Friday, June 17, 2005
Dorothy Chase has passed on. Dorothy was such a great lady. She was always rather quiet about her own achievements, so others are obliged to sing her praises. A bit more than forty years ago, she'd teach group guitar lessons in living rooms borrowed for the occasion for the grand sum of fifty cents per person per lesson, and those two quarters probably just covered the cost of the mimeographed song and chord hand outs. If a student broke a string in class, Dorothy would reach into her guitar case and she usually had a spare to share so the person could continue. She taught elegant and intricate fingerpicking on guitar and just wanted people to play music, you know, and she succeeded mightily. One time, she brought Libby Cotten to town to play. I used to refer to Dorothy Chase and her family as "instrumental figures" about town, and I'm fairly certain everyone who heard it got tired of hearing that joke from me.
Everyone in their family worked in the store, including the Grandpa who spoke with a thick accent and had a funny trick when he shook hands with the kids. The Folk Music Center was in a small wooden building, what was once a private residence that had been converted to a commerce. Facing the tracks that ran through town, the center was a short stroll from that greeting card studio where Frank Zappa worked for awhile. Back then, the Chases had a clock on the wall with the numbers reversed, so the hands seemed to move backwards through time. This was long ago, when they were there at that shop. The San Bernardino Freeway had just been completed and the lanes were nearly empty of cars because Los Angeles still a distant city, and a different world.
Inside the store, there were a few bins of records and small baskets of capos and kazoos, and harmonicas in many keys were offered for sale. Guitars, banjos, and other stringed instruments covered the walls, held aloft with brightly colored pipe cleaners. There were dulcimers, a fiddle or two, and banjo-ukes! And people were always free to try them out, often retiring to the outdoor courtyard to play, and impromptu "hoots" would soon erupt. Back then, you could buy on time and arrange regular payments if the Chases knew you, and they even sold bongo drums!
The center moved to larger quarters on the main downtown thoroughfare, in vicinity and across the street from where the small hay and feed store used to operate right nextdoor to the only "department store" in town. There were rarer instruments on the walls, and even a sitar rested on a stand in the corner, and the baskets held shakers and rattles and claves. The baskets sometimes held postcards of aerial shots of the LA basin, showing the ominous dark bank of smog ending like a wall at the edge of our valley. I first met Baby Ben Harper in that store when he still was a babe in arms, cozied in his infant carry-all that rested on the counter while his mom was tending the register. This is just a small story about neighbors and friends and people in the community and some of my memories of them.
Dorothy Chase's passing announced in today's L.A. Times. ¶ 6/17/2005 07:16:00 AM
Everyone in their family worked in the store, including the Grandpa who spoke with a thick accent and had a funny trick when he shook hands with the kids. The Folk Music Center was in a small wooden building, what was once a private residence that had been converted to a commerce. Facing the tracks that ran through town, the center was a short stroll from that greeting card studio where Frank Zappa worked for awhile. Back then, the Chases had a clock on the wall with the numbers reversed, so the hands seemed to move backwards through time. This was long ago, when they were there at that shop. The San Bernardino Freeway had just been completed and the lanes were nearly empty of cars because Los Angeles still a distant city, and a different world.
Inside the store, there were a few bins of records and small baskets of capos and kazoos, and harmonicas in many keys were offered for sale. Guitars, banjos, and other stringed instruments covered the walls, held aloft with brightly colored pipe cleaners. There were dulcimers, a fiddle or two, and banjo-ukes! And people were always free to try them out, often retiring to the outdoor courtyard to play, and impromptu "hoots" would soon erupt. Back then, you could buy on time and arrange regular payments if the Chases knew you, and they even sold bongo drums!
The center moved to larger quarters on the main downtown thoroughfare, in vicinity and across the street from where the small hay and feed store used to operate right nextdoor to the only "department store" in town. There were rarer instruments on the walls, and even a sitar rested on a stand in the corner, and the baskets held shakers and rattles and claves. The baskets sometimes held postcards of aerial shots of the LA basin, showing the ominous dark bank of smog ending like a wall at the edge of our valley. I first met Baby Ben Harper in that store when he still was a babe in arms, cozied in his infant carry-all that rested on the counter while his mom was tending the register. This is just a small story about neighbors and friends and people in the community and some of my memories of them.
Dorothy Chase's passing announced in today's L.A. Times. ¶ 6/17/2005 07:16:00 AM
