A Walk on the Wild Side

By Earl Wild

This is a Memoir by the distinguished American Classical Concert Pianist Earl Wild. Mr. Wild passed in January 2010 at the age of 94. He spent 30 years working on this book with Michael Rolland Davis.

When Earl Wild passed, Michael completed and released the book in 2011 in a hardbound version with 900 pages and multiple photos. In 2023 this Memoir was re-edited and released as an epub version as well as a paperback version. Earl Wild knew almost every important individual in the 20th Century and he wrote about these experiences meeting them as well as speaking extensively about all the music he performed in his lifetime.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Ivory Classics Foundation
• Release date: Jun 1, 2023
• ISBN: 9798988284918

Book preview

Chapter 1: Born in the Crotch of Mckinley Park

Pianists  I’ve  Heard

Everyone has heard the line, ‘How do you get to Carnegie Hall . . . practice, practice, practice!’ Well, that was always my attitude and my goal. I was totally committed to a life in music by the time I was three years old, and I never wavered. I practiced the piano constantly.

I was born on Thanksgiving Day, November 26, 1915, in the small community of Knoxville (a Southside suburb of Pittsburgh, PA.), located in the crotch of McKinley Park. On the day of my birth, my mother was looking forward to turkey, but she got me instead.

I still recall my first encounter with sound. My parents had an old Edison phonograph that played thick 78 rpm records. Each disc was so heavy if dropped, it would surely break a toe. Although my parents had quite a few different records (but no piano music), the disc I remember most was the Overture to Bellini’s opera Norma, which begins with a G minor chord of three notes (G, B-flat, and D). At the age of three, I was able to reach up to our upright piano, and play the same three-note chord in perfect rhythm. I then continued to poke out the first few pages of the overture. My mother realized immediately that I had an unusual musical talent. No one recognized, however, that I was exhibiting perfect pitch. It wasn’t until three years later that a teacher discovered my absolute pitch (the proper term).

The glorious sound of music knocked me out. After that first encounter with the piano, I began to sit at the instrument for hours, and experiment with different chordal structures and rhythms. By the age of three and a half, I could drum out some things that sounded reasonably respectable. Fortunately, my family realized that the talent I was exhibiting was so unusual they should send me to a piano teacher. It was definitely not too soon.

Many parents think they’re being kind by holding off music instruction until their children are eight or ten, but that’s already too late. They should receive instruction, and start performing little concerts before they begin to think about what they’re doing. It’s the same with learning languages.

I was fascinated by the piano from the first day I touched it. When I began taking lessons, I never had to be asked to practice—I had to be dragged away from the piano. I knew by the age of three years old that I wanted music in my life. Even then, I was so attracted to sound, that there was never any doubt in my mind regarding my dreams and aspirations. I would become what was inside of me—a musician. It was that simple. It didn’t matter whether I was going to be famous, or whether people would like my playing, or even whether I could make a decent living playing the piano. It didn’t matter to me, because the piano and music in general were what I loved. Nothing existed except music. Everything else seemed foolishness. Music was the most important thing in the world to me and has been my source of strength and creativity throughout my lifetime.

My parent's families were both descended from immigrants—there were many immigrant families in and around Pittsburgh in 1915. My father’s parents were farmers who came to America from the Alsace-Lorraine region of France, in the late 1800s. My mother’s ancestors (her maiden name was Winstel), arrived in America in 1680 and were a blend of English, Northern Irish, and German descendants. My mother was an only child, or at least that’s what she always told us.

I was named after my father Royland (Royland Earl Wild), but I dropped the Royland as soon as I could speak. My father was raised on a sprawling farm just outside of Pittsburgh, in Baldwin Township, Bucks County. He was one of thirteen children and a very quiet man. When his mother died, my grandfather (his father), sold the family farm, bought a fancy checkered suit, and moved to Florida, where he proceeded to spend all the family money. I never met my Wild grandparents—they both died before I was born.

After trying his hand at various jobs, my father landed a well-paying job working in the invoice department of the Pittsburgh Steel Company. It was my mother who discovered that he had a special gift for mathematics.

Although he didn’t have much formal schooling, my father was able to add long columns of figures in his head and arrive at the total with astonishing speed. My mother nurtured his abilities and was extremely helpful in his work at the steel company.

I’m convinced that my musical abilities didn’t come from my father. His gifts in mathematics and his sense of logic didn’t translate into music at all—he was utterly tone-deaf. The only piece of music my father remembered or recognized was, My Wild Irish Rose. I never shared his interest in math, and he never shared my interest in music, which I believe influenced his way of relating to me. I was not very close to him, because he could never understand why I was so devoted to the piano and music. I never understood him either. Basically, our relationship was nil.

Memories of my father are not positive, though at certain times I found his actions somewhat amusing. My Uncle Ted would come over to our house on occasion, and he and my father would then go down to our basement, saying they had to fix the furnace. That was where my father hid his liquor since it was during the prohibition era (1920–1933). I eventually concluded that fixing the furnace involved drinking whiskey!

I also remember how strangely my normally quiet and reserved father, would react when he got angry with my two older sisters. He would immediately go to the attic where my sisters’ heavy wooden hope chests were stored, select the chest belonging to the sister he was mad at, place it on his back, and carry it down to the basement—three flights of stairs. This particular demonstration always meant that one of my sisters was in the doghouse. After he calmed down and got over his ‘mad-on’ (sometimes it lasted days), he would then schlep my sister’s hope chest back to the attic, where it stayed until the next episode.

My father walked out on my mother, my younger brother Bill, and me, around 1929, when I was fourteen. He left the house one day and never came back. I never found out why—my mother would never talk about it.

That was the last time I saw my father. My parents didn’t officially divorce, so neither ever remarried. I don’t think my mother had any interest in men after my father left. Actually, I don’t think she ever had any interest in the pleasures of sex either. For her, sex was something you did for procreation only— not for fun. When I was very young, I remember hearing my mother and father talking through their bedroom wall. My mother said to my father, I’m not putting that dirty thing in my mouth!

Lillian and Beatrice, my two older sisters, had moved out of the house by 1929 when my father left. Because of my mother and father’s separation, our family was feeling the horrible effects of the Depression. For some reason, my mother had no desire to find a job. She relied on me from 1929 onward to be the breadwinner of the family. To make money, I learned to make arrangements and orchestrations and I performed lots of commercial work on the radio. It was the only way I could make the amount of money we needed to live. Making a decent living by performing concerts and touring, wasn’t in the cards for me during the Depression.

I suppose I met all twelve of my aunts and uncles on my father’s side, but I only remember six: Aunt Beatrice, Aunt Malvina, Aunt Carrie, Aunt Nettie, Uncle Charlie, and Uncle Ted. I was told that Uncle Charlie was considered the psychic of his small town of Charleroi, Pennsylvania. He was well-known for performing séances and speaking in tongues, although I never witnessed any of this personally. Uncle Charlie had a daughter, Pearl, whom I liked very much. We had lots of fun together as kids (yes, Earl and Pearl)!

My Aunt Nettie’s visits from her home in Ohio were always very amusing. Aunt Nettie was a rather odd character. She never arrived at our house with any suitcases. She would wear all the clothes she felt were needed for her trip in layers on her body, and after her arrival she would peel them off, one by one. I always wondered if she wore her dirty underwear on the return trip home! Aunt Nettie was also a mystical sort. She would often fall on our kitchen floor and writhe around in a trance-like state, speaking in tongues: German, mostly (a language she said she never learned to speak).

Occasionally my mother would also speak a few German phrases—something she picked up from her parents. Her mother, Emma Cradey, was born in the 1840s and lived through the Civil War and would often sing traditional songs from that era. Eighty years later, I still remembered one of those Civil War songs, which I used as one of the themes in my Piano Sonata 2000. My grandmother also had some rather risqué sayings from the Civil War that she didn’t hesitate to use. I remember her saying things such as: Nothing is impossible—even the sewing up of a mosquito’s ass hole with a log chain, and Love will go where it’s sent, even if it’s a cow-pie! She had a very amusing outlook on life.

Almost every house in Pittsburgh displayed Civil War memorabilia when I was a child, and many had crossed swords on the wall. By the early 1920s, all the symbols had vanished, and the Civil War was all but forgotten.

Not surprisingly, my mismatched parents’ union resulted in some uniquely individual offspring. There were four of us: my two older sisters, Lillian and Beatrice, my younger brother William and me. Thirteen years separated my oldest sister Lillian, and my younger brother Bill. We were all such strong individuals that none of us became good friends, although we shared a common characteristic—our unique personalities. We each knew what we wanted from an early age, and seemed to live within our own personal worlds. We all had musical abilities, but I was the only one who made it my professional life. Sister Lillian had a marvelous dramatic soprano voice. Unfortunately, she was never able to develop that gift, because the doctor who removed her tonsils, proceeded to take out her singing voice as well.

My oldest sister Lillian was born in 1907. She was the only religious sibling, deciding at the tender age of thirteen that she wanted to become an evangelist. Lillian would stand at the bottom of our hall staircase, place her Bible on the banister pedestal, and preach to anyone who passed by. I was five at the time and found her behavior quite amusing. Although Lillian’s religious fervor stemmed from a genuine desire to help people, we all thought she was a bit odd.

From the age of fifteen, Lillian worked for charitable organizations in the poor districts of Pittsburgh, without payment of any kind. She cooked and did anything she could to aid them. Even though some of these unfortunate individuals would steal everything from her but the clothes on her back, she always returned to work for them the next day. She was very dedicated.

Lillian’s work for the poor evolved into something less religious, and more in keeping with her original desire to help as many of the unfortunate as she could. Eventually, she met and married Jerome Mannesmann. Sadly, although she wanted to bear children, she was unable to do so, eventually deciding to adopt a daughter, Jerlynn. In 1962, a few years after Jerry’s death from a stroke, Lillian also had a massive stroke. She continued to survive for ten more years without the use of her faculties, before finally succumbing. Lillian’s adopted daughter Jerlynn, and her husband Harold Lee, had three children.

Beatrice, who was four years younger than Lillian, was an exceptionally smart and emotionally stable individual. Like the rest of us, she knew from the time she was young, exactly what she wanted out of life. She chose to stop attending high school at fifteen. She took courses to become a professional stenographer, including advanced classes in dictation. She became very successful working for the New York Life Insurance Company in Pittsburgh, earning a nice salary of $50 a month. In 1928, at the age of seventeen, she eloped with her high school sweetheart, Elmer Francis Eld. Many predicted that her future with him would be a disaster because she was too young to know what she wanted in life. Beatrice had the most successful marriage of anyone in the family.

Beatrice’s husband was diagnosed with an inoperable brain tumor in the late 1960s. At the age of sixty-two, he was given only four months to live. He devoted his remaining time arranging their finances in a neat, orderly fashion so that Beatrice would be able to live the rest of her life in relative comfort. Beatrice and Elmer’s only child, Barbara, married James E. Lee, a cardiac surgeon—they had three children.

Beatrice's interests were always varied. She learned how to operate a telegraph key, and shortwave radio early in life, and became an avid amateur ham radio operator. She was fast and agile at Morse code. She stayed in contact with people all over the world until very late in her life, when she had to enter a retirement home in Greensboro, NC. For years, following performances in different countries, I would meet people backstage who would mention that they had spoken with my sister on the radio, where she had suggested they attend my concert and come back to say hello. Beatrice died on January 11, 2008, at the age of ninety-six.

My brother Bill, the youngest of the family, was born in 1920 and was five years younger than me. He was interested in scientific and mechanical things, much like my father. I could care less about those things, but we shared a mutual love of music. Bill played the French horn very well. He had a great sense of pitch and was one of the fastest musical sight-readers I have ever known. Bill also had a very good singing voice. In 1928, he decided to enter an amateur song contest sponsored by the Rialto Theatre in Mt. Oliver (a suburb of Pittsburgh) and asked me to be his accompanist. Bill was eight, I was thirteen. We chose to perform a popular song of the day, Jules Buffano’s 1925 hit Thanks for the Buggy Ride. Bill and I could hardly believe it when they announced that we had won first prize. I can’t remember anything about the award except that we were thrilled to have won.

Even though Bill had great musical talent, his mechanical interests and abilities determined his future. During World War II, he served in the Air Force as a bombardier, flying in B-29s over Germany. Later he worked for the Hollywood film company Cinerama (Cinemascope) in Los Angeles, where he stayed for many years. Bill had three wives and two children, Patty and Bill Jr.—both, I believe, by his second wife, Beverly.

I was fortunate to have run into Bill a year or so before he died. One summer in the mid-1970s, I was performing in the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles. It was a venue where I was asked to perform quite frequently in those years. After the concert, audience members came backstage to say hello, and as I went from one individual to another, shaking hands and speaking briefly, I began speaking to a man who said, Hi Earl, its Bill— your brother. I hadn’t seen Bill in over thirty years and didn’t recognize him; we were never a close-knit family. It was probably a year or so later that I received word from my sister Beatrice, that Bill had died of a heart attack while having dinner at his home in Granada Hills.

My mother Lillian lived to be ninety-three (1882–1975). Although at times there was some tension between us, she was my guardian in the true sense of the word, and a strong influence on me. My mother had an interest in music as well. She told me she began to study the piano very late in life, at the age of twenty-one. She only continued for a few years—until she married my father. I never heard her play, but she was always highly supportive of my single-minded devotion to the piano. Mother had been a milliner at Kauffman’s Department Store in Pittsburgh until she met my father. After they married, she became a homemaker and raised her children.

My mother had a strange childhood that may have contributed somewhat to her character. Her mother, Emma, married a Catholic (my grandfather—William Winstel), which in a firmly Protestant family in Victorian times was tantamount to marrying Satan himself! They were in love, but the resulting family dissension destroyed my grandparents’ marriage and adversely affected my mother as well.

As an only child, my mother, unfortunately, became a pawn in the custody battle between her parents. My grandmother instilled horrible fright in my mother, implying that my grandfather might kidnap her. My mother’s experience of fearing her father, as well as a possible abduction, was an example of the traumatic situation in which she was raised. When I was a child, if anyone knocked on our door my mother always hid the four of us in a closet. I really can’t explain why this fear possessed her so, but it was something that seared her psyche. Thankfully, she became a little more tranquil later in life.

Among my mother’s many characteristics were very acute psychic tendencies, which I seem to have inherited. She always knew who was at the door before she opened it. There were also many instances when she knew what was going to happen before it happened. I have those same abilities—my sensitivity to who’s calling on the telephone seems to be especially acute. I suppose you could say I’ve always been ‘well attuned!’

Mother’s interest in spiritualism led her to attend various seminars with the many psychics and mediums that came through Pittsburgh. I remember one such event when I was about eight. Mother was reading the newspaper when she saw an announcement about a spiritualist who was appearing downtown that morning. She desperately wanted to attend, but couldn’t find anyone to stay with me, so she took me along.

After the long streetcar ride, we arrived late at a small hall. The spiritualist was already speaking, but when we walked in she stopped what she was saying mid-sentence and said, Oh, Lily, you’re here. My mother’s name was Lillian, and only occasionally would very close friends call her Lily. The medium continued, Your brother is here, he wants to speak to you. I had no idea my mother had a brother—no one did—she never told anyone. Her little brother drowned when he was three years old. I can’t remember anything else at that event, but that particular scene with my mother and her brother has stuck with me all these years.

My psychic abilities and tendencies have presented themselves at odd times my whole life–they will be mentioned again throughout these pages. I also believe in the transference of brain cells. I feel that we all come into the world with a background other than just our immediate family’s genealogical background. There must have been someone in my extended family, perhaps hundreds of years before me, who was musically talented but didn’t have a chance to nurture that talent.

Mother was always fastidious. She was a beautiful woman who would never leave the house if her hair was out of place. I inherited that trait from her since I was also very conscious of my appearance and my hair. I would never go anywhere without a pocket comb in my breast pocket—even when I was performing onstage.

Mother enjoyed entertaining us with all her uncanny vocal impressions— tenor Jan Peerce (1904–1984) was a particular favorite. She sounded as though you were hearing Peerce’s voice from a distance. When I worked at NBC in the late 1930s, I became friends with Jan—who was born Jacob Pincus Perelmuth. I often toyed with the idea of inviting him over to hear my mother’s imitation of his singing but never did. I was afraid that he wouldn’t recognize the similarities or see the humor in it.

Her uncanny ability to mimic and give vocal impressions of people provided hours of amusement. Since she qualified for membership, Mother joined the patriotic organization DAR (Daughters of the American Revolution). After attending her first meeting, and observing the ceremonies and pageantry, she came home and gave us hilarious impressions of some of the ladies’ behavior and speeches. Mother was able to mimic just about anyone. She could also remember long conversations from many days before and repeat them word for word. She found the DAR meeting highly amusing, but it was not for her—she never returned.

I inherited some of Mother’s abilities to mimic as well as her sense of humor. I have a great appreciation for the ridiculous and find that this attitude helps support who you are as a person and affects your basic values in life. If you can’t laugh at yourself, you might as well give up. You become like a fly whose wings have stiffened.

My mother always had very colorful friends. One of them was Mrs. Harris—a woman who fascinated me. She was the house pianist at Pittsburgh’s Rialto Theatre, a silent movie theatre. Whenever she visited my mother, the two would converse in our parlor, with Mrs. Harris always seated at my piano. Mrs. Harris would run her fingers up and down the keyboard performing various pieces, all the while imparting the latest gossip to my mother. Everything she played was always in rhythm, and the music she chose seemed to match the particular bit of gossip she was dispensing. At those times, I sat quietly on the floor, totally enthralled and fascinated with both her interesting gossip and her highly unusual piano playing. Now that I think about it, she may have been the very first ‘rap’ artist!

When my mother saw that something had to be done she behaved much like a general—she took charge. One day a friend of hers was diagnosed with a tapeworm. Digestive tract parasites were much more common in those days. My mother decided to help this woman. She wouldn’t allow her to eat for one full day, then the following day, she had her friend lying on her stomach across the bed, with her head hanging over the side. Below her, on the floor, my mother placed a large bowl of hot milk. She told her friend to move her head as close to the bowl as possible and to keep her mouth open. Within an hour the tapeworm had crawled up the woman’s throat and began coming out of her mouth towards the hot milk. My mother then grabbed the worm by its head, and pulled it out of her friend’s throat! How she knew all this and could take charge so forcefully, I will never know, because normally my mother was very mild-mannered.

When I appeared in the family, I’m quite sure my parents felt they had been cursed. A young boy who does nothing but play the piano all day—he doesn’t play sports or play with the other children. What will we do with him? For a while, it seemed as though they didn’t know what to do with me. I was always quiet and terribly shy, but totally observant of everything. I hardly spoke for most of my childhood—mostly because I was so stunned and amazed, at what I was witnessing around me. I turned to the piano because it satisfied me like nothing else—it was total. Doing so also helped to drown out the various family quarrels. The piano gave me a sense of structure and organization. You either worked hard or you didn’t benefit. You always get back what you put in. I remained shy until I was in my early twenties. One day, I decided it was time to come out of my shell and speak my mind.

My mother gave me complete freedom to devote myself to my piano. I was never ridiculed, made fun of, or told to stop playing by anyone in my family. From a young age, I spent a great deal of time by myself, improvising and learning everything there was to learn about keyboard technique and various styles. This early period of study on my own provided a foundation for what I would later learn from formal study.

My father died rather young—he was only in his fifties. I don’t remember the cause of death, but he was still living somewhere in Pittsburgh. At the time of his death, my mother was living with me in New York City. I had lived with my mother for the first twenty years of my life—she then lived with me for the next fifteen! I dutifully gave her half of my income for years. I refused to return to Pittsburgh to attend my father’s funeral, so my mother went to the service with my sister Beatrice. The only thing I remember about that day was that they both bought beautiful black hats.

TREMENDOUS TECHNOLOGICAL advancements have been made during my lifetime of ninety-plus years. The world into which I was born, and the one in which I am living today, are quite different. Much of the simple elegance and individual character of the old days are sadly missing, especially in the world of classical music.

During my youth, most of the roadways were still dirt, and horse-drawn carriages shared the roads with a few early automobiles. Gasoline was twenty-five cents a gallon, a loaf of bread was seven cents, and coffee was thirty cents a pound. The first Stop sign in America appeared in the year of my birth, in Detroit, Michigan. Private homes had ice boxes (the forerunner of the modern refrigerator), which were kept cold by storing blocks of ice at the bottom of the tin-lined cabinet. The blocks were delivered daily, directly to your door, by the local iceman in his horse-drawn wagon. Most household necessities such as milk and bread were delivered the same way. To this day, I still call refrigerators ice boxes.

There were some major events in 1915 (the year of my birth). The first stone of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C., was put into place; the silent film, The Birth of a Nation by D.W. Griffith, premiered in Los Angeles; Congress created the United States Coast Guard; Kiwanis International, and the Boy Scouts of America were founded; Rocky Mountain National Park was established by an act of Congress; the inventor of the telephone, Alexander Graham Bell, inaugurated U.S. trans-continental telephone service; and Albert Einstein (who also played the violin), published his famous Theory of Relativity.

It was a year after the United States entered World War I, as well as the year the British steamship RMS Lusitania was sunk by a German U-boat (killing 1,198 people), and the year President Woodrow Wilson sent U.S. troops into Mexico to pursue Pancho Villa.

Many well-known personalities, both musicians and non-musicians, were born in 1915. They included Sviatoslav Richter, Elisabeth Schwarzkopf, George Perle, Walter Trampler, Julius Baker, Tito Gobbi, Frank Sinatra, Edith Piaf, Billie Holiday, David Rockefeller, Orson Welles, Zero Mostel, and Arthur Miller. There were also two particularly sad deaths that year: the Russian composer Alexander Scriabin, and the Austrian composer and pianist Theodor Leschetizky.

It was a period of innovation in the musical arts. In 1909, Serge Diaghilev (1872–1929), the famous ballet impresario, traveled to Paris with his Ballets Russes under the patronage of Tsar Nicholas II for their first performances. They were a sensation, causing a major buzz around the world with the introduction of the infamous Vaslav Nijinsky and their pairing of erotic choreography, startlingly contemporary music, and strikingly original scene designs. After observing the great success of Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes’ production of Rimsky-Korsakov’s Scheherazade, the well-known French perfume house of Guerlain created the famous scent Shalimar, a perfume which is still popular one hundred years later.

Also around the time of my birth, the famed dancer Isadora Duncan (1878–1927), made a marvelously liberating personal statement. She removed all her clothes while performing, to show how the body looked and moved when it was free and natural. Earlier dancers had been too frightened and inhibited to be so straightforward. I’ve never found the unclothed body to be a perfect or elegant vision. It’s the simplicity of the costumes moving against a dancer’s body that I feel is most visually appealing.

In the world of classical music, Igor Stravinsky had just composed his Le Sacre du Printemps, an important and highly controversial piece of music. Le Sacre du Printemps shocked an unprepared Paris audience and was widely perceived by the public to be violent and ugly, resulting in a mob assault in the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées at the first performance.

With all that was happening in the world, the piano became my retreat, a haven—my ‘tree house’ so to speak. Throughout my childhood, apart from some occasional events and situations, I can’t remember much except my music. With the music, I was involved in something that made me very strong and secure. I knew, even at an early age, that my talent set me apart, and gave me both a personal refuge and an individual stature. It never bothered me if other children didn’t accept me. No matter what the other children or my family did or said, I always knew I had my piano. I practiced constantly.

Besides practicing, and taking lessons from a couple of rotten early piano teachers, one of the few things I remember about the time we lived in the Pittsburgh suburb of Knoxville, was the foolish physical education teacher in my elementary school. I was about seven and never enjoyed going into the water because I didn’t know how to swim. This teacher decided that the best way to teach me was to throw me into the deep end of the school swimming pool, and hope for the best—sink or swim! Somehow, I managed to get out of the pool without drowning (although I wouldn’t call what I was doing, swimming). That cruel act didn’t teach me a thing—I still can’t swim to this day.

Another strange incident I remember about living in Knoxville involved my odd cousin Ginny, who lived across the street. We were the same age. I would often see her sitting in the middle of the dirt road, playing in the piles of horse shit—even eating from them on occasion. Her parents were continually reprimanding her for this gross act. Whenever Ginny’s mother spotted her in the street, she would run out of the house and physically drag her inside, while Ginny kicked and screamed all the way. Ginny was well-known in the neighborhood for her all-too-common screaming fits. After many ineffective scoldings, the family doctor suggested a possible remedy. He recommended that the next time Ginny had a screaming fit, they should stand her on a table too high for her to jump off, and pour buckets of ice-cold water over her head until she stopped. Her parents decided to try this drastic move since nothing else was working. Success. The sudden shock of the cold water was all it took. Ginny was cured of her screaming fits forever. Unfortunately, I never found out if the cold water treatment also cured her of her odd eating habits, because my family moved away from Knoxville a short time after that incident and I lost touch with Ginny.

The approach to treating adolescent behavioral problems was very different in the early part of the 20th century. By today’s standards, Ginny’s ‘therapy’ would be considered barbaric, cruel, and possibly even a jailable offense.

Our family moved around quite a bit during my childhood, but we always stayed within the Pittsburgh metropolitan area. I have no idea why we moved so much since my father had secured a well-paying job in the offices of the Pittsburgh Steel Company. After leaving Pittsburgh in 1937, I continued to move frequently. In my lifetime, I’ve lived in more than twenty-five apartments, and fifteen different houses, in five different states.

When I was eight, we moved to Belshover, Pennsylvania, and a year later to the suburb of Squirrel Hill. Shortly after that, we made a disastrous move to a house in Mt. Lebanon. My father rented an old house that happened to sit directly over an abandoned mine tunnel. One day, as I was sitting at my piano practicing Chopin’s Winter Wind Étude, the house started tilting, and slowly began to sink. I felt like I was on the Titanic! Luckily, it didn’t fall into the cavern below. The house was condemned by the city, so we were forced to move once again—this time to the suburb of Carrick.

In Carrick, I remember that we lived at 313 Spokane Avenue, and our telephone number was Lafitte 2506. Funny, the little things we happen to remember from our past. My family had one of those early telephones with an earpiece on a cord. The telephone needed to be hand-cranked to reach an operator, who would then put the call through for you. The house in Carrick was located on a very steep hill—the street must have been a seventy-five-degree grade. During the cold Pittsburgh winters, when the streets were covered with snow and ice for days at a time, I had trouble getting to my house. Since it was located in the middle of the block, I found it difficult to stop while walking (or sliding) down the sidewalk. I would often grab a sign pole that was fortunately placed directly in front of our house. You could forget about trying to approach the house uphill during the snow and icy winters.

In my youth, Pittsburgh was a very interesting place, with the enormous influence of New York City not too far away. As a heavy-duty industrial city, it was the headquarters of U.S. Steel, Gulf Oil, Alcoa, Rockwell, and Westinghouse, to name just a few of the thirteen Fortune 500 companies that were located in the city in the early 20th century. Pittsburgh was a wonderful place in which to grow up. Despite all the industry, it was uniquely eclectic and picturesque—a city of mystery. This was, of course, before the 1950s when the ‘wise city officials’ decided to clean up the city. I feel they took away Pittsburgh’s unique atmosphere and ruined its charm.

In the early 20th century, Pittsburgh was filled with numerous large and noisy rolling mills, which were in operation around the clock. At night, the mills lit up the sky with an array of the most unusual colors. The fiery gold and burnt oranges—often shot through with bursts of purple and red, mixed with blues and black—produced sulfurous clouds of smoke reminiscent of Dante’s Inferno. The pollution in Pittsburgh at that time was so heavy, that street lights all over the city remained on until ten o’clock each morning.

The soot gathered in your hair and irritated the skin. After washing your face and hands, they would be dirty again within an hour. Businessmen would have to change their white shirts twice a day. To make matters worse, most families in Pittsburgh at the time, burned soft coal in their furnaces, adding greatly to the pollution. However, to the men who ran the mills, the city’s industries were more than dirty air and water—they were progress. It was American ingenuity and technology roaring into the future.

As a result of its steel industry, Pittsburgh became a very wealthy city, which greatly benefited all the arts. Moguls and art patrons such as the two Andys, Carnegie (correctly pronounced car NAY gee) and Mellon, patronized the world of music and art and were great benefactors of learning institutions in general. Henry Clay Frick and Henry Phipps, both partners of Carnegie, along with George Westinghouse, and H.J. Heinz, were considered the ‘Dukes’ of Pittsburgh.

Growing up in Pittsburgh at that time allowed me to meet some of these ‘Dukes,’ who were among the very important figures of the early 20th century. Unfortunately, I never had the pleasure of meeting Andrew Carnegie (1835–1919), but I did meet Andrew Mellon (1855–1937) on various occasions.

Mellon was an interesting man. From 1921 through 1932, he served as Secretary of the Treasury under Presidents Harding, Coolidge, and Hoover. Throughout the prosperous 1920s, he was a very popular individual and helped to reduce the nation’s public deficit. Upon leaving the Treasury Department and President Hoover’s Cabinet in February 1932, Mellon accepted the post of U.S. Ambassador to Great Britain. He served there for one year before retiring to private life.

I had the opportunity to watch Mr. Mellon’s behavior as I was growing up in Pittsburgh. I didn’t particularly like him. What a tough old codger he was, totally bereft of any charm. He gave me the impression of being a cranky, unpleasant man, who screamed at people a lot. Many of the wealthy individuals I met when I was younger were quite similar types. It made me think, if that’s what money does to you, I don’t want any.

During the last year of his life, Mellon was about to be jailed for tax evasion. I was told on good authority that he went directly to President Roosevelt and offered a plan. If Roosevelt would help him out of his mess with the IRS, he would build the most beautiful art gallery the United States had ever seen. Through Roosevelt’s intervention, Mellon was allowed to avoid jail and with his $10 million investment, the stately National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., became a reality.

I think paying money to the federal government to avoid jail is an interesting concept. Many other high-profile wealthy individuals since Mellon’s time have found themselves in similar positions (people such as Martha Stewart, Michael Milken, and Leona Helmsley). Perhaps they should have been allowed to contribute sizable donations to our country, as a way of paying for their crime. Instead of spending immense amounts of money on legal fees, these wealthy individuals could have helped the U.S. government reduce its federal deficit. Having the courts' stage witch hunts to make examples of them, seems like such a waste of time and money. Why shouldn’t the federal government, and the citizens of our country benefit from the stupidity of the wealthy?

My total devotion to music, and the fact that I was a terribly shy, sheltered, child, meant that I had very few close friends as I was growing up. Child’s play bored me. The only time I ever went out to play, was when I wanted to see what the other children were doing, and once I found out (usually after about ten minutes), I would hurry back into the house to my piano. I only had one close friend when I was young, but he wasn't human. I had a loyal dog named Chummy. We were inseparable. I taught him many tricks—he would always sit under my piano until I finished practicing. I’ve forgotten what breed of dog he was; I think he was just a mutt—but a smart and faithful one.

My mother often said that I played with the neighborhood children only long enough to create great dissension among them. Whatever it was, the other children thought I was a kook. They would walk by my house, hear me practicing the piano, and wonder why I never came out to play. Then they would begin making rude gestures toward me from the street. I realized that I was different at an early age, and it rather pleased me. I felt like a rarified flower that was blooming in the desert. When I hear stories about pianists who had to be pushed to the piano to practice but eventually fell in love with the instrument, I don’t believe their attitudes are genuine—I don’t believe they are actually for real. I also have doubts about pianists who take up the instrument later in life, at fourteen or fifteen—or even at twelve years of age—in hopes of having a professional career. Natural pianism is something that has to be cultivated and nurtured from the very beginning.

One of my early piano teachers, whom I liked, was Mrs. Hanson. She would also accompany many popular singers. Occasionally, some of them would be in her home when I was there, and they would ask her, I sing this piece in C, could you transpose it? Mrs. Hanson would always do so on the spot. I don’t know if she could have done that with classical music, but transposing used to be a common expectation of accompanists. In my early years, people only entered into a life in music when they had exceptional talent. As a child, they probably had perfect, if not absolute pitch or they could find most anything they heard on the piano. They had a natural technique before studying, with the proper way of playing a chord on the piano, and an innate sense of rhythm. Today many individuals are studying the piano but some don’t begin until they’re in their early teens. In most of these cases, they rarely have perfect pitch or a keen sense of rhythm—everything is a learned behavior. All their life they continue to play like a learned musician. I find there’s nothing worse than having to listen to studied musical performances.

My intense love of music doesn’t mean I escaped all childhood experiences. I had some personal adventures that were rather unusual. When I was eight, I learned the art of embroidery, because a strange sickness descended upon me. No one knew what was wrong with me—there was no name associated with this sickness. I had neither an appetite nor any energy, and I had to spend months in bed. I now believe I may have had mono (mononucleosis). The months in bed allowed me to learn the art of embroidery. Embroidering was a big fascination to me at the time, and gave me something to do with my hands since I didn’t have the energy to practice the piano. I learned to make wonderful designs with elaborate French knots, completing what I thought were some interesting and artistic pieces. Sadly, in later years I discovered that my mother had given them all away. Today I have nothing left to show for all my efforts during those long months.

A couple of years later, when I was about eleven, I learned to walk on a high wire. I was very curious about the circus and would attend traveling shows as often as possible. One of the circuses that came to Pittsburgh had the most spectacular high-wire act I had ever seen. I became mesmerized by it. I was easily fascinated by anything that required great agility, and this was the ultimate. After much cajoling on my part, my father agreed to erect a high wire for me between two trees in our backyard. It was just a low wire, being only about four feet off the ground, but I worked on the wire whenever I was not at the piano. With all my hours of practice, I became quite adept. I learned to walk back and forth easily, to run and jump, and even to turn around mid-wire—all without the aid of a pole, or umbrella for balance. I began to develop the agility I had admired so much. Unfortunately, the end of my high-wire walking occurred after a couple of summers, when I grew quite tall rather suddenly. The extra height I had gained so quickly made me lose the balance and coordination I had worked so hard to develop. When I was turning on the wire one day, I slipped and almost severed my leg. After that episode, the wire came down.

I lost my interest in performing on the high wire, but not the knowledge I had acquired. To have a career as a concert pianist (or as any kind of performing musician), you have to work very hard, but you also have to take chances. You are always on a high wire so to speak, without a net. When you walk onto the stage to perform, you must throw away the net—otherwise, your performance will sound planned. By not taking chances, you risk becoming pedantic, boring, and static or, heaven forbid, an authority, turning your performances into what critics often refer to today as profound. Personally, I think the word profound should be considered a four-letter word.

When I was a child my mother took me to see a famous hypnotist. His name was Dr. Polgar, he was billed as one of the leading hypnotists in the country. The event was held in one of Pittsburgh’s large concert halls—I remember my mother and I sat down in front. He hypnotized a large section of the audience at one time (something that isn’t allowed today) and then had various individuals do unusual things while under his power. It was very amusing, but as the afternoon came to a close many in the audience wouldn’t snap out of it. It turned into a major scandal! Dr. Polgar was forced to walk around the audience and individually wake up each person who hadn't come out of their trance.

In 1927, when I was twelve, I heard of a man in Pittsburgh who charged one dollar to take people on short rides in his airplane. He had a fixed double winged, one-engine bi-plane. I decided it would be fun to take a ride, so I went up with him one day. The plane was a two-seater—I sat in the back, wearing goggles and a leather hat. I felt like the Red Baron. I loved it and wasn’t frightened at all. Pittsburgh from the air (with the wedding of the two rivers), had a completely different look.

In 1945, I was able to experience another marvelous flying adventure by taking the very first flight aboard the new four-engine prop plane, the Constellation. I believe I flew from New York to California in about eleven hours with multiple stops for refueling.

Shortly after my first flying experience, I was thrown into another adventure. Since I had spent much of my life indoors practicing the piano, my parents felt that I was becoming too pale and sickly. They decided I needed some outdoor exercise or at least some sunshine, and sent me for a couple of weeks to a YMCA summer camp. It was called Camp Connoquee, located in the Connoquenessing Township of Butler County, Pennsylvania, just north of Pittsburgh. I did get some sun, but I didn’t enjoy myself. Those two weeks turned out to be very bizarre indeed.

Our camp was at the foot of one of the highest mountains in the Connoquenessing Range—not that any of the hills were high by some standards, but they seemed high to me. There were about sixty or seventy young boys attending the camp that summer. We lived in very basic canvas tents, eight boys in a tent. The tents had canvas floors.

Since all the tents were pitched at the bottom of the mountain, we were all subjected to every manner of animal life. The whole scenario was quite foreign to me, and not at all pleasant. The only piano around for miles was in the so-called food hall, an old cabin where we ate our meals. It was the most terrible, beat-up, upright piano I had ever touched. It had the strangest sound—totally out of tune, and unbelievably thin and tinny. I suppose you could say it sounded like an old bar room piano but, at the time, I had not yet experienced a piano in a bar.

That summer was probably the longest period I was ever away from daily practice, although I did manage some form of practice despite the bad piano at my disposal. Once word got out that I could play the piano, the camp counselors asked me to play the Star-Spangled Banner every morning and to perform a few pieces for the group after our dinners. I played popular songs of the day, along with a few well-known classics that I thought everyone would enjoy. The group thought I was divine. I was looked upon as a specialty—sort of like the Shirley Temple of the camp! I was tapping away on the old upright, playing songs such as Nola, a 1915 hit by Felix Arndt.

However, I was not a happy camper that summer. Every time it rained, our tent flooded. Worse yet, after the rains came the snakes. They would slither in during the night, and be all over the floor of our tent in the morning. The various insects I experienced that summer were also quite dreadful. One day we all went hiking to the top of one of the big hills, which turned out to be a rather difficult climb, at least for me. Coming back down the hill we walked through an old river bed, and apparently, one of the boys stepped on an above-ground hornets’ nest. The hornets immediately flew out and began attacking us! We were all running down the hill as fast as we could, screaming and swatting all the way. Unfortunately, there were railroad tracks at the bottom, and a long freight train just happened to be passing. We were stuck—we couldn’t pass or go anyplace. We had to wait for the longest time until the train went by, flailing our arms at the angry hornets, and dancing around while we waited. Many of us sustained multiple stings and suffered for days.

My canoe experience that summer was also surreal. The Connoquenessing Creek flowed by our camp. I have no idea what I was thinking, but one day I got into a canoe alone and started paddling around. It had rained a lot that summer, producing a rather high creek with some very strong currents. Suddenly, I could feel the river current begin to pull me downstream. In all my excitement and panic, I managed to drop my only paddle into the water. There I was being pulled downstream, knowing that there was a rather dangerous waterfall down river. I guess you could say I was going down the creek without a paddle! It sounds like a joke, but this was real life, and not the least bit funny at the time.

As I began yelling for help, I was spotted by a group of counselors. They quickly got into a nearby automobile (a model-T Ford, I believe), and drove as fast as they could to the next town downstream to rescue me. The next town was a small ‘burg’ called Fombell. It was my last possible escape before the rapids. Automobiles in 1927 didn’t travel very fast, so it turned into quite a race. Fortunately, the counselors beat me and arrived in Fombell before I passed through in my canoe. Somewhere, they found a long rope and threw it to me from a bridge that crossed the creek, the last bridge before the rapids. I have no idea how I managed to catch and hold onto that damn rope, but somehow, as I was drifting under the bridge, I caught it and was saved from a horrible fate.

I always thought I should have received a special merit badge or some award for doing such a great job of catching a rope while drifting in a canoe. Until that time, I had only been good at playing the piano. Apparently, the counselors were annoyed with me for taking the canoe out alone without permission, so I received nothing but a reprimand.

By the end of those two weeks, far from the camp doing me a world of good, I was almost carried home on a stretcher. It was a horrible experience, but I did get plenty of sunshine and fresh air. I also learned something about myself—that I was not the outdoors type. I was so happy to get back to my piano, and music.

Fifty-five years later in 1983, I was performing with the Ft. Lauderdale Orchestra, when two letters from Ft. Lauderdale residents were delivered backstage before the concert. One was from Robert B. Yates, who said he had been my tent mate in 1927 at Camp Connoquee. He wrote that he always remembered my special piano abilities at that young age. He also said that he sang a popular song called Constantinople one night at the camp and that I had accompanied him. He was retired and living in Ft. Lauderdale. I couldn’t remember him or playing for him, but I enjoyed speaking with him after the concert.

The other note was from Ellen M. Brennan, who said that her family had lived in the house behind me when my family lived on Spokane Avenue in Carrick. She remembered a young boy named Wild, who practiced the piano day and night. She said she was looking forward to hearing me once again that evening. Mrs. Brennan was also retired and had moved to Ft. Lauderdale.

A totally different childhood interlude involved going to a Baptist summer camp. Fortunately, it was not a religious camp, and I could sleep at home every night. It was similar to what summer daycare is today. It was a place to store the children and keep them out of trouble during the daytime working hours. We were able to indulge in various arts and crafts at this summer camp. I learned how to weave a large basket. My particular creation looked like a receptacle in which a snake charmer would keep snakes. It wasn't a great piece of work, but I was quite proud of my accomplishment.

My basket ended up becoming a serious tool of communication, between my mother and me. While proudly showing my new basket to my mother, I became very annoyed by a rather crude remark she made about it. I had spent the entire summer working on this project, and I wanted her to like it, and be proud of me. I was so upset with her remark, that I picked up the basket, and began ripping it apart with my hands. If she didn’t think it was any good, I didn’t want it around. The only part left after my tirade was the bottom portion of the basket, which happened to have a wooden base. My mother, not knowing that the bottom of the basket included a solid piece of wood, picked up the remaining part, and in a rage, tossed it at me. Unfortunately, her aim was very good, and the basket hit me in the knee, cutting it quite badly. She apologized afterward for her outburst and helped me tend to the wound. After all these years, I still have a scar on my knee to remind me of that damn basket.

Basket weaving was the only craft that I enjoyed that summer. I was working toward a goal and ended up with a finished product for my efforts. Or perhaps I should say, I had a finished product, until my altercation with my mother! Of course, between basket weaving and tending to wounds, I would always go back to the piano to practice. Playing the piano was like breathing for me.

One year I decided to join the Boy Scouts. Why I don’t know (perhaps it was my mother’s idea). Once again, when it was learned that I played the piano, I was asked by the Scout Master to perform the Star-Spangled Banner at all the meetings. This activity helped get me through the Boy Scout meetings, as it had at the YMCA summer camp. In the end, I still couldn’t tie a single one of those goddamn knots. The Scouts awarded me most of the merit badges anyway since I was the only Scout in our troop who could play the piano. I guess I was performing a service. I always wondered, what they would have done concerning the Star-Spangled Banner if I hadn’t been there. I think they felt that they had to give me the badges to keep me happy. It was my reward.

It’s rather strange how performing the U.S. National Anthem—The Star-Spangled Banner—has played such a role throughout my life. It helped me through quite a few childhood activities, and years later during WWII, when I was stationed in Washington D.C., it gave me the opportunity to get to know the First Lady, Eleanor Roosevelt.

I found the whole scouting scene rather stupid. I was never the type to be a Scout. Music was my life, and there wasn’t anyone else in the group who was involved in music—I didn’t share any common interests with the other boys. I think it’s most important to find one’s own people in life. Anyone who is the least bit artistic, cannot bear to be involved for any length of time in clubby-type environments, with their forced rules, activities, and pursuits. Teaching young boys how to tie knots is very honorable, but I must confess that I have never had to use any of that knowledge, except perhaps on my shoelaces.

In school, I was an honors student in academic studies until the age of twelve, but unfortunately, that didn’t continue. By twelve I had become so immersed in music that everything else was unimportant. Nothing could interrupt my study of music—I would never permit it. Although I liked art class, the only practical thing I ever learned at school was typing. Any form of mathematics, or geometry was foreign to me.

One aspect of school that I especially enjoyed, was listening to Walter Damrosch’s Music Appreciation Hour, which was broadcast nationally from New York City, on NBC radio each week. Fortunately, the Pittsburgh schools allowed their music classes to listen to this program every Friday morning. I loved those Damrosch broadcasts, both because of his witty personality, and for what he accomplished with his clever, and informative programs.

As a broadcaster, Damrosch had a very thick German accent. All the kids enjoyed his voice—it sounded so authoritative. He could also be very amusing, which helped convey the substance of his programs in a light way, which was appropriate for children as well as adults. He often recited wonderful limericks about great composers. One day he was talking about the popular Serenade by Franz Schubert, and began reciting the following:

Schubert had a horse named Sarah,

Which he often led in parade;

And every time the trumpets blared,

Schubert’s Sarah neighed!

He also came up with words to many of the great symphonies. I particularly remember his words for the Scherzo movement of the Brahms Third Symphony:

Have a Scotch and Soo-da,

Have a Scotch and Soo-da;

fizzzzzz, FIZZZZZZ

Drink it up, drink it up!

Antonin Dvořák’s popular Humoresque, provided another opportunity for some interesting lyrics, although these words may not have been from