RAY TEMPLIN
Originally published in The American Rag, October, 2007. Re-printed with permission.
Ray Templin, the pianist. drummer, band leader - also actor, writer and
producer - arrived in Los Angeles in February 1979. In less than a
month, he had a role in a national TV series, a three-days-a-week piano
gig at a Shakey's pizza parlor, and a spot at the Coca Cola corner in
Disneyland. In six months, he was on an LP as a solo pianist.
He was 32 years old. but he had a busy career behind him and a
successful one ahead as he became known not only for his own piano
style, but for his command of the styles of Fats Waller and Earl Hines.
He had left his native Chicago because his day job had collapsed just as
his first-born child arrived. He was well-established in the Chicago
jazz scene, but it did not promise enough to sustain a family;.
Now 60, he has retired after 25 years at Disneyland, including 22 years
spending mornings as the bass drummer in the marching band. He and his
wife, Trish (for Tricia) have moved to Tucson, Arizona, where he
augments his pension playing in local bands while seeking substitute
spots with festival bands. He also is continuing his career in TV and
radio as an off-camera voice or on-camera announcer.
On arrival in Los Angeles, he got in touch with a casting agent, who
found him the role of a bookkeeper on Andy Griffith's short-lived TV
show "Salvage One."
"On lunch break," he recalls, "I ran across Andy strumming a guitar and
struggling with the lyrics on the break of 'I’m Satisfied with My Gal..'
I knew them: 'You've got great big eyes, pretty teeth..... ' Andy
invited me over to his house."
Later, Ray was to have a spot on Griffith's "Matlock" TV show as owner
of "Ray Templin's Bar."
Meantime, he followed up every lead. He worked up an act for the improv
clubs - toss your name in a hat, get 10 minutes on stage, maybe at 3 in
the morning, hope somebody will hire you.
He was told to look up Bob Ringwald. He found him at a Shakey's in
Burbank, playing piano, flipping slides and singing along with them.
"When he came off stage, I was amazed. I didn't know that he was blind.
I still don't know how he did it."
Ringwald suggested he play a few things and then talked the manager into
hiring him.
"Bob is responsible for my first music work in Los Angeles."
Bob also told him to call Jim Turner, another pianist, who put him in
touch with Paul Affeldt, head of Euphonic Records. The result was his
first album on vinyl. "Ray Templin--A Flash at the Piano."
Ringwald was organizing his Great Pacific Jazz Band - just five pieces,
Zeke Zarchey, trumpet; Roy Brewer, trombone; Don Nelson, reeds;
Ringwald, banjo, and Jack Wadsworth, bass saxophone. They rehearsed at
noon in the Disney studio, where Brewer and Wadsworth worked.
They had a gig coming up for which they wanted to add a piano, a typical
one-hour set at a jazz club. They called Ray.
"After the gig, I told the, ‘I’d really like to play drums with you guys.’
'They shook their heads, 'We don't like drummers.'
"Well, could I come to a rehearsal -just once.
"Okay"
"I took only a little snare drum, cymbal, temple block, tom tom and my
stick bag.
"They called for 'Sugar Foot Strut,' I pulled out one of those hand-clap
cymbals that sort of go bocka-ta-bock
Zutty Singleton had used one on the original Louis Armstrong Hot Five
record.
'They were amazed. 'How did you do that! It sounds just like the record.'
"A couple of times during the session, I thought it was better to keep a
tune uncluttered and I stopped playing. Later, Ringwald told me, 'I
never met a drummer before who could actually not play.' I told him,
'Bob, sometimes silence can be a hot lick.'
"And so I became their drummer. I'm on their album, 'Great Pacific Jazz
Band - The Music of Louis Armstrong.'
"We began doing festivals, six or seven a year. They also had steady
gigs. I couldn't make all of them because of my Disneyland commitments,"
When Ray had first called Disneyland, he was told that there was no
opening, but send over a resume and photo.
"Two weeks later, they called me in for an audition. I had never been to
Disneyland. Sonny Anderson, the booking guy at the time, led me to the
piano at the Coca Cola corner.
"I played and sang something, I don't remember what. He asked, "Can you
play 'Black and White Rag?' I wasn't into it for more than 30 seconds
when he closed the lid almost on my hands.. I thought, 'Well, that's
that,' but he said, 'When can you start?"'
-
Ray alternated at Coke Corner with Ragtime Rod Miller, who has since
retired after 36 years, and with Judy Carmichael. It was only a
temporary job, but it lasted through the following summer, then it was
back to Shakey's- for a month..
"1 got a call to fill in during rehearsals for a new show at Disneyland
while the scheduled piano player was on a cruise. When he didn't return,
I got the job permanently.
"There were three of us plus a puppet, a talking rabbit. We played
Dixieland with nothing written. Sonny Helmer, the trombonist, was the
front man. He had a penchant for letting his mind wander as he talked
with women in the audience. They asked me to take over as front man.
That show lasted the entire summer of Disneyland's 25th anniversary.
"Then, Stan Freese. who was leader of the Disneyland Band, said, 'Hey, we
need somebody to walk around with the bass drum.' I did that for 22
years, greeting people outside the gate, on the Mark Twain steamboat, in
the town Square. Maybe four half-hour sets a day. At formal concerts in
Plaza Gardens, I often played piano. Great fun! They are a terrific
bunch of guys at Disneyland. I can't say enough about what I learned."
In the afternoons, Ray was part of a series of musical groups, the Delta
Ramblers, the Straw Hatters, the names changed regularly.
"Every so often, they needed an emcee, so l got into that sort of thing
- and into writing shows for them.
"Disney is a funny organization. There are many talented people at the
parks, but the studio seems to think only well-meaning college kids are
there.
"My agent had been sending out a demo tape of the voice-overs I had done
in Chicago. They included various 'characters,' different voices.
Somebody at 'Imagineering' got hold of it and called me, not knowing I
was working at Disneyland. 'We are redoing all the rides at Fantasyland
and need somebody who can do sound-alikes.'
"The most-heard characters in the Fantasy Land area of the park are my
voice, including all the villains on the Pinocchio rides, and the German
ringmaster on the Dumbo circus train. A year ago, I redid the safety
spiels, 'Keep your hands inside,' etc.
"I've also done a lot of voice-overs outside Disney. If you hear,
'Please turn the tape over,' that may be me. I'm the voice of the radio
announcer or the next-door neighbors arguing on the 'Married with
Children' TV show."
After several years of doing festivals with Ringwald, Ray formed his own
band, made up mostly of his Disneyland friends.
It had a string bass and guitar instead of the tuba and banjos that were
dominating the festival circuit at the time. Even so, Roger Krum hired
them for the next Sacramento Jubilee sight unseen on the strength of
having heard Ray several times as a featured artist at monthly concerts
for the Sacramento Traditional Jazz Society.
"We did the next four or five Jubilees, and then other festivals. We got
around to a lot of neat places. Then, it got kind of hard. There is not
a lot of money in festivals and everybody in my band played for a
living. The pay per man per set had not changed much in the 10 years
since I had started playing with Bob Ringwald in the early '8Os."
He wrote a show for the band. In the first half, they gather at Ray's
house for a 1938 jam session in preparation for an upcoming concert. In
the second half, they present the concert, all 1938 tines. Throughout,
Ray explains what is going on.
The show was received well at its opening at the Grand Theater in
Anaheim, California, and again at the Sun Valley festival. It was booked
for a refurbished theater in Glendale, California, but a legal dispute
with another theater put the kibosh on that and Ray dropped the project.
Cornetist Bob Schulz, with whom he had played in the Chicago area,
settled in the San Francisco area and repeatedly uses Ray on piano and
drums in his Frisco Jazz Band.
He also has played with some of the premier Southern California groups
like the Hot Frogs, Golden Eagles, Night Blooming Jazzmen and the
Pieter Meijers Quartet. His talent as an entertainer served him well as
a member of that humorously-named trio, "The Palm Springs Yacht Club,"
teamed with John Reynolds and Westy Westenhofer.
When Schulz phoned to ask if he would be interested in going on a
cruise, Ray demurred. Trish grabbed the phone and vociferously overruled
him. They just did their 11th cruise.
A job at Disneyland provides "benefits," something few jazz musicians
have these days - health care, union protection, and a pensions good
enough that Ray could retire at age 59. He moved to Tucson, a city that
had attracted him while touring with Banu Gibson and Bob Draga, and
where he has jazz friends.
"In a sense, I am still working, just off the clock. I have an Arizona
agent who finds me voice-over roles. Besides, I do a regular Tuesday
night gig at the Chinese Rose restaurant in Tucson with the Arizona Road
Runners. Recently, I have been the drummer with Bob Schulz, Butch
Thompson, the Golden Gate Rhythm Machine, and Independence Hall."
Ray was born January 27, 1947, in Chicago.
"I grew up around music. My father appreciated jazz. He had records of
Earl Hines, Teddy Wilson, Fats Wailer.
"My uncle - my father's younger brother - played piano at parties. My
grandfather was a commercial artist, but he also taught violin, guitar
and piano.
"At age 3 or 4, I began fooling around at-the piano. When I was in the
3rd or 4th grade at St. Juliana 's in Northwest Chicago, a nun began
offering piano lessons. I played her a version of Twelfth Street Rag,
She said she couldn't do anything for me."
As a tot, when records were playing, Ray would bang on pans and
especially on those big tin cans in which popcorn is sold for parties.
So, when he was about 5, his parents bought him a drum set, used, from
the 1920s. He kept it into his late teens.
Except for singing, there was no music in the parochial schools he
attended, but he and his friends would get together to play. At the
University of Illinois in Chicago, a new campus when he enrolled there
in 1965, he took a couple of music theory classes.
He had an assortment of after school and summer jobs. At one, a fellow
grocery clerk mentioned the club where he was playing. He went to see
them, sat in on drums and got hired.
Their trio consisted of Ray, a guitar player and the leader on
Chordovox, a kind of predecessor to the electronic keyboard. It was
based on the button accordion but without reeds. It was attached to a
large amplifier/speaker cabinet filled with old-fashioned radio tubes.
It was possible to make it imitate various instruments.
The trio was Ray's first play-for-money job. But it was, significant for
another reason: A friend of the leader dropped in. She was Trish, an
opera student at DePaul University.
On October 1, she and Ray double-dated . They were engaged three months
later. They will celebrate their 40'th wedding anniversary in May.
"The Vietnam war was on. I was drafted on July 18, but not until we
honeymooned in Colorado. In Denver, We wandered into a bar where the
piano player turned out to be Teddy Wilson. He was most gracious. We
missed our dinner reservation."
Ray was in the army two years. After basic training; he was sent to
police school in Ft. Gordon, Georgia.
"I got high marks with the 45 pistol. I was kept on as an instructor.
Trish moved down to Augusta.
"I moonlighted on piano at a Shakey's. Some men from the base suggested
I audition for their outfit It was a kind of unofficial Special Services
entertainment group, eight of them on the books as clerks and such, but
actually putting together all kinds of shows, including music.
He auditioned as a drummer.
"We already have one."
Piano?
"We have three guys who can play piano, but our tenor sax player is
leaving in two weeks."
"Give me that thing!"
He had fooled around on an alto, but tad never held a tenor. However,
the fingering is similar. He played two choruses of "Rose Room" and was in.
He spent the rest of his two years of service writing, producing,.
acting and playing music in shows. Trish was worked into some of them.
One member of the group was Loren Koravec from Concord, Massachusetts.
"He was a real good banjo player. We formed a duo with me on piano to
play in the officers' club."
A folk singer, guitarist, trombonist Joel Higgins arrived and joined them.
Mustered out, Higgins went to New York where he met a producer of shows
for dinner theaters. Within six months Ray and Koravec were able to join
him Together with Trish, they put together a four-person revue called
"Green Apple Nasties." They traveled the dinner theater circuit for two
years before they had a falling out with their manager.
Back in Chicago, Ray and Trish formed an act that worked the local
clubs. Ray got a day job as a photographer and sound engineer for an
educational company producing lessons on tape. Photography had been a
hobby since he was a youngster, when he had a basement darkroom.
An agent found him radio and TV acting jobs, mostly off-camera
voiceovers and announcements, but also occasional spots on screen, for
which he had to join the Screen Actors Guild. That proved lucky when
he moved to Los Angeles where it was much more difficult to break into
the union.
He began meeting with and playing with local jazz men, including Bob
Schulz, who was teaching high school band in Lake Mills, Wisconsin. Ray
worked with Schulz's Riverboat Ramblers, subbing when needed on either
drums or piano.
Other jazz friends were members of the Salty Dogs - Mike Walbridge, Kim
Cusack, Wayne Jones, Tommy Bartlett.
Then, after 10 years of marriage, Tnish got pregnant. Adam, the baby, is
6 foot-3 now, but he was born 6½ weeks prematurely at 2 pounds, 14
ounces. And Ray's publishing company job nosedived, eventually to die.
As part of its cutback, he was let go.
Joel Higgins, his old dinner-theater partner, was out in California
doing TV. Ray accepted his invitation to come try his luck there. Trish
and the baby joined him after a brief stint in Florida staying with her
parents. Their second child, Julie was born 2 years later.