Features and Reviews
Knocky Parker: Legendary Pianist
Part II
By Bill Mitchell
Last month we began to reprint a 1977 interview with the legendary pianist, John "Knocky" Parker. Dr. Parker (he had a Ph D. in English) recorded prolifically in several musical genres, including ragtime, Western, blues, and traditional jazz. In his day job as a college professor, he lectured on jazz, ragtime, literature, and cinema. In the first installment he tells of his childhood on a Texas farm near Dallas, and his early exposure to itinerant Black pianists in that city. He was a quick study and was able to substitute for them on working jobs by the age of eight.
Bill: And this, then, continued on through your school days?
Knocky: Yes, weekends and all--only, however, whenever the regular ones couldn't be there or something, and there was a crew of the best Black musicians in Dallas, whom I knew and who knew me. I worshipped them. I thought they were so extraordinarily good. Sometimes I can recall, people mention names and I say "Yes," "No," "Yes," "Yes." I knew "Hot Lips" Page for one, and I know definitely, I clearly remember "Blind Lemon" Jefferson. "Blind Lemon" feeling of my face, because I was just a little bitty kid and he'd laugh and feel of the hands and the face, then he'd play and I'd play. That's how I got acquainted with the A and E keys, open string because they played in those keys. He played an unstructured blues style when he wanted to.
B: Then you got into a Western band, didn't you?
K: Yes, Jim Boyd was telling me this, he was the younger brother of Bill Boyd's Cowboy Ramblers on Bluebird. Well, the big western bands, it was the Bluebird band. "The Light Crust Doughboys" and Bob Wills shared Vocalion, Wilson Brown was with Decca and Bill Boyd's Cowboy Ramblers was on Bluebird. Bill Boyd's band was in Dallas, and this is what we'd have to do. He would buy radio time from WRR and then sell minutes to emporiums and businesses in Dallas, and the band would play and then there would be one minute or two minutes of advertisements and they'd play another short tune. He gave guitar lessons and a free guitar to each student that took the course of study. That's how he made his living and then he'd work weekends and advertise the dances on his show too. Then the musicians would get a cut from all of this, even the records. The funniest thing was the co-op, I guess it's still going on, I don't know. Is the band you play with all co-op, they divide whatever there is?
B: I guess, if we had anything, but we don't.
K: Of course we didn't either, but we'd just have a ball. One time, Blackie Stephens who I worked with, took two cuts. He was the leader and his wife took up tickets so he got a cut, and his brother drove the car so he got a cut and all they would take was not so much per mile but just how much the gas and oil cost. Then he'd have to furnish everything else. Then each musician got one cut out of it. We'd get either 50% or 60%, sometimes 100% of the gate, whatever they could get and we'd advertise where we were playing, we'd play free for the radio stations, back then. I know each station wanted one whole string band to play regular daily programs somewhere around noon or in the early morning as close to noon as possible. Of course the only thing we got from them was to advertise our date. And of course then, when we'd go into some little old hamlet, they would turn out, we hoped, sometimes they didn't and I know sometimes the tires would be threadbare and have maybe four flats in 100 miles when we're trying to get back home. And then the cold rain and snow in Dallas at night, snowing and holding the bass fiddle on the fender-- agonizing experiences! Some of them would be drinking and I had a bad habit, I was just a little kid and didn't know any better and I would dose up with Vicks and have Vicks spread all over my nose and throat, trying to ward away whatever, constant colds that everyone had. Fumes of whiskey, sometimes maybe fumes of marijuana, and that Vicks salve all over the car. Everybody would get sick. It would be bad enough just the fumes being there without all that other stuff first. Wow, it was terrible, horrible, I'll tell you. That's the way it was though.
B: Then you were with these bands up until the war?
K: Yes, oh yes. The "Light Crust Doughboys" was the best. Oh, that was the best! And these musicians were, there's no doubt about it, extraordinarily good. They started going to T.C.U. (Texas Christian University) studying musical form and counterpoint. Keith Mixon taught them and they kept telling him about the kid playing the piano. Keith Mixon taught Kenneth Pitts and Marvin Montgomery. Marvin played banjo, Kenneth played violin and was the nominal leader. He told them if I would come out he'd try to arrange to give me some lessons--meaning "free," because this was depression days, nobody had anything. And I went out one Friday afternoon and knocked on his door and wanted to sink into the rug. I was scared to death. He knew it, he said "Play something for me." And I didn't know what to play. I was worried about being in his office. And he could tell I was ill-at-ease you know, and might just get up and run away at any second. "Play some Gershwin," he said. So I was trying to play "The Man I Love" the way I imagined the music would be written, so that I could make him think I knew something. And he said, "Are you trying to play that song the way you imagine the music is written?" "Yes," I said, and he said "Play some blues." All right, so I played some old blues. He said, "Come in here every Friday at three o'clock and I'll give you a free lesson." And he started me off on some little thing from Schumann's "Scenes from Childhood," a rather easy little piece, something like "Traumerei" or some other little rocky parcel with, oh, sixteen measures, a little epic. I didn't like that, I wanted to do "Liebestraum" and the "Second Hungarian Rhapsody." I took them out to him after the second or third lesson. "Well, we'll try this," he said, not knowing what, and sure enough that worked out just fine. And I kept on going then and he gave me two lessons a week, and then three. Then he arranged that anytime I could come out there in case any student stood him up I could wait out there for a lesson, and if they appeared I'd go practice some more in the practice room right down the hall and if they didn't come he'd have some free time, thirty minutes. Just all the free time available. Then he arranged for me to quit the "Doughboys" and come to school regularly to finish out my degree. He wanted me to because he became interested in me. And I've often thought, "What if he'd said ‘No' to my lessons?" I would have still been down there, I guess.
B: And did he teach you to read music?
K: Well, I didn't want to read, he wanted me to learn but I was so anxious to learn pieces and not reading. But each piece, I had the music there and I learned the piece by the notes. Of course I had the records at home, and I couldn't have done it without them both. And he explained that each five notes equaled a fifth, just how it was, and he'd count it out and he'd explain it to me in kindergarten terms, in elementary terms the stuff in the Tchaikovsky Concerto. And I'd sit down there then and play the whole thing the same way a graduate student would do, you know, first year piano. And I never did get but one year after I quit working with him because the war came along. Just one year, but I'd already played what they considered to be the equivalent, you had to have one concert with somebody else. And I'd had two full concerts so they counted each of those as junior and senior concerts and gave me all the deserved credits so that I could graduate. I had a lot of hours already in the other area that had just piled up during the night work while I was working with the "Doughboys" with very little in B.A. major in piano. One year was all I had with Keith Mixon, plus, I think, a few summers, two summers, and that's all. The war came.
B: Is he still living?
K: Yes, he's retired. I wrote him and I was supposed to go down there. I was supposed to do a concert in January before my illness caused me to cancel that for this year.
Note: Paul and Pat Affeldt transcribed the interview from tape cassettes. They commented that Knocky's "gumbo-thick southern drawl" sometimes gave them problems. They did their best to interpret it, but there are obviously a few impenetrable passages of confusion and puzzlement in their text, up with which we have to put.
