(Link to a video of one of my finer musical moments at the bottom of this post!)😁😁
Many folks are aware of the fact that I bought this self-same instrument (down to the serial number), from the Gospel church that my mother attended while pregnant with me. This very organ played the first musical notes (loud music was never played in our home!) that fell upon my developing fetal ear drums.
When one has both, physical and mental trauma/abuse in their life (I had several birth defects, and multiple surgeries since I was 2 weeks old!), they tend to have firm, concrete and clear memories at a very early age.
I can clearly remember events that happened to me (remember - I'm 55!), at the age off 11, 13 and 18 **months** of age!
I remember both, being held in the loving arms of the minister's wife who worked in the church nursery (the feeling was unusual for me - I'd never felt warm, human love in my life at that point..) AND, me pulling myself up on the side of the bassinet in that nursery - with a cast up to my hip on my right leg, and peering out of the large window in the nursery and into the church's sanctuary.
I had to 'bob and weave' to try to look through adults who were both standing and sitting, as the nursery was in the back of this church.
Having no clue as to what that the genius (later PROVEN!) young man was doing to that 'magic box' in the front of the church, BUT, I knew that that was for me!
Whether they like it or not (and I can list names!), there are SEVERAL people who are still alive because of the musical heritage - a completely safe place - that this young man instilled into my soul.
Every time I heard this Hammond C3 / Leslie 22R >> 122 rig - 3 to 4 nights per week for my first 11 years and under the very skilled hands of the young child prodigy and my life-long music mentor and friend, Chicago's own late Bishop Phil Willis, I was transported to a place where I couldn't be mentally and physically abused by my mother.
The only thing that I hate with a vengeance when referring to my music taking me to Heaven is that I eventually have to return to Earth, which is both disappointing and much more painful in comparison to the escape that I'd just experienced.
Just for the record and necessary background:
My mother blamed an affair that my father had on her with her sister while she was pregnant with me on ME - and, I wasn't even there - yet! Additionally, if my mother wasn't robbing a woman that we considered a grandmother (she cared for my father after his mother passed at the age of 32 from tuberculosis) until SHE died, and my mother had to stay in her good graces for this poor woman to pay her bills, she would have gotten an abortion! So, I survived both, a woman who would have aborted me, had it not been for influential people in her life whom she thought she had to impress, AND, I was literally an orphan before I was born. Often, I got physically beaten until I could no longer stand on my feet by the mother from Hell who was simply jealous that I was unapologetically **ME!**, overall, a much better person for this world than she ever dreamed to be!
"Those that say, 'Don't air out your dirty laundry in public!' PROBABLY has a full hamper, themselves!"
- Auckland Chase Théoden, paraphrasing Dr. Phil McGraw
Back to the matter at hand:
Just to get away from Satan's Secretary, I often sat with my grandparents on the 2nd pew from the front, rather than on the 2nd pew from the back, where my 'genetic accident' (called by some, a 'family') sat. Think about it. There were SEVERAL reasons for this!
During 'alter call', a part of most Gospel church services, since I couldn't walk until I was 6, and with a cast going up most of my right leg (I was born with a severely clubbed foot and both, Erb's Palsy and Gunstock Deformity in my right arm.. There are more physical and mental challenges in my life, but, at this rate, I'm starting to sound like a 'Pitiful Pearl Party of ONE!'😂), I crawled out from under my grandparent's loving, protective feet, up the righthand isle of this church a few feet, and then, I crawled up the 5 steps that led up to the pulpit/platform/stage of this church, since the Leslie 22R >> 122 that was attached to the Hammond C3 that my mentor and Savior was playing just 3 ft. from me sat at the top of these stairs. I sat on the 4th step and leaned my head against the lower louvers of this Leslie, and I let Phil, then 15, rock me into a place where the evils that were just a few feet of me could never reach me.
It's of no wonder that, while my right ear STILL (at 55!!) hears 5,000 hz better than average human hearing, the hearing in my right ear is a bit less than in my left ear!! 😂😁
I'm a 'super sensor', according to my Dr... Due to semi-ocular albinism, too much light hits my retinas, too - and much more! (My nose is powerful enough that I could probably compete with a bloodhound - NOT a trait that you ever want in your life!!😁😀)
I could live 1,000 of my lives, and, my playing style STILL wouldn't be even in the same state - much less, the same ballpark!, as the skills of this fantastic man, Mr / Bishop Phil Willis (born and buried in Hannibal, MO, but he lived in Chicago his entire adult life), but that doesn't keep me from pressing forward!!
In fact, after his passing, I took a couple videos of my late, great mentor playing songs on a Hammond organ to the St. Louis Cardinal's past organist of 20 yrs and friend of mine (he was a professionally trained church organist when he wasn't playing for the Cardinals or moonlighting as an organ / piano salesman and music teacher at his beautiful aunt's music shop(s) here in the St. Louis area, just to see if he could tell me what my Phil's 'passing chords' - those used between key changes were... My friend handed me back my phone and he said to me,
"Auckland, I can't even tell you what damned, basic KEY signature he's playing in!" 😁😁
My reply:
"So, it really ME? I though I was too stupid to catch on to his playing style!"
My friend,
"Auckie, **NOBODY** plays like your late friend and mentor, Phil! It's not just you - you're in good company here!😁😁
Even if you put my Phil's videos into the website/app, "Chordify" that tells you every key change to virtually every video on YouTube, it gets MOST of his chords wrong, and you (now) rarely get a bad chord from this fine, useful tool. This is because Phil never 'stayed' in the key change. He merely tapped it, and continued his wonderful, walking bass lines on those organ pedals, so, because he treated a simple key change the same as any passing, chord, his style MASSIVLY confuses this app and most of the chord changes that it puts out are wrong when it comes to his videos!
A video of me playing Lynyrd Skynyrd's "Freebird". Hey! Ya gotta know that:
#1) I'm playing the self-same iconic organ that started it all!
#2) My late, great life and music mentor, Mr / Bishop Phil Willis's memorial pamphlet resides on the music stand of this, the same organ that he played from the ages of 9 - 16.
#3) I knew good and damned well that, during the first part of this song, the organist should NOT play anything other than basic chords - not even any inversions, thereof, and, he/her should keep their hands OFF that Leslie switch, leaving her in the "Slow" position until the jam session at the end.
#4) Did I tell you that there was a jam session in the end? 😁 Please stick around until 05:55 in the video!!
At the beginning of this video, by the 3:00 point, my soul had already long left the tarmac - AND, at 05:55 in this video, my soul leaves the (rocket!) launch pad!! 😂😁
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kGA8QZfJvGg&list=RDMMkGA8QZfJvGg&start_radio=1
More later, and thanks for listening!
- Auckland Chase Théoden
