My friend from kindergarten

Expressions; Chick Corea, piano

I started kindergarten in the fall of 1971. Sioux Valley Schools put me in the “morning” kindergarten class. I got on the bus in the morning with my sister K. We dropped the first-graders through the sixth-graders off at the schoolhouse in the northwest corner of Bruce. Then my kindergarten classmates, along with the junior highers and high schoolers still on the bus, would continue on to Volga.

After a morning spent with Mrs. Clark, we got on the bus to go home at about half past eleven. And Mom had lunch ready when I got home.

We had about thirty-three kids in my morning kindergarten class. As a young South Dakotan, I never imagined that there could be that many people my age in the world. Then, Mom told me that there was an entirely different class that met in the afternoon full of thirty-three more kids my age. Well, who can make any sense out of that? I’ll believe it when I see it.

It took me a while to make friends out of these new kids. I am a procrastinator. It takes a while for me to scan the playing field and then bust a move. Eventually, I found a really good friend named Tim VW. We played together at recess. We sat on the floor together when Mrs. Clark taught us how to count to one hundred. We ate cookies together during snack time. And we rode the bus home together after school.

I must have talked about him to Mom and Dad because soon enough we went to visit him and his family. They lived on a farm only five miles away from us. Our families became pretty close.

In the fall of 1972, my seven Bruce classmates and I started first grade at the schoolhouse in the northwest corner of Bruce. For three years, we studied in isolation from the friends that we had made in kindergarten. Mrs. B., Miss M. and Mrs. P., in our new school digs, provided us with an almost “country school” experience. With as many as twenty and as few as twelve in a class, our teachers could wield a mighty powerful scimitar of discipline. The three of them excelled at playing “Good Cop, Bad Cop and ‘I’m Busy Over Here But Call Me If You Need Me’ Cop”. The shallow teacher-student ratio allowed our teachers to spend a little more time with each of us on an individual basis as need warranted. We took something like that for granted back then.

In the autumn of 1975, the Sioux Valley school board decided to close our little school and to herd us in with the rest of our schoolmates. I got to renew my friendship with Tim.

One night in January of 1977, Tim’s mom and dad invited us over to their house. Over cookies and coffee, later in the evening, with Mom and Dad sitting right there, Mr. VW said to me, “Erik, I want you, over the next few weeks, to write down on a piece of paper every song that you know how to play. See if you can come up with enough music to play for maybe an hour and a half. Next month, the Brookings County Pork Producers will have their annual banquet at the Holiday Inn, and I’d like you to provide dinner music. Can you do that?” I think so, Mr. VW. Can Mom and Dad come? “Yup.” Even though we don’t raise pigs? “We’ll figure something out.”

I am a procrastinator. On the night before the banquet, Mom and I sat at the piano and wrote down every single song that I knew. Then the next day, while I was at school, she typed the list out on index cards, categorizing the songs by style. Before we headed into town she handed me the cards with a red pencil so that I could mark them off as I played them.

On a cold winter night, a school night, by the way, in February of 1977 at the Holiday Inn by Interstate 29 in Brookings, South Dakota, I played my first gig. I was eleven years old, I played solo piano for an hour and a half, on a rotten piano, they provided me with dinner, they provided my parents with dinner, and they paid me twenty-five dollars. Not a bad night’s work.

You don’t hear Chick Corea play solo piano very often. His musical interest lies more with his interplay within an ensemble. And he has played with so many ensembles. The way he plays within a combo setting wouldn’t qualify for a swing style characterization. He doesn’t play jazz like George Shearing, Oscar Peterson, Art Tatum and Teddy Wilson. Brazilian and Spanish-American rhythmic and musical styles exert their influence over his improvisations and his song choices. But that doesn’t mean he can’t swing. And he does on this album. Really, how can you do otherwise when your selections include Charlie Chaplin’s “Smile”, George Gershwin’s “Someone To Watch Over Me” and Billy Strayhorn’s “Lush Life”.

After graduation, I lost track of Tim. I heard through his parents that he got married and that he became a banker in a small town in Minnesota. On the stormy evening before Dad’s funeral, Tim made an appearance at the funeral home with a card and a plant. It had been almost thirteen years since I had last seen him. And now it’s been another thirteen years.

As many times as I have traveled between South Dakota and Minneapolis over the years, with Tim’s home somewhere in between, you would think that I would have taken the time to stop for a vist. Ah, but I am a procrastinator. Don’t worry, though. As my friends have heard me say before: I WILL conquer my procrastination problem. JUST YOU WAIT!!

Credits: To Mr. VW, for recognizing my abilities before realizing them myself. Thank you for giving a little “push” out into the world, to do what I’m supposed to do.