I was about 16 years old, visiting "High School" in the nearby town of Ried and, of course, given the circumstances of that time, I was always broke.
Strolling down the Main Square in the direction of the river, I saw one of my friends coming up towards me.
Charly Reicheneder, the son of the owners of the shoe store by the same name, had blown a great fanfare in the same music group where I was a drummer. We marched together and played together from 1942 to 1945 and we remained great friends ever since, even though our ways had parted.
Charly's greeting must have gone something like this:
"Servas Eggi! Was tuast denn ?"
I probably told him that I was not doing all that much.
Charly came right to the point: "You want to play the string bass in our band ?"
"Sure, but I have no idea how to play the string bass"!
To play the bass in a Jazz Combo was a far cry from the almost two years of violin lessons I had had, where one plays mostly "Etudes" and other boring exercises.
Charly told me that he was growing tired of playing the bass, that he had been practising the clarinet for quite a while now and that he thought that he would rather play this reed instrument than the "Double Bass".
"I'll teach you" he said.
And that was it!
From then on Charly gave me lessons in the fine art of playing the bass and, on a peace of card board, he drew the contact points for the individual notes. I had no problems whatever with the rhythmical aspects, but I must say that the bass lines for melodies in varying keys where a different matter.
That took a while and I was sometimes surprised that the rest of the "Melodies", (that was the name of our little combo) put up with my attempts to find the appropriate key.
Sometimes I would ask our pianist: "in what key are we playing this piece ?" or, "what key did you change to now ?"
He would just smile and say: "Listen and try it. You'll find it."
As time when on, I got a little better and found the keys quicker.
I also discovered that I could sing with a mike and an amp and a speaker and that too added to the entertainment value of "the Melodies"..
Charly became a wonderful Clarinetist, a simply great Tenor Sax player and, as this article with his picture in one of Braunau's magazines says,
Charly became a "Living Legend".
Under his name the magazine wrote:
"A Legend in his Lifetime"
Here are "The Melodies"
(Normally we used a piano. Space constraints
forced us to use an accordion on the occasion of this picture.)
Bertstravels
remembers these times fondly.
.
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