Passing It On

My brief attempt at a career as a rock music columnist

It was just 46 years ago ...

It seems like yesterday but it was, indeed, November 1973 when I tried to launch a career as a rock music syndicated columnist. I was just a couple months on the job as a swing reporter at my hometown newspaper, The Council Bluffs (Iowa) Daily Nonpareil. It was my second stint at the Nonpareil, where I started my newspaper career five years earlier before entering the Air Force. I had no idea where my newspaper carer was headed since my job included covering the police and courthouse beats a couple days a week, plus three days covering sports.

I did know, however, that this was my opportunity to try my hand at writing about rock music. In my first, pre-service go-round, I had reviewed a few concerts and albums for the paper and offered to do it again. I sweetened the offer by telling my bosses that I was planning to self-syndicate an oldies column and I'd give it to the Nonpareil for free. They accepted.

I created a name for my company, rented a post office box to handle the flood of mail I expected and placed an ad in Editor & Publisher magazine, the meeting place for journalists in those pre-Internet days. The flood of mail never came, but I did land one paying client, The Tablet, a Catholic newspaper in Brooklyn, N.Y. Tablet editors went big, buying two of the three items I offered -- the main Rockback column plus the three-question quiz filler (they passed on Oldies Answered, a 250-word column answering readers' questions).

The Tablet was much larger than the Nonpareil with a circulation of more than 100,000 subscribers. This placed them at the top of my pricing structure, which was, in my estimation, unbelievably reasonable. The check at the top of this post reflects the total cost for a month's worth of material. There were four Rockback columns at $1.85 each and four quiz fillers at 75 cents apiece. With a 10 percent discount for ordering more than one item, the total was a mere $9.36.

Unfortunately, this arrangement lasted less than a year. The Tablet abandoned its youth section in 1974 and my quest for syndicated rock stardom ended, although I began research into what would eventually become my book, The Day the Music Died: The Last tour of Buddy Holly, the Big Bopper and Ritchie Valens.

Here is a sample of what I was writing about in those days:

Author Larry Lehmer's book about Dick Clark and American Bandstand --  Bandstandland: How Dancing Teenagers Took Over America and Dick Clark Took Over Rock & Roll --is now available from Sunbury Press. His book about the last tour of Buddy Holly, the Big Bopper and Ritchie Valens -- The Day the Music Died -- is available at Amazon.

Tragedy has the cruelly ironic capacity for instantly transforming a young person's ephemera into their legacy

One tennis racket (Jack Kramer model)
One tennis racket (Pancho Gonzalez model)
Seven tennis balls

Twenty six years and this is it? The sporting legacy of a young American male? Apparently so. They were the only athletic items among the dozens of personal effects I helped pack while settling the estate of an apparently troubled Airman First Class following his suicide. A young man's life shipped to a grieving mother. Four cartons, 13 items in all. A life's accumulation.

It wasn't a job I sought. Just one of those extra duties of an Air Force officer. For one month I was appointed Summary Court Officer to deal with the unpleasantness. I didn't know the airman, but we were roughly the same age. We were both scheduled to leave the Air Force, too; me on an early out program, him on a medical discharge. I wonder if he knew that as he wrapped the venetian blind cord tightly around his neck in the darkness of his hospital room?

One $20 bill
Eighty-three cents in coins
Two packages, Pall Mall cigarettes

Twenty six years and this is it? These were among the items recovered from the Airman's hospital room. There was more. Clothing, keys and a wallet full of IDs and a meal card. The keys were for a car that sat disabled in a local garage because the airman couldn't afford repairs. That $333 an E-3 got every month didn't go far, even if the Air Force was providing room and board.

This was the Airman's first duty station following tech training. His anxious behavior was apparently obvious as he worked the over night shift. He spent months in outpatient therapy before he was hospitalized. I wonder how much he shared with loved ones in the letters he wrote in response to the 63 we found in his room after he died?

83 LP records
30 45 rpm records
One 78 rpm record
One Motorola phonograph

He, obviously, liked his music. He apparently played, too. We also found two violins, a guitar and a five-string banjo among his effects. There were 16 musical instruction books, too. I wonder what he thought about as he listened or played his music? The lone 78 was by Bob Wills and his Texas Playboys: "Never No More Hard Time Blues." Did the music brighten his mood or did it depress him? Did he play along with his instruments? Was he any good? Was his voice on any of the five tape cassettes he left behind?

Where did he go in his brown cowboy boots and brown cowboy hat? Did he read either of the two hardback books he posssessed -- The Man and the Mask by Henrik Ibsen or Aristotle's On Man and the Universe? How about his Bible? He had five pair of socks, three underwear briefs, eight t-shirts and a laundry bag. One roll of masking tape, a flashlight and a jar for crushing nuts. A young man's life in four shipping cartons. So sad.

Author Larry Lehmer's book about Dick Clark and American Bandstand --  Bandstandland: How Dancing Teenagers Took Over America and Dick Clark Took Over Rock & Roll --is now available from Sunbury Press. His book about the last tour of Buddy Holly, the Big Bopper and Ritchie Valens -- The Day the Music Died -- is available at Amazon.