Gene Logan set his mind to starting a group featuring Valley and Winter Texan musicians, he came up with not one, but two groups. By virtue of being Gene and Paula’s winter home, Countryside RV, located on the corner of Countryside and Valley View Road, hosts both outstanding musical groups on Mondays at 1:30 p.m.
The two groups are called, “Memory Lane,” and “Hear Jazz Here,” and they share the show time, playing every other week January through March.
Those who are, "a hair over 55," will know the music already. Anyone who is there on vacation and still in their 30s, might need a translator. In any case, a Monday afternoon at Countryside could be the most enjoyable afternoon of the winter.
Gene began his keyboard career when he was young. Keyboards were called pianos back then, some 75 years ago. By age 14, he had "paying gigs." He then moved on to become a piano teacher for 10 years and worked 20 years in a music store, all in southern Illinois.
In 1992, Gene and Paula moved to Deming, New Mexico and started wintering in the Rio Grande Valley, where he played under Don Petri in the original "Hear Jazz Here." When Petri gave it up, Gene took over. Hear Jazz Here and Memory Lane share the same musicians except that Memory Lane includes a second trumpet and a bari sax, and Hear Jazz Here features a clarinet player who doubles as a vocalist.
Trumpeter Don James comes standard with both groups. He began his musical career at the age of 16, playing two shows a day, seven days a week at the St. Louis Grand Theatre (some would say Burlesque House). He and his wife, Judy, have an unusual hobby. In summer they volunteer with the Canton, Ohio Drum and Bugle Corps, and cannot keep up with the number of meals they cook during the summer season. Don also plays with his 93-year-old trumpeter father.
Second trumpet for Memory Lane is Roger Cauchi, who says he is a mechanic by trade and a musician by choice. He’s played trumpet for 60 years including a stint in the Royal Canadian Air Force Reserves Marching and Dance Band.
He is a self-taught musician but had “a little private tutoring,” by an Italian teacher during his early years in Quebec. When his mother bought him a trumpet, there was no school band and he really preferred sports. But mother knew best, and he now plays in a 17-piece stage band and dance band back home during the summer and in several Valley bands in the winter.
Herman Bays, who plays in both groups, is a self-taught guitarist from southwestern Virginia, where western movies and music were the only forms of entertainment in town. Kids tended to choose the guitar, which has become Herman’s ticket into bands such as the Shrine Dance Band, and the Mellotones in Louisville, Kentucky and in the Valley where he plays with "Swing Street" and "A Train" as well as with Countryside’s two groups.
Glen Thorsteinson gave up electronic engineering and rocket science when he retired, but not music. Glen’s tenor sax grounds both Countryside groups, though occasionally he lapses into a clarinet solo or plays backup for another soloist.
Another Winter Texan who plays in both groups is Harry Bardot. When he went to military school, he listed his trombone as his hobby. The next thing he knew, he was in the Navy Band School in Washington, D.C. and playing in shipboard bands, including three years on the USS Missouri.
Today, Harry plays in the Rio Grande Valley Band, a 75-piece concert band made up of Valley residents and Winter Texans. The band gives concerts throughout the Valley from December through mid-March.
Linda Stark is the youngest of the members of the two groups. While she might not have played drums for 40 years after high school, she is still one of the best drummers around. Stark has also played accordion since she was 10. Valley musicians are glad she and her husband took early retirement.
When Dave Boyce arrives for Memory Lane Mondays, he is loaded with musical instruments including a clarinet, alto sax and bari sax. Dave was the son of a military man, who lived all around the country growing up. He attended high school in Omaha and then attended Creighton College, which he paid for by playing gigs around the area.
He founded Boyce Scientific, which sold microscopes and precise-measuring equipment. After he sold the business to his children, he and his wife, Ann moved to the Valley where Dave now has plenty of time to play sax or clarinet.
Harold Rademacher, a Monday regular at Countryside, did not have to become a Texan by retiring to Texas in winter. His father was in the army, and Harold was born at Fort Ringgold in Rio Grande City, where his father was Quartermaster Sergeant of the 12th Cavalry, 73 years ago.
Rademacher gave his first solo at age six, under the legendary band director, Roque Guerra. When he attended the University of Texas-Austin, he was told that an alto sax was not a symphony instrument, so he switched to clarinet. After college he spent 50 years directing bands in San Isidro. Today he works part-time teaching instrumental music at St. Paul’s Lutheran School.
Singer and clarinetist Don Gabriel enrolled at the Fairbault, Minnesota School for the Blind as a child, where he learned to play nearly every instrument in the band. He credits his musical family for that background. Clarinet is his favorite instrument, but he also plays baritone and tuba.
Gabriel is also a vocalist, who can belt out songs like "Blueberry Hill" with a voice akin to Louis Armstrong’s.