Don Buzard
Continued from Home Page
"Gatemouth" Brown entitled Blackjack. Do so right now. You won't regret it. For one thing, there's Gatemouth himself -- a national treasure of blues, bayou, jazz, fiddle, guitar, and unique voice that I didn't know about until I got serious two years ago about finding some Don Buzard footprints. But mainly, there is Don. Listen to his solos on a couple uptempo jazzy cuts, realize that he started doing that sort of thing half a century ago, and put the disc on your shelf knowing you have a genuine collector's item -- one you will retrieve and play many times.
One of these days, just to make my own collection complete, I'll buy the 1977 vinyl Andy Gibb album Flowing Rivers, on which Don is prominently credited.
I have a garage recording, sent by a steel player from Denver, apparently made within a year or two of my afternoon at the stateline saloon. One can clearly hear wives or girlfriends chatting while Don and a rhythm section have at a mixed bag of jazz and western material. Hey, if Michelangelo had scattered his product arround your place, you'd probably have a coffee or a beer while he made his next trinket, too.
Go to the Steel Guitar Forum, find the archives, and do a search on Buzard. You'll find some serious steel players heaping some serious praise on Don, and wondering why he never became better known -- even within the steel community.
Which suggests -- accurately, I'm sad to say -- that Don died just a few years before I set out to find him via the Internet. I really would like to have met him again and told him what an unending impression he had made on a kid from Flatlander country who didn't know a steel could be made to do the things Don Buzard made it do. Sometimes life gives you such chances, sometimes not.
I think maybe every musician has a Don Buzard indelibly stored in his memory bank of defining experiences. Someone who was infinitely talented, awesomely creative, stubbornly insistent on seeking unattainable perfection. In my own case I carried that aural image around for more than 40 years and, being a journalist and a realist, began to wonder if I was imagining it all.
Blackjack -- and the things I've read from other steel players -- proves I wasn't imagining a thing. So that's good. The Blackjack reissue is dedicated to Don.
I only wish there were more material out there to be heard. The world would be a better place for that.
If you know of any that I've missed (one other Gatemouth CD features Don, including a hilarious outtake), let me know.
Cousin Mike's Hammond C-3: a veteran's story
MAY 2010 -- It was 1984 when I discovered my cousin owned a Hammond C-3. It was dusty and mostly hidden behind circus gear crammed into a truck near the midway of a north Florida county fair. The carnival season was starting, and the Hammond was headed north. Mike no longer played keyboards in the show, but like anyone who ever had a Hammond he didn't want to leave it behind.
This was the first time I had seen Mike since the year he got out of high school in the mid-'60s. He grew up in the Pacific Northwest, and I grew up in Michigan. A lot had happened in 20 years, but on this trip the only part I cared about -- or knew about -- was the circus part.
I was doing journalism as a day job and he was walking the high-wire in a self-contained little show that included performing dogs and parlor tumbler pigeons. Because his partner was -- and remains -- Carla Wallenda, my newspaper let me fly down to Florida and let me write about what it's like when a drunk shouts for you to trip and fall, or when you get stung by a bee, while walking on a high wire.
SINCE THAT DAY Mike and I have reconnected each year at one small-town carnival or another. When we came to know each other a little better, I began to realize the most remarkable things Mike did in the missing 20 years had nothing to do with music or circus. As the biographical bits emerged, I asked to see some pieces of paper that helped fill in the blanks. One, for example, regarded events of December 3, 1968, while Mike served as a combat medic with Bravo Company, 5th Cavalry Regiment, 1st Cavalry Division near Don Luan, Republic of Vietnam. It says in part:
Private First Class Morgan exposed himself to the intense hostile fire as he moved to the forward fighting position to administer first aid to the wounded personnel. With complete disregard for his own safety, he shielded the injured soldiers with his own body as he treated them. Although wounded twice himself, Private First Class Morgan ignored his injuries and continued to administer first aid to the casualties. Only after all the other wounded soldiers had been treated did Private First Class Morgan seek aid for himself.
That's from a Silver Star citation typed Feb. 1, 1969, in police-blotter prose about as stylish as a five-day weather forecast. By then
Mike had been in Japan for hospitalization and treatment, and had
just returned to Bravo Company.
On the night of March 8, near the Cambodian border, 54 men -- two undersized platoons of 27 soliders each -- moved out 600 and 700 meters from the company's day position and established ambush positions. In the early hours of March 9, each platoon fought separately, each against at least 200 fresh North Vietnamese Army regulars seeking -- unsuccessfully it would turn out -- to overrun them and take a position known as Landing Zone Terry.
What followed became known as the Battle of Angel's Wing, resulting in Bravo Company's heaviest casualties of its eight-year Vietnam deployment. The two platoons on the leading edge of the battle took rocket and mortar fire, fought within 10 feet of charging (and by some accounts seemingly hopped-up) enemy, and desperate to mark friendly positions for close-in air support doused their shirts with insect repellent, lit them, and tossed them onto the battlefield as beacons.
The 1st Platoon took casualties of six killed, 19 wounded (most more than once), and only two unwounded survivors. My cousin "Doc" Morgan's 2nd Platoon suffered five killed, 16 wounded, two "lightly wounded" (meaning not airlifted out after the battle), and four not wounded. Combat medics are not observers to war, they are participants who do their best to take care of wounded while themselves fighting. Mike recalls firing the first round from his platoon. In the end he was shot up worse than he had been back in December.
THIS TIME only four days passed between combat and someone feeding another piece of paper into a typewriter. What emerged included:
When his platoon was attacked and surrounded by a numerically superior enemy force and numerous casualties were sustained, Specialist Morgan constantly exposed himself to the intense hostile rocket, mortar and small arms fire as he administered first aid to the wounded soldiers, although seriously wounded himself, Specialist
Morgan refused medical attention, but continued to treat the injured men, engage the advancing insurgents and give words of encouragement to all would would listen. Even though enemy rockets were exploding near his position and wounded again, Specialist Morgan remained in the exposed position to administer first aid and evacuate the casualties. Not until he was ordered to accept aid and be evacuated did Specialist Morgan leave the contact area.
That was Mike's second Silver Star citation. It's the third highestaward for combat valor, after the Medal of Honor and the three Service Crosses. Mike's platoon sergeant got one of those, and every survivor he has met from the two platoons received at least a Bronze Star with a V device (for valor). And, obviously, a lot of Purple Hearts were awarded.
Non-veterans -- that includes me -- can only be second-hand awestruck by what young men are able to endure in combat. I have assured Mike several times that there is more gratitude for their actions than they think. I've also told him that the awe trumps the gratitude, and the awe is self-indulgent because everyone who was never in a place like that wonders -- has no choice but to wonder -- if he could have even performed, let alone performed well.
FOR SURE I CAN perform simple arithmetic. It was 15 years after Angel's Wing that I began my friendship with my cousin. Mike has always been big on family, even cross-country family, so -- partly fueled by my unabashed journalist's curiosity and willingness to ask unartful questions -- he probably spoke to me as much about these things as h e spoke to anyone. In
public he never revealed himself as a veteran, let alone a combat veteran, let alone a medic who fired his weapon with one hand while holding a buddy together with the other hand. Literally. And it was almost 40 years before Mike began contacting the "family" with whom he endured Vietnam.
A couple weeks ago a handful of Bravo Company soldiers reunited in West Virginia, along with some significant others, and several family members representing men who never came home. Many attendees went to the Wall together. A few visited a nearby Civil War battleground. They were able to talk. The networking will increase through the home stretch of life. Like combat veterans of many wars, it takes time before anything like this can happen -- even among the only people who know what they are talking about when they finally talk.
RIGHT NOW the country is obsessed with the Boomers retiring. Which statiscally makes sense. But the human interest story, as they probably still say on any news desks that may still exist, is what is happening among those who heard their '60s and '70s rock and roll in the jungle, getting shot at while their socks and underwear rotted off.
More and more gatherings like the one in West Virginia have been happening in recent years. But there are still Vietnam vets out there who need and deserve to be brought home.
Mike is on his way north again for another summer on small-town midways. It's going to be the best summer in quite a while. His old buddies have seen to that.
Mike is a guy who once could come into town and leave again without even mentioning what would have to be the defining moments in anyone's life -- unless some nosy cousin snooped around. Now his pickup truck sports decals in the back window: Combat Medic.
And why the hell not?
The C-3 is in storage down South. Gone, but not forgotten.
Dr. Tom's Journal
(c) 2011 Tom W. Ferguson
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When we came to know each other a little better, I began to realize the most remarkable things Mike did in the missing 20 years had nothing to do with music or circus.
It was Memorial Day 2010 when I wrote this column about "those who heard their '60s and '70s rock and roll in the jungle, getting shot at while their socks and underwear rotted off." It is, however, a timeless story about people, of numerous generations, who should be remembered every year. Every day, actually.
Having
a house party?
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Want to roll back the rug and open the floor to dancing? He'll bring along his duo or trio.
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