by Mike Morris
Eventually, we saw a car approaching. It was Claude and Goober. Johnny quickly directed me, “Don’t tell em whad appen.”
When Claude and Goober pulled up, they just sat staring at us for a while. Eventually, Claude asked, “Where ya’ll been?”
This was the first time I marveled at a Johnny Spring lie. I do not remember the yarn he spun; I just remember it was extraordinary and totally believable; something about tracking a 10-point buck.
54
Ripley and Wilt
During the NBA playoffs, Johnny, Ripley, and I drove to Atlanta to watch one of the most talented teams of all time – the Los Angeles Lakers – with Jerry West, Elgin Baylor, and Wilt Chamberlain. The Lakers lost that night, and after the game Johnny and I realized we had lost Ripley. Ripley was only 12 or 13-years-old at the time, and although he would later have a growth spurt, he was pretty puny. We searched the stands but could not spot him among the fans milling around, some heading to the exits, some celebrating their victory over the Lakers. Suddenly, Johnny pointed toward the court and shouted over the noise, “Thar he is!”
I looked down on the court, searching for Ripley and eventually spotted him walking across the floor with Wilt Chamberlain. Wilt was towering over him. Ripley was looking up at the over 7-foot tall Wilt and appeared to be explaining something to him.
As quickly as we could, Johnny and I worked our way through the crowd, down to the floor, and eventually found Ripley. Ripley told us he was supposed to meet Wilt at a back entrance. We exited the venue and began following Ripley around the building, searching for some secret rendezvous spot.
Reaching what appeared to be a loading dock, Ripley pronounced, “This is it.”
Johnny and I had begun to give Ripley a hard time when suddenly Wilt strolled out onto the loading dock, accompanied by Elgin Baylor and Happy Hairston. Before we could feel a sense of total awe, the three super stars put us at ease, their warmth making us feel like we were old friends. We talked and laughed about all kinds of stuff. Eventually, I asked where Jerry West was. They pointed me in the direction of the locker room and told me to go on back. I walked through a corridor and entered a large locker room where I spotted Jerry West, alone and putting his things into a bag. I explained that Wilt and Elgin had sent me back. Jerry’s demeanor contrasted sharply with the other three. He did not appear to appreciate me being there and looked to be in pain. I figured he was really unhappy about having lost the game, and I headed back out to the loading dock to find the others still talking and laughing like old friends.
We eventually parted with the superstars, and I remember that shared moment in time with fondness and respect.
55
Students Teaching the Teacher
My senior year, having learned to read music a little, and having mastered all the drum rudiments, I became section chief of possibly the best high school drumline in the country. The summer after graduating, I was hired by three different high schools – two in Georgia and one in Tennessee – to teach their drumlines. I was expected to help design their halftime show as well as write all the drum music. I had made up parts before, but had never written anything, and I was still learning to read myself, so that was a challenge. I wrote the parts to the best of my ability.
At the band camps, I gave the parts I had written to the drummers – the drummers I was supposed to be teaching – and asked them to play the parts back to me. All these Southern small town drummers could read the spots off the wall. If they played back something other than what I had intended, I would say, “No, that’s not what I meant. I meant this.” Then I would play what I had intended to write. They would attempt to hand the music back to me, so I could make the corrections, but I would refuse and tell them to make the corrections themselves ... like it was some kind of test or challenge. They would eagerly make the corrections and proudly show me. Carefully, I looked at how they had written what I had intended to write ... and committed it to memory ... then told them it was correct ... and that served as my crash course in writing and reading music.
56
The Southerners
One of the great, positive influences on music and education in the Bible Belt is Dr. David Walters. Dr. Walters directed the Southerners at that time. His eldest son played saxophone with me in the Madrigals, and his youngest son played guitar in a rock band with my little brother Ripley. Both brothers played in the Southerners, the youngest playing snare drum. Although Jacksonville conjures up painful memories for me, it was my great fortune to wind up in Jacksonville, Alabama and to have had John Carruth and David Walters as band directors. Many former band directors as well as many current band directors in the South were mentored by Dr. Walters. In fact, John Carruth was a student of Dr. Walters.
I had arrived in Jacksonville during the middle of Coach “Bear” Bryant’s legendary reign as the football coach of the University of Alabama’s Crimson Tide. Due to the enormous success of the Crimson Tide’s football team, their marching band received tremendous exposure and was celebrated around the country as the “Million Dollar Band.” What much of the southeastern United States knew that the rest of the country did not know however, was that if the University of Alabama had the “Million Dollar Band,” then the Jacksonville State Marching Southerners from Jacksonville, Alabama was the “Billion Dollar Band.”
Tennessee Tech offered me a percussion scholarship and the Southerners did not. In fact, not only did Jacksonville State not offer music scholarships, they did not even offer percussion majors at that time. Nevertheless, an invitation to try out for the Marching Southerners, the best drumline in the country, a drumline right there in Jacksonville – the drumline that had influenced Jacksonville High School – couldn’t be passed up. I turned down the scholarship from Tennessee Tech, and as a hot shot, attitude-carrying freshman who still couldn’t read music very well – a little like the guy in the movie “Drumline” – I showed up to try out for the Marching Southerners.
Freshmen arriving to audition for the Southerners usually did so with high expectations. Most had been the best players in their high schools and did not suspect they might be ill-prepared for the severity of competition as well as the difficulty of the music. A number of freshman did make the band, but many more did not. A few were thrilled to have made the band as alternates – remaining on the sidelines throughout the season with the hope of filling in for a practice, or maybe even for a performance.
It was especially uncommon for a freshman to make the snare line. I can think of a half dozen, and five of them were from Jacksonville High School. Usually, freshmen who wanted to play snare would try out for the tenor drum section – no easy deed – and play tenor for a year or two before attempting to make the jump to snare.
These tenor drummers played parts that did not require the same mastery of rudiments as the snare parts, but were equally as difficult, and when combined with their unique sticking patterns were a work of art that I have never seen anywhere else. Drums were slung low, and using snare sticks instead of the traditional tenor drum mallets, they played from way up high. Dynamics were spectacular. And whether they were playing soft or loud, the most incredible aspect was their precision sticking always reaching above their eyes. These later became known as eye-shots; super loud strokes for an occasional special visual and dynamic effect; but, everything the Southerners tenor drum section played was an eye-shot; only sometimes they just barely grazed the drum head, playing so softly they could barely be heard, then “bam!” Their volume would explode into eardrum pounding loud! No change in stick height could be detected, loud or soft. It was awesome.
When the section chief, Denard Henson, a full-blooded Cherokee from Cherokee County, Alabama – Centre, Alabama, the town where I was born to be precise, invited me to try out for the Southerners – and back in those days not many people were invited to audition for the Southerners – he did so very casually – no hype. He just said, “You should try out for the Southerners.”
The invitation came right after the all-state band auditions in which Denard was an adjudicator. I chose to enter the contest at the last minute at the behest of other band members who were contesting spots for the all-state band. Jobe McCorky, a fellow snare drummer, had struggled the last two years, and he convinced me I should enter the fray. I was troubled by the sight-reading part, but eventually applied. During the tryouts, I surprised myself, acing the sight-reading, but made a stupid mistake on one or two of the rudiments. I think it was the nine-stroke roll or the 15-stroke roll that confused me momentarily; I got them mixed up or something. Nerves may have worked against me, and at a crucial moment I miscounted the strokes during the slow build up. I started improvising – something that one didn’t do at an all-state audition.
I finished in fifth place with a score of 94.5, only two-tenths of a point behind the winner, a very humble guy from a large school with a tradition of producing great drummers. He took first chair with 94.7. There was a three-way tie for second place – three guys from another large school – scored 94.6. Apparently, they weren’t expecting anyone to come close, arrogantly thinking the contest was a lock and strictly between the three of them. McCorky finished 6th with 75.
Since I came in fifth and didn’t even make the cut for all-state band – they only took the top three, I challenged Denard, “Four guys were better than me. Did you ask them?”
“We don’t want them. Their heads are too far up their butts, and they can’t cut the parts, anyway.” And that was the end of the invitation. I still suspect he may have asked them, and they said no.
I don’t recall telling anyone about Denard’s invitation to audition, but it seemed that most of the high school band immediately knew and were very excited for me. Having lived in Jacksonville for less than two years, I didn’t fully appreciate the distinction of being invited to audition for the Southerners; playing in the Southerners was an aspiration for so many high school band students throughout Georgia, Alabama, Tennessee, and Florida, Denard most likely expected some degree of enthusiasm on my part. In my aloof kind of way, I probably appeared to blow him off. This may have helped to enforce the perception that Mo Mickus had an attitude problem.
Rolf New had made the snare line as a freshman the year before, opening the possibility in the veterans’ minds that another freshman from Jacksonville High School could do it. However, Rolf made a tough decision to focus on some very difficult chemistry courses and was not going to play his sophomore year. This was unheard of. Many interpreted his decision as a lack of appreciation and further enforced in many minds the idea that all Jacksonville High School drummers were arrogant. Back in those days, students who enrolled in Jacksonville State University and played in the Southerners, attended Jacksonville State University with the sole purpose to play in the Southerners. There was nothing else.
Being a Southerner meant taking all your classes early so you could be at practice every day at 2:30; and you would remain there until practice was over, whenever that might be, and for the drumline it often wasn’t until midnight or later. Focusing on your studies? What was that? But, dropping out of the Southerners to focus on academics was part of the uniqueness of Rolf New, and I respected him for that. He eventually earned his PhD and became a very successful chemist.
Rolf and I shared a similar belief that talking large wasn’t as important as one’s actions. Some drummers in the Southerners talked larger than they played. Since drummers in the Southerners were some of the best rudimental players in the country, that was some large talking. To hear them chatter one would believe they had an amazing dedication to the drumline. Rolf and I always figured that if they were that dedicated, they should just shut up and try practicing more and let their drumming do the talking. We may have been misunderstood. People thought our attitudes were arrogant ... and they probably were. But we believed if you professed to be dedicated to an art form, then you should do everything you could to be the best you could be. Rolf and I, a half-century later, are still trying to be the best drummers we can be.
That first day of the Marching Southerners band camp began early – six o’clock in the morning. Warm-ups, which went on and on, took their toll. There were many who didn’t last past lunch time. By early afternoon, the blisters that formed on my hands had popped and blood oozed onto the head of the drum. My arms began to lock up, and the veterans were having a field day making somewhat cruel efforts to dampen my enthusiasm and question my grit. It was purely a gut check.
“What’s wrong Mickus? Can’t handle it?”
“He don’t look so good to me.”
“Yeah, I thought he was supposed to be so great. He don’t look so great to me.”
Other guys were struggling. Guys were leaving, but I seemed to be the one getting blasted. “You gonna quit Mickus?”
“I think he’s gonna quit ...”
“Go ahead. Quit Mickus! You ain’t got it. Quit, you pansy.”
Quitting never even crossed my mind. But a determination to smoke these guys and make them eat their words did. After the rest of the section finished, Denard Henson began a serious midnight session with the new snare drummers. Inside the music hall, he focused on the music we would be using to audition the next day. Multiple cadences, very complex ones, with names like “Maudine,” “Southerners,” “69,” “Dee Dee,” “George” and “Heidi/Nancy” were “lay bare” – rhythms, strokes, and visuals. Each challenger would choose one as an audition piece. We would play it from start to finish with one tenor drummer, one bass drummer, one cymbal player, and one of each Latin instrument playing along.
Memories can play tricks. For years I remembered a crowd of hungry snare drum hopefuls working that night with Denard. The reality was there may have only been three serious contenders left at that point – Denard being one. Denard may have been the greatest sling tenor player of all time, but he was moving to snare that year because of a shortage of quality snare drummers. Apparently, Timmy Hawkins from Georgia, another snare drummer, also a freshman, had been coaxed by a very persuasive Denard into putting himself in an extremely arduous position to be thumped, pounded, trashed, prodded and bent into a good snare drummer. Denard never let me know the reality of the situation until almost 40 years later.
When the sun came up, there we were, ready to audition. I could smell fear. It wasn’t mine though. I was ready for a fight. My night had been spent drumming on my pillow, mastering and memorizing the cadences – even the longest and probably most difficult one – “Dee Dee.” As each person stepped up to the line for his struggle, a volunteer – a veteran from the other sections – stepped up to play along with his audition. When a tenor drummer stepped up to audition on “Heidi/Nancy,” I volunteered to play the snare part. In retrospect, I realize there were no veteran snare drummers there. So in my mind, I was making a bold gesture, and the others seemed taken aback because of my impudence. In actual fact, I was given the go ahead with some hesitation, not because anyone was impressed, but because I had the audacity to volunteer before someone could yell at me to do it. If I had not stepped up, who else would have covered the snare part? Denard was doing the judging. The other drummers may have figured this was the piece I intended to audition on, but I then volunteered to play along with a Latin audition on “George.” Veterans exchanged glances. Someone said, “Damn.” Both cadences I played perfectly from memory. I was feeling pretty cool, but in reality they were probably thinking, “What an arrogant little snot!”
When it was my turn to audition, I selected neither “Heidi” nor “George,” but a third, maybe the most difficult one, “Dee Dee.” A deflating of disdain – a change in everyone’s attitude – sort of flooded the auditions. After I played my audition on “Dee Dee,” flawlessly by the way, the others were clearly impressed. At least, that is the way I remember it. But I wasn’t done; when a bass drummer auditioned for “Southerners,” I again volunteered. I can’t forget the look on the faces of some of the line. Their faces were frozen in the fac
e of something they hadn’t faced before, or rarely faced before – another drummer who had just defied what they thought was feasible – learning and memorizing, instead of sleeping for a few hours after a grueling and somewhat cruel, 18-hours-long practice, four difficult snare drum compositions.
After that, no one ever gave me a hard time. The veterans, from that day on, treated me respectfully. In fact, there used to be a horrible initiation called “Rat Run” that all new Southerners’ drummers had to do. I didn’t do it. At reunions, when I hear the other old guys talk about their own horrible experience with the “Rat Run,” for a moment I feel a twinge of guilt – but it is always followed by an inner smile and a sense of happiness that I didn’t have to go through all that pain and vomiting. I hate to vomit.
57
Second String
In an environment where the football field was the Promised Land and football players were saintly heroes, drummers, even good ones like me, who on occasion shared that same saintly ground, were relegated to existing below the radar – radar exclusively attuned to the supreme – radar so ignorant and unaware that it reduced the genuine sublime to second best and mediocre alongside the spurious saintly football sham.
Suffering from oversensitivity to my plight in life, I dulled the ache, a sense of “second-string” throbbing, with trifling escapades and antics. I never targeted what I really wanted; I only went after second best. Often, my uninspired efforts fell short, and not only didn’t I attain my goals of being second best, but missed third and fourth best as well. I spiraled downwards, always reaching for something less than I wanted. I joined the military.
