JAJ

 I grew up in a house with a piano.  Everybody sang, some better than others, and most of us played that piano.  Some of us could even read music.  As a kid it wasn’t unusual for us to gather at the piano while one played and the rest of us sang.  Old school, I suppose.  I played the French horn and could read music but couldn’t play the piano reading sheet music.  I played by ear and was maybe just below average at best.  I could hear it in my head but struggled to recreate it.  Many of my friends shared my disease but didn’t have pianos in their homes so they often gathered at our house to work out how to play popular tunes.  It was probably painful to listen to.  My parents were saints, though, and tolerated us repeating the same phrases over and over, ad nauseum, until we got it right without telling us to “Stop it already!”.  Not sure any of us ever got it right.  Kept us off the streets. 

There were many local bands that played dances.  They included Tiny Tony and the Statics, The Sonics, The Wailers, The Kingsmen, The Dynamics and others.  Some enjoyed a bit of recording success.  The Dynamics were a Central District favorite and had recorded a few tunes that received radio play.  The drummer, Ron Woods, was a well-known figure and one night when he was over visiting he taught my friend, Bobby Melvin, and I to play JAJ.  We got good at it and it probably drove my parents to the edge. 

The Dynamics

Turns out that Ron taught many local kids how to play it and we taught others.  Soon it was the most-played piano tune in central Seattle by young boys out to impress their friends.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fpTNB357xeY

The song was originally written by Dave Lewis (The Godfather of Northwest Rock) on the Hammond B3 and he had a number of good recordings that established a distinctive organ-driven Northwest Sound.  Anyone who had an organ at home was very popular as “friends” would gather from far and wide to work on their renditions of Dave’s many songs.

Dave Lewis

One of his partners lived two houses away at the corner of 24th and Calhoun with their kids, Venus and Ronald.  Both were stellar kids.  Venus favored he Mom and Ronald was the miniature spitting image of his Dad minus the thin mustache.  Venus was the sweetest kid ever and Ronald would often come to the door, mitt in hand, to ask me to play catch and show him how to play baseball.  He wasn’t a natural.  I would try to impress him with my ability to play his Dad’s songs on the piano but he just laughed and let me know that my attempts to replicate his Dad’s work were covered with flies. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JZDvRYzSyXE

The piano thing has continued for me.  I have been married for over 30 years to Jean who got her degree in piano performance, taught music at a private school, performed live many times and ran a piano studio out of our home for nearly 20 years.  Our daughter, Kasie, studied piano for 13 years, performed at the Seattle Art Museum on Vladimir Horwitz’s piano, played at several public events including on KING FM (Live by George) where she blew George Shangrow and everyone else in the room away.  My shining accomplishment is that early in Kasie’s piano career I taught her how to play JAJ.  A father’s legacy. 

I’m still living with a piano and today, when nobody is around I sit down at our Steinway and play JAJ which Ronald would laugh at and Kasie played better than me on her first attempt 30 years ago.