knocking down all social scaffolding that might support a new person – an invader to the established order. In Hellincrest, friends and enemies were easily and clearly distinguished. There was no camouflage confusing that issue. I missed that. I had once dreaded the apparition of a fight every time I left my house in Hellincrest, but now I was having withdrawal. I felt frustration and craved someone to punch.
When I joined the drumline, Don Brittles, a senior, and one of the larger guys in the school, was the tenor drum section chief. Don liked to punch people – usually in the arm. He thought it was funny. His victims would holler out in pain and then give wimpy little smiles, acquiescing to his bullying. I had already learned in Hellincrest that you had to take a stand, otherwise you would be trampled under the hooves of a horde of hoodlums. By taking a stand, you would earn others respect, and then they could become your supporters and even your protectors. I figured if Don ever hit me, I would hit him back with so much ferocity that he would never even consider attempting it a second time. I maintained a vision of Roger driving his fist into the chest of Keith Faulter, knocking the air out of his lungs and his sun glasses off.
Don seemed to be cautious around me – sizing me up. However, one day an exceptionally boisterous Don was throwing punches and asserting his power over his perceived domain. My peripheral vision caught his approach, and I realized I was his next target. I was ready. As he pulled back his fist to throw his punch, I braced and prepared to unleash the hardest counter punch I could throw. As soon as his fist made contact with my left arm, and his momentum was still carrying his body toward me, I spun and drove my fist hard into his chest. “Kaboom!”
Well, that clearly caught him totally off guard. His ability to breathe had just been knocked completely out of him, and he looked like he was going to cry. His glasses set cockeyed on his nose as he finally wheezily whined, “I was only playin’!”
Giving him my most menacing Hellincrest glare, I coolly warned, “I was only playing, too.”
I don’t think Don punched people after that, and I only remember throwing one other punch during my time in Jacksonville. It appeared to be over a girl, but was really just a stupid desperate flailing at a world I didn’t understand and in which I could not find a place. Many years later, I apologized for that punch. The guy I punched assured me that he had no hard feelings. I sort of suspect he considered the black eye I gave him a medal – an honor he had earned, proving his love for the girl he married.
50
Melody Rules
Equipped with unyielding confidence and optimism, my younger sister Melody made a positive splash in Jacksonville. While Ripley and I were pretty traumatized and suffered a form of paralysis, Melody was totally unintimidated and charged full steam ahead – becoming very popular and emerging as a leader on several fronts.
Initially, she had wanted to join the marching band as one of the featured twirlers. However, one of the many rules in Jacksonville prevented her from doing that. It did not matter that she was extraordinarily better than the existing twirlers. In fact, the existing twirlers, although especially beautiful, were not really twirlers. They were mostly flute players who doubled as “faux twirlers.” Somewhere, there was a clearly stated rule that only musical instrument-playing members of the band were allowed to be featured twirlers. Rules in small towns in the South can be baffling. Although, there was also a clearly stated rule that in order to play in the band, one had to know how to read music, that rule was broken to allow me into the band. On the other hand, despite the fact that Melody was a National Champion twirler, the instrument playing/featured twirler rule was uncompromising.
For a brief moment, Melody was deeply disappointed. Her disappointment was so brief in fact that I was totally unaware of it. The only reason I know now is because Melody had confided in my older sister Arcadia, and over a half century later Arcadia made me aware of how distressed Melody had been. Anyway, Melody became a cheerleader, which was a step above featured twirler in the Jacksonville social order. She also became editor of the school newspaper and school yearbook and took on an assortment of other leadership roles in the school. People, particularly guys, cozied up to Ripley and me only because we were related to Melody.
The other cymbal player in the drumline was Jed Barney, a 9th grader. Jed had a huge crush on Melody. I have to hand it to Jed; I learned a lot from him. He seemed to know all the drum rudiments; he just couldn’t play them very well. But between questions about Melody, he showed me numerous rudiments while we were in the stands waiting to play. Jed didn’t know I would go home and practice whatever he showed me deep into the night on my pillow until I mastered it. The next time I saw him I could play it flawlessly. Jed started to believe, and began telling everyone that I had been putting them on – something a Southerner would do, but not me – that I already could play all the rudiments and was just getting a laugh, pretending I couldn’t play.
Another drummer who had a crush on Melody was Rolf New, the drumline section chief. His interest in Melody, coupled with the fact that I was in the drumline, paved the way for us becoming friends. Rolf had never physically been out of Jacksonville, but his dreams were huge. He loved to hear stories about Washington, D.C. and other places I had disturbed. He also taught me a lot and encouraged me considerably. When I realized how much I didn’t know, and that there were 30-plus guys in the high school and 100-plus up at the college, all in this small, hick town who could play better than me, I was ready to give up drumming. Rolf, a senior, an intellectual, a determined leader who was looked upon with awe by the other drummers, had built this drum section from the time he was a 7th grader, and he told me, “You’re bet’ern all these guys ... put together! Ya jus’ don’t know nothin’. Once you learn, you’ll play rings ‘round ’em.”
And with Rolf’s and Jed’s help, that is kind of what happened. Some of the guys in the section were hard workers. They had diligently and painfully practiced on parts for years and still struggled to play them. Here I came along, and after watching for a few moments could play those same parts faster, cleaner, and clearer than they could.
I was soon recruited into a rock band, the Madrigals. We became the top local band and traveled through Alabama, Tennessee, and Georgia, playing our own brand of Top 40 music at clubs, parties, and school dances – and getting paid very well to do it. It is funny, but despite
being a drummer extraordinaire, 20 years later at a class reunion, some of the jocks who had been friendly with me – mainly because we had once migrated down to Panama City over spring break and I had out-partied everybody, greatly impressing them – didn’t even realize I was ever a drummer.
During concert season the drummers, like most drummers, sat in the very back of the band room and tended to goof off during long periods of counting measures of rest. Mr. Carruth was better than most band directors because he brought in music with great percussion parts so the drummers had something interesting to do. I usually just watched because I couldn’t read music. But one day, someone was absent, and I was playing the bass drum part on “The March of the Sinfonians.” It had great percussion parts; I was just kind of jamming – having a great time, playing by feel. Suddenly, Mr. Carruth stopped the band and strained to see the drummers in the back.
Mr. Carruth was as blind as a person could be and still see. He wore these super thick, black-rimmed glasses, but he could still not see to the back of the rehearsal hall where the drummers were. He asked, “Bass drummer, what do you have in measures 146 through 151?” The entire band turned in their chairs to look back. They all stared at me. Now, no one other than Mr. Carruth and the drummers knew I couldn’t read music. I froze. Mr. Carruth continued, “Bass drummer, play at measure 146,” and immediately started counting off. I thought, “Oh man, this is going to be Embarrassment City!” When he passed “four” I was still frozen, but the bass drum sounded the syncopated thud, um-thud, um-thud, thud. It was a miracle. Mr. Carruth replied, “Oh ... that’s right. It didn’t sound like you played that before.”
