Keep on Dancing: Reflections on being in a bluegrass band, Part II

In 1997, my brother Ed, an otolaryngologist in Sikeston, Mo., was shot by a patient. Some of this happened a couple of months later. Some of it happened almost 60 years before.

In the Midwest, the end of January is brown; dead-grass brown, dead-leaves-blowing-in-the-cold-wind brown, patches-of-frozen-naked-dirt brown. The sky that day was an oppressive gray, and a frigid northwest wind shook my car as I drove back to my home on the string-straight highway. As the dingy afternoon merged into night, so did my mood match my surroundings. Visiting my recently-widowed sister-in-law and her young family had been hard for both of us.

The phone surprised me. It was my wife asking if I wanted to talk to an old friend I’d known since kindergarten, Malcolm Lee, who had called from Florida having just heard about my brother’s death. She had a number to call back. I hesitated. I didn’t really feel up to a rehash of the shooting and its aftermath, but even less did I feel like putting off the inevitable, so with one eye on the road and the other on the phone, I placed the call.

A familiar voice I had not heard for several years sprang from thin air into my ear, although the smallness of the phone somewhat disguised the rich expansive bass of my radio announcer friend. He had just talked with local relatives and was calling to offer his belated sympathies. I gave him my now-pat spiel, but it seemed there was something he needed to tell me. He spat and sputtered, but finally came out with a “You’re not going to believe this, but ...” It turned out to be an interesting story in a “small world” or “there but for the grace of God go I” type of way.

To really appreciate it, you have to know what happened 60 years ago.

My Story

In the days before cars and girls and football, I was over at Mr. Keihne’s house in Sikeston. Mr. Kiehne was the high school principal, and his son Jim, later a dentist in St. Louis, was a friend of mine. Another friend, Tom Critchlow, now a surgeon in Cape Girardeau, was also there. We were out on a second-floor balcony, at night in the summer. We were young, of an age when you don’t get hot and sweaty just sitting and complain about the heat. Of an age when time seems to run more slowly and you can actually get done what you plan and still have time left over to be bored. Their house was across the street from that of my grandfather’s who was a “big Democrat.” I harbored suspicions Mr. Kiehne was Republican which was almost like being a Communist, whatever that was, and was glad for the dark so my fraternization could remain circumspect. It was well into the ‘70s before I realized that could be a matter of opinion.

Somewhere, Jim or Tom had come up with two baritone ukuleles. These smallish, four-string instruments seemed exotic and glamorous in our hands, and we would haltingly play and sing songs like “The Seine” and “The Ballad of Tom Dooley” and “Greenback Dollar.” The latter was particularly enjoyable as it allowed us to sing “an’ I don’t giv’a damn” with relative impunity — as long as we were not heard by our parents. Our singing could hardly be called such, as temporal and spatial gender considerations did not allow us to sing in a joyful manner unless in church. Our vocal stylings were carefully modulated endeavors toned to be audible to the individual singing but not to the individual sitting next to him.

Jim and Tom got their fill that summer, but for my 14th birthday, I asked for and received a Harmony guitar. It was a six string of course, brown with steel strings and cost $14.95, which was well under the unspoken, but strictly observed, $20 limit for birthday presents. It gave me that good-inside birthday feeling you have when you’re a kid that sometime between 35 and 50 turns into the exact opposite. The fact I didn’t know how to play it was only a temporary obstacle. Applying the “anything worth doing is worth overdoing” maxim that has often defined my time on this earth, I busied myself learning songs like “Goodnight Irene” (three chords) and “This Land is Your Land” (three chords) and “Hard, Ain’t it Hard” (three chords). And yes, they were all the same three chords.

Hey!!! Give me a break — I was teaching myself!

I had gotten in on the tail end of the pop-folk craze of the ‘60s. It was small, as crazes go. Sunday night at 10 p.m., past bedtime, I would surreptitiously listen to “Hootenanny,” a 30-minute radio show of folk music on WLS in Chicago. These guys — The Kingston Trio, The Limelighters, The Tarriers, The Brothers Four — were making music I could play (as long it was only three chords), and they were older and cooler and getting girls (I assumed), and I COULD DO THIS!!!

It turned out there was a guy just down the street who had actually taught himself how to play the five-string banjo by audiotaping (the only kind there was then) “The Porter Wagoner Show” off television. He then slowed it down so he could pick out the individual strings so he would know the picking pattern and taught himself how to play bluegrass. Interestingly enough, this guy — Terry Burke — became an audiologist. He lives in Colorado and would occasionally jam with John Denver before his death (John Denver’s, that is). He knew more than three chords and made me feel inadequate — in a musical sense. We teamed up and were joined by the aforementioned radio announcer who learned to play the bass fiddle. We added two girl singers, Patti and Sue — soprano and alto, respectively — and we were on our way. Terry’s virtuoso instrumentals and our five-part harmony gained us local acclaim, and we soon thought to test our mettle in the crucible of regional talent shows.

This is Part I of a three-part series. Look for Parts II and III in the November and December 2021 issues of TBY.

Dr. J. Russell Felker, a Sikeston, Mo., native, received his MD in 1973 and practiced urology in Cape Girardeau, retiring in 2016. He and his wife of more than 50 years, Suellyn, raised four children in Cape.