Music • Photography • Writing
My dad played piano as a teenager and learned music theory at a conservatory in Chicago, his home town. He traveled with several big bands, most notably the Edgar Drake Orchestra, and learned to play accordion for a cross-country gig aboard a train. Once the wife and kids came along, he settled into the more routine life of a day job as a banker, but always supplemented his income with a wide variety of music jobs. He and his buddies would play such diverse styles as German polka jobs, stolling Italian music, cowboy songs, and society tunes, often at the world-famous Broadmoor Hotel in Colorado Springs. He played honky tonk piano Sunday nights at the Broadmoor's Golden Bee, an English-style sing-along pub, for nearly three decades, from its opening until shortly before his death. To hear a (poor quality) live recording of him playing "The Wiffenpoof Song" at the Golden Bee, click here.
