The Fun Addicts

Through the years as we had the privilege of being invited to sing around the country, we were lucky enough to have had a lot of people who thought of themselves as fans of our efforts. But no one ever enjoyed the Fun Addicts’ performing, or our just being together as a quartet, more than our bass Phil Petty did. He was at the same time a crucial member of our group and unquestionably our best audience.

Early this past Monday morning, Phil “slipped the surly bonds of earth to touch the face of God” (quoting his favorite president on another sad occasion), and our quartet lost a dear friend, an indespensable part of the group, and, without doubt, our greatest fan. So even with this lump still lodged in my throat, I must tell you, Phil, that “from the first hello to the last goodbye, it was awfully nice to know you.” I can’t even conceive of ever forgetting your love of laughter and a good joke, your good-hearted willingness to do anything to promote our group, or the many kindnesses you showed me and the other guys in our group.

Enjoy your rest and your reward, my friend.

A quartet needs to build as large a repertoire as possible when it begins to perform a lot, and of course that comes about in the natural course of events. But having a large repertoire also means there is a need to brush up on that group of songs and routines often, which accounts in part for why there is such a need for regular practice.

“Timing,” as has been noted by wiser men than I, “is everything.” And timing is what suffers when there is a failure to go over the songs often enough. The little song I want to share with you today was one of my favorites because it shows we were pretty adept at timing since we do do a number of duets in it. Of course, if we got together today to try to sing this song, after so long a layoff as we’ve had, that timing would be one of the first things to suffer.

In any event, I hope you enjoy “Sam, the Accordion Man” by clicking on the link below.

 

 Sam, the Accordion Man [1:51m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

If you look at the top navigation bar, you’ll see a link to “Harmony Lane.” That’s where you can find the audio posts containing of some of our performances. In fact, I have copied all of the audio posts previously shown on the front page of the blog to that location so that they will all be neatly tucked away right there in that one place for easy access.

Also for your convenience, there is a list of those sub-pages in the sidebar over at the right in the “Pages” box. The indented ones are the sub-pages, and you can go directly to any one of them just by clicking any of those links.

Think of it this way: If you want to listen to our songs, just stroll with us down Harmony Lane.

During our performing career we had many comedy routines that our audiences enjoyed, and of course we had as much or perhaps even more fun doing them than even our audiences seemed to have watching them. But we also sang straight barbershop songs from time to time that we enjoyed and appreciated immensely. And this song is one such song that I particularly liked for a number of reasons. For one thing, it is the quintessential barbershop song to many people, myself included, and for another we had our own special arrangement of it.

We often called this one “The Oh Yeah Song” for reasons that will become apparent when you click on the link below and listen to it.

 

 The Oh Yeah Song [3:28m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

When someone posts a comment to one of these blog entries, that comment is sent to me by email from the website. That would be true whether or not I had “comment moderation” turned on, but since I do have it on, I must also approve any comment from someone who hasn’t had a comment previously approved before it will appear under the entry on the blog. Once I have approved their comment, any future comment they make will show up immediately on the post to which it was made. Moderating comments has become a necessary evil nowadays due to spammers’ posting comments on blogs in an attempt to get people to click on the links they post and thus increase the visibility of their websites among search engines.

Yesterday afternoon, a comment to Phil’s tribute to Lee Walker arrived for me to moderate. It was from Holly Crenshaw, a writer of obituaries for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, who had a 3 P.M. deadline for writing Lee’s obituary. The comment arrived around 1:30 P.M. You can read it here. So in response to her request, I called her immediately after receiving it. It surprised her that she got such a quick response. She asked that I permit her to interview me so she could get some material to use in the obituary, and of course, I agreed. I also gave her Phil’s and Bob’s cell phone numbers and suggested she might wish to contact them for other perspectives.

I asked her how she found the entry about Lee, and the logical and simple answer was that she searched the web for Lee’s name and our website came up. It’s nice to know that Google knows we are here and that our little blog has already been helpful to someone.

Our conference call last Sunday went reasonably well, I suppose. However, after listening to it, I discovered that all three of the other parties on the call were combined on one stereo channel and my end of the conversation was recorded on the other. So I was unable to separate out the two guys who were on the phone (Forrest and Bob) and the other one (Phil) who was also using Skype, and the reason I was trying to do that was that Phil on Skype came through much more loudly than did either Forrest or Bob.

It is normally possible through software to increase or decrease the volume of one channel or the other, but since the three of them were combined on the one channel, I couldn’t balance their relative volume levels. That was a bit of a disappointment. It underscores, I suppose, the necessity of exercising a modicum of discipline, something we are not known for, by avoiding talking over the other person when they are talking. If we were all on Skype, the relative volume of each participant might be more equal.

Another thing I learned was that even though I had muted my mic while recording, I can’t talk to someone else here in my house while the recording software is running because even though the other participants didn’t hear the things I said while I had the mic muted, the recording software did.

Further experimentation and learning are apparently needed to yield a satisfactory result on a future call if we choose to do this again.

I was very sorry to hear of Lee Walker’s demise. Like others, I’m sure, I felt like good things last forever. For most of us, it ain’t so! I guess I was also sorry and disappointed that the celebration of my friend’s life was having to share time with the annual Super Bowl. It did cause me wonder what life is all about - and what impact we, collectively or individually - have made on those we knew and associated with on our bumpy trip through life.

I would call Lee Walker an above average raconteur, and a fair entrepreneur, financially. He did well, presented himself well - and, though - I am told - he had only a meager amount of money in his waning days, he was always willing, ready and able to help his friends out or buy a meal for them. He was a man of love and humor, with much love to give - and one who needed lots of it. He was a typical ladies’ man - with raging hormones - our Man of La Mancha! But, he was certainly no better or worse than others of his peers, during the years of his life.

Lee was a man of many talents and interests. He practiced Optometry for most of his adult life and never failed to help a friend short of cash. His profession kept him on his feet, which practice almost lead to his demise in recent years. He was a golfer, who once inspired me to play - then talked me out of it, speculating (correctly) that I would probably be a golf bum.

He was an ardent lover of the Barbershop hobby. He sang in ensembles of all sizes - and was an excellent bass, always eager to jump in where needed to sing an old barbershop refrain or tag. He introduced me to the hobby and is the main reason I have been a member for 40+ years. He became a specialist in the judging of the Stage Presence category, and was present in the pit, many times, for my own quartets: always a mentor and friend.

Lee and I were both vulnerable “soft touchs” and poor planners when it came to investments. I sold him on buying into the investment venture of another barbershopper while at Lockheed. We both lost. He talked me into investing in Ohio oil wells. I think we both broke even. But it was fun! And we had fun speculating! During the “oil well era”, he introduced me to the naturally-sweet, dried mangos from Florida, where his half-brother lived. My palate still retains the memory!

As to Lee’s religion and the planning for his soul, I am ashamed to say I know little. We talked a lot through the years, but he was a somewhat private person in this area. He was a curious person, always searching for the ultimate answer. In many ways we were alike in our stumbling.

I could write a book on this big, loving bear; but, as with many of my other planned endeavors, I may not make it before I, too, take the /long walk./ But you can believe this: I loved and respected this comrade and I will pray for his journey to Heaven. Perhaps, if we both make the heavenly chorale, our problem of both being basses will fade into obscurity and we will be able to harmonize after all.

Bon voyage, dear friend. May God guide your steps.

Phil Petty

Footnote: Lee’s memorial service will be held at 2:30 P.M. on Sunday, Feb. 4, 2007, at the First Baptist Church of Woodstock, GA. The church is located at 11902 Hwy 92 in Woodstock.

A remarkable event took place yesterday, an event that borders on being almost miraculous in nature.

As I mentioned a day or so ago, we scheduled a conference call between the four of us for 4:00 P.M. yesterday afternoon, and when I placed the call exactly at 4:00 P.M. (using Skype), everyone was there … on time … even Phil! To appreciate just how rare this event is you need to know that never before, in all the long years we have known each other, have we all shown up exactly on time for an event.

Being late for practices, for instance, was almost more the rule than the exception, and the most frequent offender was our genius bass, Phil, even though our practices took place at his house. Phil is simply congenitally late, due to a combination starting too late and then slowing down and getting distracted along the way.

One of our coaches, Rudy Partin, once was one day and 6 hours late for a coaching session that had been scheduled long in advance. Rudy, a valued member of the Research Triangle Park chapter, the baritone of an excellent quartet and a Society judge, lived in Raleigh and had agreed to work with us one weekend. When he didn’t show up as scheduled on Friday night, we exchanged several phone calls with him, and in each of them he promised he’d be in town in a couple of hours only to fail to meet his own deadline. Finally, on Saturday he scheduled a flight to Atlanta, and when we picked him at the airport, we were a bit miffed at his several delays. (Those who have the habit of being late are frequently intolerant of others who exhibit the same trait. Why is that?) So when we greeted him, we modified our usual Intro song, “Hi, Neighbor,” especially for his arrival and sang to him, “Hi, Asshole.” We all got a big laugh from that, and later when we sang at the Research Triangle Park hospitality suite after the next contest, we began our performance with a reprise of “Hi, Asshole” and laughed about it all over again.

We were once even so late for the departure of our flight when traveling to Lincoln, NE., to headline their show that we missed the flight and could only get two seats on the next departing flight. Forrest and Phil took those two seats and went on ahead, while Bob and I came on a later flight because we were the more seasoned travelers in the group and figured we could find a way to get there in time for the show if we should encounter any further problems. Now you can easily imagine that when a chapter pays for a guest barbershop quartet to perform on their show they tend to expect four people to show up. Only the smallest of towns accept quartets who have less than four members, and there is essentially no demand for barbershop duets. Fortunately, Bob and I arrived in time for the performance, and we had a great time with the good folks in Lincoln.

But our lateness wasn’t restricted to routine events. We’ve even been late for our scheduled appearance in a contest, even though we were in town and in our hotel in plenty of time to be ready for it. But somehow we became distracted by something (I’m almost sure it involved Phil), and at the very last minute we realized that we were about to be called for our scheduled set in the contest. So we ran across the street and arrived back stage just before our name was called, and we marched out on stage almost totally out of breath. That we made the cut that evening was no doubt due to divine intervention, since singing usually involves passing air over the vocal cords to make them vibrate. And none of us had any air in our lungs after the rush to get there … just barely in time.

So with all this as background, maybe you can understand a bit better why I nearly had a heart attack yesterday when I called and found the four of us in the appointed place at the appointed time! It gives me hope that maybe nothing is impossible.

Lee Walker was a friend of the Fun Addicts back during our performing years in the Atlanta Peachtree Chapter and the Dixie District.  On Saturday, Phil notified me that the night before, Lee who was in his late 70s had passed away.  He was a long-time barbershopper and Stage Presence Judge who had supported us, helped us through his judging and had fun with us on many occasions.  We had shared laughter with him and now we are left to share sadness at the news of his passing.  A memorial service for him will be held on February 4, 2007, although the time and place have not yet been set.  Phil, whom Lee brought into the Society in 1965, says he plans to attend and pay his respects. 

News is not always light-hearted.  But despite the sadness of this news, my memories of Lee are of the good times we had together and of how much he enjoyed laughing and having fun with us.  We, the Fun Addicts, offer our condolences and sympathy to his wife, Juanette, and to the Atlanta area chapters who have lost a valued and loyal member.