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The REALLY Good Old Days

Last Updated (Wednesday, 14 May 2008 11:39)
Written by Roger Bobo
Thursday, 28 June 2007 05:07

Articles - Personal Essays

This photo arrived in my email a few days ago. It was sent by Ralph Sauer, my old friend from the Los Angeles Philharmonic and as far back as the Eastman School of Music in the 1950s. It wasn’t the first time I had seen this picture, and the memories it brought back were from a time almost forgotten. The four men, the trombones and tuba of the New York Philharmonic in the late 1940s to the early 1960s, Gordon Pulis, Lewis Van Haney, Allen Ostrander and William Bell were probably the most famous and legendary trombone and tuba section ever.

When I was 15 years old and the New York Philharmonic came to Los Angeles, I arranged to take a lesson with William Bell, who was, as well as being a great tuba teacher, a kind and jolly man. After the lesson, Mr. Bell invited me to come back stage with him for their Sunday afternoon concert. I was as excited as a kid could be. Mr. Bell introduced me to the trombone section who also seemed to have that kind and jolly characteristic. Soon, they excused themselves so they could practice something together, and as I listened, my musical world took on a new dimension; it was the choral from the last movement of Brahms 1st Symphony. I had never heard anything so beautiful, and even today that beauty is still alive in my memory, and remains as a sonic reference how a trombone section should sound.

While I attended the Eastman School of Music in Rochester New York from 1956 to 1961, I would occasionally drive down to New York City and take more lessons from Mr. Bell. He had a teaching studio on 48th St. above a restaurant called the Red Devil and I remember my first lesson there,- it was at 8:00 AM on a Sunday morning! Walking from my hotel on 56th at 7:00 AM in a nearly isolated New York City was a special experience in itself; the biggest city in the world was not quite awake yet, the streets were empty and quiet. After the lesson Mr. Bell asked me to wait while he taught two more lessons after which he would take me to lunch at the Carnegie Tavern. It was during this wait that I met some of the chronic followers of William Bell; someone referred to them once as “The Satellites”- they were good guys and were, in fact, always around Mr. Bell.

The entrance to the Carnegie Tavern was right next to the stage entrance to Carnegie hall; for the hall the steps went up, and for the tavern the steps went down.

Carnegie Tavern was what in Holland is called a “Brown Pub”. It was dark, it was brown with heavy natural wood tables, it was very cozy and the walls were covered with pictures of all the performing Carnegie Hall musicians that frequented the tavern including the photograph that inspired this article. Mr. Bell bought me a London broil sandwich, hot rare roast beef on dark rye bread with caraway seeds and laced with natural gravy; it was the best sandwich I’ve ever had. I returned to that tavern a few years ago and was saddened that it had become a pink pub with pink tablecloths and bright lights; I U-turned, and have never gone back.

The first time I saw this photograph was on the wall of trombone teaching icon Emery Remington’s famous room 310 studio at Eastman. Gordon Pulis and Lewis Van Haney had been students of Mr. Remington, better known as the Chief, in the early 1940s. The Chief’s studio walls were covered with photographs of the students that studied with him at Eastman; most of the men in those pictures had jobs in symphony orchestras throughout North America.

Seeing this picture again brought back memories that can’t be duplicated in this very different world we live in now; William Bell personified those times and there will absolutely never be another William Bell.

And the same question returns that struck me when I first saw that photograph over a half century ago. What was written on that card that Mr. Bell was holding and the legendary trombone section were focusing on? Whatever it was it must have been good!

- June 3, 2007, Le Domaine Forget, Québec, Canada