From: "Doug Bright" <75366.2463@compuserve.com> To: Subject: Article: November, 2005 Date: Thursday, December 15, 2005 9:26 PM PART ONE: TALL BOOTS: NEW CD PRESERVES A WESTERN MUSIC LEGACY By Doug Bright Demographically, Suze (pronounced "Susie") Spencer Marshall belongs to the baby-boom generation that raised itself on rock and roll in the 1950's and '60's, but unlike most of her contemporaries, she spent her formative years completely oblivious to the daring new sound, and when she finally discovered it in her early teens, she took a dim view. Yet even in childhood, her greatest passion was music. "My grandparents, their extended families, and friends were all musicians," she explains. "I learned to sing and play chords from them when I was very young. As a kid, I thought everyone played music." Many years went by before she learned that her family of talented recreational musicians was linked to one of the most popular acts in country music history, The Sons of The Pioneers. Growing to adolescence in California, she learned a vast repertoire of songs they had written that were never commercially recorded, and it is from this treasury of all-but-forgotten gems that she has compiled a well researched and exquisitely performed album, appropriately entitled TALL BOOTS, in honor of her beloved musical mentors. "Great-grandfather John Spencer and his brother, Ephraim Spencer, began their journey west in their teens," she explains in the liner notes to her new CD. "With a change of clothing, saddle bags stuffed with food, and violins securely tied on, they mounted their horses, left their New England home, and fiddled their way across the American West at a time when good fortune waited for those determined and tough enough to find it." After working in the mines of Missouri by day and fiddling for dances by night, they traveled to Florida, where they hooked up with Teddy Roosevelt's Rough Riders. "That put 'em in Texas for training," Marshall elaborates, "and that's one of the reasons they ended up in Texas." Born at the dawn of the twentieth century, Suze Marshall's grandfather, Jack Spencer, was showing some promise on the fiddle by the age of ten. By 1930 the family had relocated to southern California and Jack Spencer had grown up to be an accomplished fiddler and guitarist. Through his brother Austin, who played banjo and piano, he met steel guitar virtuoso Bennie Nawahi, a Honolulu native who developed a hot jazz style similar to that of his countryman Sol Hoopii and came to the mainland to ply his trade in 1928. After recording with various groups on the East Coast, he settled in Los Angeles. Nawahi and the Spencers hit it off immediately, working up some tunes and joining a loose configuration in Long Beach called the Biltmore Hotel Orchestra. They recorded a couple of sides as the Biltmore Hotel Trio before forming a more ambitious six-piece group called the International Cowboys that included the Spencers' brother Vern and a young man named Len Slye, who would later be known to the world as Roy Rogers. They apparently recorded a couple of sides under this brand name, too, but they soon broke up after a tour that amounted to a road musician's nightmare. "Len had the only car, and the car broke down," Suze Marshall explains. "They didn't have any food. They would play, and some guy would masquerade as their manager and take their checks and cash. The tour was capped off with an earthquake that struck while they played a Los Angeles theater. They were just startin' to play and the chandeliers started swingin', and people just started flyin' out of there! They played a couple of songs and basically emptied the place, and at that point my grandfather said, I've had enough of this!" With the demise of The International Cowboys, Len Slye and Vern Spencer, who would later take the more familiar stage name of Tim Spencer, joined the now-legendary Bob Nolan to form The Pioneer Trio in early 1934. When Lloyd Perryman joined them, a new institution called The Sons of The Pioneers came into being. Jack Spencer, on the other hand, had learned his lesson from his ordeal with the Cowboys. "He did play professionally slightly after that: he didn't just jump right out of it," his granddaughter explains, "but he no longer looked to make money playin' music. He did some recording with a couple different groups as a rhythm player. His name would be this and his name would be that, but he didn't really want to be recognized. People would say, "Oh, you need to play! Just think how much money you could make!" But he'd already gone broke playin' music. He was in the Navy after that." Consequently, the family into which Suze Spencer was born instilled in her a deep love for its music but regarded it as a strictly recreational activity. "For them, music was something that kept your mind brilliant," she recalls. "They felt that the strongest way to build a really sharp mind was to play music." And play music they did! The liner notes to Suze Spencer Marshall's new CD are packed with fond memories of hearing, learning, and harmonizing their songs at her childhood home in San Jos`e, at the family ranch, on trail rides, and on the beach with her grandfather when he visited his old friend Bennie Nawahi. "We didn't have TV and only turned the radio on for special programs," she recalls. "There were always so many other things to do, so much music goin on, and I loved it! They were a lively bunch and, I think, rather thrilled that I loved the music so much." Eventually, however, Suze Spencer's happy musical childhood was cut short by a life-changing turn of events. "I was about twelve," she remembers, "and my stepdad moved the kids all up to Oregon. I felt like they just ripped me out of my own life: that was devastating! My grandparents and the whole extended family were just the kindest, most wonderful, most loving people! I've had to go through life with nobody knowing me and knowing what it was like to be around them. It's been tough." "I'd go to my room," she continues, "and I'd try to write down everything I could remember--pages and pages! I've got it all. I had this huge repertoire in my head that no one in the world knew. It had never been recorded, it had never been published, and I knew all the parts to all these songs, and nobody had a clue. That's how I grew up." By 1984 Suze Spencer Marshall was living in eastern Oregon with a husband and three children. "I was flyin' back from Idaho Falls," she remembers. "My husband got transferred there, so I was on my way back from house-hunting. The kids were at home with friends. On the return trip back to eastern Oregon, the plane lost cabin pressure and overcorrected, so it blew out my inner ear system. It took 'em about six months to figure out where they could send me 'cause at that point I was in bad shape. They found out that some of the best inner-ear doctors in the world were in Portland, and that was close to sea level, to take the pressure off. I had a friend in Vancouver that was willing to help take care of the kids while I was havin' surgery. They figured I had the best chance to survive if I could come, but I knew I'd have to stay. My ex left me then. He came back for a while and it just made it worse, so he ended up movin' on." Once situated in Vancouver, Marshall faced a long and depressing ordeal of reconstructive surgeries, and her morale was at an all-time low. "I had pretty much given up," she remembers. "I was in really bad shape! My grandfather thought I would try to get better if I could play the music or sing the songs. He sent up an old, beat-up guitar and told my daughter that if I could just get the guitar in my hands, he would call and sing the songs over the phone and help me remember how to play 'em. My grandpa enlisted her to help me be strong enough to hang in there for this next big surgery. He would call every night and sing to the kids and sing to me, and I'd try to remember how to play those things. That's what got me playin'." Meanwhile, Marshall's children were studying music at Brass, Reed and Guitar Shop in Vancouver, and it was through people she met there that she discovered Puget Sound Guitar Workshop, an adult musical summer camp that provides week-long sessions of instrumental training and camaraderie. Vintage swing was gaining popularity with the campers when Marshall first attended in 1987, reviving a powerful memory of listening to the great vocalists of the big-band era with her family in California. "I'd have a Shirley Temple and watch Ella or Nat King Cole--I saw all those people!" she recalls happily. "So when I went to camp it was like, "These people know all the good stuff!" There were good players up there, and I knew the chords to my grandpa's music would fit what they were doing. That was a huge connection, but I never found anyone to play the repertoire I knew, so I knew that I would have to research it before anybody would get it." ---------------------------------------- ---------------------------------------- (This article will be continued in the next issue of HERITAGE MUSIC REVIEW. TALL BOOTS can be ordered through Suze Marshall's website, www.suzespencermarshall.com.) ----------------------------------------