I Ran Away With An All-Girl Band, My life on the road with the Victory Sweethearts - Hardcover

Wolff, Patricia

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0967573203 ISBN 13: 9780967573205

Publisher: Stone Hut Pr, 1999

Synopsis

A memoir of Patricia Wolff's life on the road, from 1940-1947, as a saxophonist in the all-girl big band known as Freddie Shaffer and his Victory Sweethearts.

About this title

About the Author

Patricia Wolff grew up in Frankfort, Indiana during the Depression and spent summers on the family farm in the country. At the age of fourteen she went on the road with Freddie Shaffer's All-Girl Band as a saxophonist and saw a world that most teenagers only dreamed of. Seven years later, at 3 a.m. in a diner in Ohio, she met Gene Wolff, a tenor man from Detroit in the Bob Chester Big Band. They eventually married and settled in northern Michigan, where they raised two sons and a daughter.

Pat has led a full and creative life that includes skiing, car racing, printmaking, painting, metalsmithing, and owning her own art gallery. Recently she has exhibited her watercolors in select Micigan galleries and has written several childrens' stories, published numerous essays on life and music, and been an active member of the Grand Traverse Writers Group.

She live with her two cats near Traverse City, Michigan.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

"Okay, Queenie, you're on!" For years that's how my husband teased me after I ended my career as a "show girl." I think he was a little jealous. It had to be that. He was a much better musician than I, but he knew that I had had more fun than he. Mine was a life most girls would die for -- and most parents would consider a nightmare. That is, if they knew what went on, on the road. I'm still amazed that I played in an all-girl band. Well, that's not entirely true. My mother made me do it. Life was pretty normal for most of us teenagers in Frankfort, Indiana. We had our little cliques and our after-school activities and we loved to be noticed by boys. And to make sure they noticed us, we gathered at the drug store every day after school and often again in the evenings. I always ordered a chocolate coke and slid into a booth with my friends and talked and laughed and talked some more. We were a close-knit group and talked endlessly and effortlessly about everything in our lives. On most of the important subjects -- boys, clothes, school, our parents -- we were usually in agreement. But when it came to the future, everyone but me seemed to know where they were going and what they were going to do. They all planned to attend college, maybe to get a degree, definitely to get a husband. I asked my friend Sally once what college courses she wanted to take and she said, "sexual inter." Another friend, Phyllis, made no bones about it: She was going to college to get a man. When the war came they married their boyfriends and watched them ship out overseas. But not me. I was different. I wanted to be an entertainer. My mother was a fairly average parent back in the 30's and 40's in middle Indiana. There were four of us kids and though I know now that times were rough, my mother made sure we had all the advantages she had never had, especially a good education. My sister and I took lessons in piano, tap dancing, and elocution, and my little brother learned to play the drums. I could never understand that kid. He insisted he was playing "Old Suzannah" on the drums, when it sounded like the same old racket to us. But Mother encouraged us, even in our clumsiest efforts, and she sewed endlessly to make sure we looked well dressed. The piano lessons did it. In the end I realized that what I learned on the keyboard made it possible for me to pursue a career in music. It would have never happened otherwise. "If you learn the basics of piano, you can easily learn to play any other instrument." That's what I heard almost every day. But I didn't like piano and I didn't like my teacher, who once broke a ruler across the piano trying to get me to understand tempo. Most of my early teachers had been little old ladies with their hair pulled up in buns, strict but sweet and caring. Not this teacher. She was a large, intimidating, bosomy woman with a boyish haircut who always smelled of cinnamon. With me she had little patience. It was as if she used up her daily quotas of kindness and attention on the young man who had his lesson the hour before mine. He was a wonderful musician, who played with feeling and excitement. I would go early to my lesson just so I could hear the two of them play on the pair of pianos she kept side by side in her studio. They always had a wonderful time playing together. How I wished I could be that good. Then one day the teacher told her prize student that she had taught him everything she knew and he no longer needed lessons from her. Did this mean I would never hear them play together again? And how could this be -- to teach someone everything you know? Was this the way of life? Was it my responsibility to try to learn everything this woman knew about the piano? I carried the burden of this notion with me for what seemed like an eternity and I tried, I really tried, but I didn't seem to get much better. Evening after evening my dad would say, "Patsy, play 'Liebestraume' for me." I never got through it without making a mistake, but he was never critical and he never stopped asking. It soon was apparent that my teacher had little hope for me. She went through the motions of teaching, but there was none of the enthusiasm she had exhibited with the young man. I tried a different teacher, a sweet little old lady with her hair up in a bun. But it was useless. I had tired of the piano and wanted to try something different. "You already know the basics," Mother said, "so now everything else will be easier. What do you want to play next?" "Clarinet," I said.

Edition details

• Publisher: Stone Hut Pr
• Publication date: 1999
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0967573203
• ISBN 13: 9780967573205
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 93