My dad, Chet VanLannen played clarinet for a while in a little group named Matskie's Men About Town. They played every other Sunday on the Bandstand at Bay Beach Amusement park. He brung me with too, and when the band would take a break to go catch a beer or something they would let me fool around with the organ just to keep me from bein' a pest. One day they came back an I'm sitting there playing The Whiffenpoof Song like nobody's business, from that day on I was hooked.
Once they seen I was serious, they sent me to my Aunt Verna. Verna had one of them pump organs. It wasn't much to listen to, sounded like a camel giving birth to an elephant, but it was a good starter. It had a pump that you pumped with your right foot while you played. By the time I was fourteen I had a right thigh muscle the size of a Pulaski ham.
I played birthday parties and family gatherings mostly. One spring we had Father Ollmann, from St. Bernard's parish, over for Sunday brunch, and he suggested I play for the Easter services.
I played everyday after school learning all the standards. "Holy, Holy, Holy," "Peace in Heaven," "Easter Parade" and a spiritual called "Hey Lazarus You Can Get Up Now." When Easter came I was as nervous as a lawn chair at a fat farm, but I got through it okay and got some applause.
In the 50's I moved down to Milwaukee, I started out playing the churches again, but I was getting restless and plus the pay aint all that good, so I started looking for other work. The first place I worked was the Roll-a'Bowl-a on Fifth. I drove by there a couple summers ago but there aint nothing there no more. That winter they opened up a indoors ice-skating rink too, down by the Mayfair. You could skate all day for a dime, fifteen cents if you had to rent skates.
Listen to the CDs!
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Christmas For Two
Dinner For Two |
It was a couple a years later that they started putting out them new electric organs. The two big ones on the market where the Hammond, and the Whirlitzers. Them organs were fancy, but they didn't play themselfs, and so every November they hired somebody to demonstrate all the features. Mostly what you did was just play all day and switch it back an forth between the different instruments so that folks could get a feel for it. Make it look easy, even though it isn't! But which I made look like it was.
About my forth day of showing off, I keep seeing the same young gal showing up to hear me play. She was a cute in her black and white saddles, and Saint Mathew's school uniform, and right away I knew I had to know her better. One day while the boss was away I asked her if she wanted to sit down and try it for herself.
Now, one thing I have to make clear is this was against the first rule of floor demonstrations. And they were very strict about it too; never let the customer touch your organ. If they touch it, the boss always said, they'd find out how hard it actually was, and then they wouldn't want one for themselves. Even though I caught holy heck from the manager, it was a good thing I talked to her and found out her name that day, because she turned out to be my wife, Mrs. Evelyn VanLannen.
In the insinuating years following, I made a pretty good living playing weddings and wakes, brat fests and baseball games, but the lifestyle of a professional musician, aint never easy, and there was a couple of three nights there were I didn't come home till sometimes 11:30. 1976 was a particularly crazy year what with the bicentennial and all, and Evelyn suggested that maybe it was time to settle down some, so that fall we packed up the family and moved up to Lena.
There was a supper club in Lena called the Asp-Inn, where you could get a prime rib special for $6.95. It came with salad and bread bar, your choice of potato, and a cup of instant homemade French onion soup. The owner of the place, Less Vanness, played the synthesizer, which was really just an organ but with more buttons, but it also had its own drum setting, so you could play waltz or salsa, even disco if you wanted.
Lucky for me, one winter Less drove his Ski-doo through the ice, up on Kelly Lake, he didn't die or nothing, but his fingers got pretty frostbit, and whenever he played people said it sounded like a gorilla wearing work gloves.
Finally he just quit altogether an asked me if Ev' would mind me playing a couple nights a week. I said I could talk her into it which I was pretty sure I could do, since they stopped serving at 9:30.
Over the next twelve years I played darn near every supper club in Northern and Central Wisconsin. But as any musician can tell you times change, and the restaurant business switched over to Muzak, which pretty much put yours truly out of business.
But a while back I was playing for Ev's bridge club and they said that I aught to record an album of this before I can't anymore. Which I took to mean before I kick the bucket or what not. And I thought, darn it, they're right, this is a dying art form, and I need to save it for prosperity.
So I rented a recording studio and made "Elmer VanLannen's Christmas Dinner For Two". The studio technician loved it. His exact words were, i"I can't believe you did this." Which is pretty much the reaction I've been getting from everyone who listens to it.
So mix a couple of Black Russians, have some onion sticks and cheese spread, then sit back and relax, your dinners will be out shortly. Oh, and Merry Christmas.