At Left, Ronnie Lambert, 20, begins his 5 1/2 Years in Europe During WWII.
by David Lambert
I write this today as the grown son of Ronald Wybrant Lambert of Louisville, KY and, in later years, Atlantic Beach, FL.
I am proud to tell to you that I am his son, just as I am ashamed to tell you that I never said this to him.
It’s a ghost I wrestle. He deserved better, my dad did . . . from his kids, from his work, from the world, and ultimately from his own body. He deserved better.
I’m proud of him, proud of how he hoisted the family yoke and rolled with the yaw of work and business.
And I’m proud and happy that he finally found his peace and his place in a drafty old beachfront house in a small village on the ocean in North Florida. He was never happier than sitting facing the ocean with a martini in his hand and a day’s or week’s work behind him.
My dad was known as Ron to most, Ronnie to boyhood friends, and he was R.W. on every bill and letter that populated our mailbox. But I knew him only as Dad, or in my teenage years, Pop, (a handle I was never sure he liked).
He died nearly 30 years ago, after a 10-month debilitating bout with bone cancer. His was an ugly dying. For the most part he was fighting out of his weight class; yet he fought strong and smart.
Ultimately the illness sapped his strength and sucked the flesh from his body. In the end he rolled his hands down and bared his vein to the needle . . .morphine. Ronnie’s Cocktail the Hospice nurses lovingly labeled it.
I’m proud of how he fought and I’m proud of how he died. Still, I never told him.
I’m proud of how my dad always played the deck he dealt from . . . and how he skilfully enjoyed the things that came his way, those things that he had. He took whatever came his way with a grain of sand or salt, then recast it to fit the skin of his quirky, humorous and slightly humble sense of self.
Of my father I’ll say this: I never heard him complain; he never groused, bitched, or bellyached. Toss what you would his way and R.W. Lambert would somehow wrap his arms around it and make it his. This wasn’t always immediate, mind you; sometimes he’d have to think on it awhile, but I saw it happen many times.
On this father’s day I think of him and I realize how little he’s populated my thoughts these last few years. And I am again ashamed.
So, this day, nearly 30 years after your death, I say this: Dad, I’m proud to be your son. I’m proud of your five war years and I’m proud you had the smarts and the luck and the skills to get through them. I’m sorry you knew too much of the canvas and the cold water, the primal fear, the wrenching loss, and the horrors of blood and bullet. I’m sorry you had to carry that particular psychic brand on your soul.
But your soul scabbed over, and you outlived the scarring; at least that’s what you showed us.
Later, with a family and four hungry boys, you had the balls to strike out on your own when your fortunes turned anemic. You took a dilemma and made delimmonade. (You’d have hated that joke, I know.) I’m honest when I say I can’t imagine the mountain of doubt you faced, and the mountain of debt.
This day, I want you to know that your sons are who we are because of the choices you made. We learned from you what counts, and what doesn’t. From you, my skewed world view. It’s helped me understand. From you, an appreciation of lyric and song. Music is my bank account. From you, interest in the world outside. From you, my love of word and story. Maybe best, from you, the ability to generate laughter. And from you, the need for laughter. You could always laugh. Even when it hurt; especially when it hurt.
So on this day, 30 years too late, I say to you the things I should have said before you got sick. I am proud of you.
I now understand what you gave up. . .and I understand what you gave us.
Thanks, Pop. Too little, too late, toodleoo.
–© David Lambert, Father’s Day, 2010
Mike Bloomfield: That Tone – No Fuzz, No Feedback, No Attempt to Be "Contemporary." Photo by Steven Rushin at mikebloomfield.com
A Wee-Hour Wakeup Call From The Great Mike Bloomfield
by Tom Ellis III
It was the summer of ’67, but from my vantage point, not exactly the “Summer of Love.” Living seaside in Northeast Florida and working as a beach lifeguard, my days were filled with surfing, girls and lots of parties, few of which could compare to what we heard about from buddies who’d been to the West Coast and indulged. In fact, if there was any similarity between our experience and those in San Francisco, it could only have been the music, the richness of the fare served up by our local AM radio station.
Jay Thomas was the DJ, and he lived in my neighborhood, in a cave-like efficiency a block back from the Atlantic. He may have been working at a tiny 1,000-watt station, but his presence in our minds was huge – his weekday show from 3-7 p.m. and on Saturday afternoon captured our attention in late 1966, when he started playing album cuts from groups like the Beatles, Beach Boys, Stones and other bands who had top-40 hits. Jay was AOR before there was AOR. He supplied a rich soundtrack to high school life, one that led many of us to the record store where we began to see and hear all kinds of albums by all kinds of bands, stuff we’d never heard of and gobbled up.
That summer the music scene exploded across the U.S. Even in my little beach town it was hard to escape the gusher of musical talent that we started to hear about, buy albums by, and turn our friends onto. But something else happened that summer, for me it was momentous – I was introduced to Rolling Stone magazine, brought back from San Francisco by a girl I was chasing.
There it was: The voice of the Bay Area, music central, right in my hands. And as I read those pages – all those bands, the reviews, interviews, the ads for gigs – my musical jones went off the charts. I immediately subscribed.
A few issues later I found an article in which a guy named Paul Butterfield lambasted the Doors (who we were covering in a garage band I was playing with) for their insincere take on the blues. The blues? Paul Butterfield? Who was this guy?
Mike Bloomfield Taught Us How We Should Hear Blues Guitar
Only one way to find out – I grabbed the keys and headed directly to the Record Bar. One hour later I was on my way home with the Paul Butterfield Blues Band LP lying beside me on the passenger seat. Little did I know how seminal that trip and discovery would be.
I had been messing around with the harmonica for a year or two, never figuring it out, frustrated that I couldn’t understand how it could fit into our band’s covers of the Stones and Yardbirds. I guess my ear was more attuned to guitars. Jeff Beck, Brian Jones, George Harrison and a few other guys defined my ideal of great “soloists.” Rock was all about guitars anyway, right? But Butter totally, totally turned me around.
First, there was the music. So tough. No girls or love songs. Hard emotion, adult stories. And played loud, as the album commanded, the band had a sound that grabbed me much more tightly than anything I’d ever heard. Then there was Butter – the weary voice and that incredible harmonica sound, diving, swooping, punching, weeping, speaking directly to you, not a single note wasted, nothing overplayed.
But most of all there was Bloomfield.
Which one was he in that picture? Big hair or short hair? Who cared? I’d never heard anyone play like that, and I haven’t since.
Blame some of it on my buddy Charlie. His mom had been a jazz singer in San Francisco in the early ’50s, and he was a guitar player in a house filled with all kinds of cool music played all day. Getz, Miles, Coltrane, but also lots of guitar – Charlie Byrd, Wes, the nasty Howard Roberts stuff. My Dad, too – his love of Mel Torme, Sinatra, Basie, Lambert, Hendricks & Ross, and other vocalists had helped refine my ears a bit beyond the great AM radio we had.
Bloomfield: Closer to Jazz Than Anything I'd Heard on My Albums or The Radio
That is what hooked me about Bloomfield. His playing was so exact, so spot-on. There was a lyricism and vocalese to it that was closer to jazz than anything I’d heard on my albums or the radio. But he could cry, too, and give up such sadness. It was so sophisticated, even inside the edgy dynamics of the Butter band. The phrasing was so unique. “Poobah” was one of the happiest, greatest guitar romps I’d heard and it was an INSTRUMENTAL! No words! None of my guitar touchstones could play like that, and maybe wouldn’t dare to. They weren’t even playing in the same park with Mike.
The playing on the first, then second, Butter LP just touched me, and nothing had more resonance than Bloomers. I memorized those solos and played them over and over in my head. Butter became my soundtrack. Time to kick the party into gear? Turn on Butter. Want to impress my music buddies? Drop the needle on East-West. Had a bad day? More of it. I was hopelessly, deeply hooked. Butter would turn me into a harp player, but Bloomfield fed my soul.
For a while it just kept coming. The Electric Flag blew me out. There were guitar lines in the first Super Session LP that were like emotional mazes, the notes twisting and turning in your head, apparently avoiding the possibility of resolution, when, suddenly, MB would pull it all together into one tight statement. Breathtaking stuff. And that tone – no fuzz, no feedback, no attempt to be “contemporary,” to be Hendrix or Page or anybody else.
But access to Mike started to dwindle. Another Super Session LP. The solo album. His brilliant playing for Tim Davis on his first LP. But his name didn’t pop up much in Rolling Stone. As the mid-’70s neared, Mike started to more a part of history than currency. What had happened to him?
By then I was living in Atlanta, writing for a music magazine there, soaking up the burgeoning music scene. I heard live music all the time. But no one like Mike. So, like any fan, I did what fans are wont to: I sat down one night and wrote him a letter. I wanted him to know there were guys out there like me, not residents of San Francisco or California, but guys far removed who hadn’t forgotten him. That solo in “Far Too Many Nights.” Someone who still listened to his work. Who could cite some of his greatest solos, even hum them out loud. I told him there were lots of us out here and we missed not having him playing, right now. Stamped, sealed and addressed to Columbia Records, the message went into the mailbox the next day, probably, I thought, on it’s way to a black hole. But I had gotten it off my chest.
About a month later my first wife and I were wrapping up a long night of partying, both of us dozing off after a combination of too much workday, dinner, friends and alcohol, nightcapped with a bit of the bud. It had to have been 1 a.m. or so, and I had just dozed off. The phone rang. I sat up, pre-hungover, dazed a bit, sensing the anxiety that normally comes with those late night calls (Family tragedy? Buddy in jail? Tom, get down here now – you won’t believe who’s sitting in with the band tonight!)
I said hello. A voice asked me to ID myself. I did. Asked again. I did. Some laughing on the other end. “Who the hell is this?” from me. “It’s Mike Bloomfield, the guy you wrote the letter to,” was the response.
It seemed a bit dreamy, the whole thing. The combination of drugs and alcohol didn’t help, but I remember bits of what turned out to be a 30-minute conversation. Mike telling me how much he appreciated the letter. How he couldn’t believe I had cited so many solos. More laughter as he and a buddy seemed to be partying a bit themselves. Crazy questions about where I lived in Atlanta, if I played music, who were my favorite guitarists. Some sideways comments about Butter, who had by then become my gold-standard when it came to harp players. That staccato conversational attack. Suddenly becoming soft-spoken explanating about why he wasn’t playing outside San Francisco much. Kind of like his soloing – full of emotion, twisting and turning, succinct then rambling. And then it was over. And I was into a deep sleep.
The next morning it was like I had walked through surreal terrain. But I was STOKED. My wife couldn’t figure out why a meandering half-hour conversation in the middle of the night had me so turned on. Bloomfield albums were pulled out and played. All day. All the next day.
And the next month. The next year. Next decade. Last year. Last week. Bloomfield forever, still there, sitting right beside me in the passenger seat.
(Postscript: Cut to the mid-’90s and I’m deep into a five-part, two-year series on Butterfield, written for Blues Access magazine. Mike’s been gone a while, Butter too, but I’m living vicariously, getting to talk to so many of their musical friends – John Hammond, Musselwhite, Elvin, Sam Lay, Naftalin – and friends – Peter Butterfield, Allan Bloomfield, John Court, Sally Grossman. Norman Dayron asked me to write the liner notes to “Live at the Old Waldorf.” It’s hard to focus just on Butter, with all of these Bloomfield memories swirling around. Someone should write a book!
Someone is – Jan Wolkin! He and I hook up by phone, trade stories, contacts, etc. He and his partner, Bill Keenom, are published and he sends me a copy. I start it, ravenous for more Bloomfield. I’m reading, quickly. And then I’m there, misidentified – but it’s my story, told by one of Bloomer’s buddies – about the late night call to the fan. History corroborates my memory. It really happened. Yes it did. Yes it did.)
(Tom Ellis III has written for a variety of music publications, the Dallas Morning News, and for Elektra and Rhino Records. He is a biographer of Paul Butterfield and he has played the harp for 40 years. Ellis also is a noted expert on vintage American microphones. His encounter with Mike Bloomfield is documented in Jan Wolkin and Bill Keenom’s book “If You Love These Blues.”) Contact him here.
The Pioneer Building, A Lovely Old Slice of Victorian Architecture in Downtown Seattle
One Christmas I Dined Alone
by David Lambert
A month before Christmas ’76 I hired on as a writer for a small newspaper in Burien WA, 20 miles south of Seattle. Burien, a slow-life bedroom community that fed the newly awakening Seattle metro. I was a reporter with flair for soft news, features — and I was the new guy. My editor was Ed Penhale, a skinny guy with Woody Allen lips and a scraggly beard. Penhale was a Live Free or Die New Hampshirean with a big heart and a quick laugh. I enjoyed working with him and he was a very competent editor.
And editor Penhale, God love him, was a music freak—a progressive post hippy brainiac from the Woodstock era who still clung to the best of the flower power ethos. He’d been given a set of tickets for dinner and a performance at Seattle’s old Pioneer Bank, a 19-century architectural relic that had survived both fire and quake. The building sat amid the concrete tats of other times in the Northwest. Downtown Seattle — cool place if you like architecture and history. I did and I do.
Rack of Lamb. Makes My Mouth Water.
Penhale knew I’d be alone that Christmas. New to Northwest and new to my job, I’d had little time to make new friends, and the ones I’d begun to regard kindly were leaving for home and holiday. So before he took wing, Penhale gave me tickets for a Christmas Eve repast — drinks, dinner and a ticket to see jazz violinist Joe Venuti downstairs at the Pioneer Bank. This, by the way, compliments of the news edit desk.
Early Christmas Eve 1976 I dressed in my only coat, a worn and drafty woollie, and drove deep into Seattle, deep into the cold and hilly downtown, which like me, wore its old and only Christmas finery. This was the year I’d eat Christmas dinner alone.
Pioneer Square was alive with last minute shoppers and revelers, so I was alone but not lonely. I sat down to a near-Authurian repast, lamb with mint and a pear chutney, golden roasted birds with golden roasted vegetables, great slabs of juicy beef that leapt from the carver’s knife, and oyster dressings and tangy white cheeses and hard crust breads and fruits of all roundness and flavor, all of which I doused with bricky, rich red wine.
And the desserts, my God, the pie crusts alone were art — rhubarb, mince, apple and cherry and pear. But I tasted none of these because my heart was set on one dessert only, a simpler prize — bread pudding.
What Dessert Is More Democratic Than Bread Pudding?
Is bread pudding not the most democratic of desserts? A sumptuous aggregate of throw-aways and have-arounds — stale homemade bread, raisins, milk, and cinnamon — covered with a buttery sugar and bourbon sauce. Only this dessert seemed reasonable after the lordly meal at which I’d just spent hours.
Pioneer bank was dressed in lush Christmas tones, fat golden bows and ribbons of scarlets and forest greens. The staff had done the old girl up. Still, regaled or not, most diners abandoned the place after their feast and before the music started.
Around 11 p.m., with a swollen belt line and a body on the verge of revolt, I pushed away from the rich coffees and post-dinner brandy and walked downstairs to the little show venue, not much more than 50 seats and a stage. I heard Joe Venuti’s twirly, rollicking jazz violin before I could see the group. He was on stage with two sidemen, a pianist and a stand-up bass player.
The band was in mid-song and it was very dark so I grabbed a quick seat in the rear. The song finished and the stage lights perked up to show that I was the only body in the audience. It was me and the band.
Joe Venuti, Considered by Many The Father of Jazz Violin
Venuti looked at me and said ‘Merry Christmas, you by yourself?” I said yeah. “Like jazz?” he said. I said yes sir. “Come on up if you want.” I did, moved myself to the front row.
I stayed for two sets. I bought the room a round of drinks, but the band were pros, which means they politely tasted their drinks then set them aside. It was Christmas, what the hell. They were on the road and I was away from home and I was just tanked enough to not be intimated. . .much. I figured they knew I couldn’t play by the way I talked. If I had been any kind of player, they would have had me sit in.
At midnight the band came back from a break and Venuti had the house bring out a bottle of champagne. We toasted Christmas 1976. The band cranked up for another set. I stayed for a final drink and in between songs, I bid my farewell. I told Joe Venuti this was maybe my most memorable Christmas and I thanked them for their kindness and friendliness. Now when I think back over my many holiday seasons, I think maybe I was right: 1976, the Christmas I dined alone.
