Jazz legend has Othello roots

Musician, author Bill Crow was born in the back of Knepper's Novelty Store in Othello

OTHELLO — Former resident Laurie Muhlhauser was listening to the radio one day when she heard a little something new about her hometown.

"I was with a friend who was a jazz enthusiast, the classic jazz," she remembered. After a song finished, the announcer came on and announced that that date was the birth date of Bill Crow, "legendary jazz musician and author who was born on this date in 1924 in Othello, Wash."

Muhlhauser wasn't certain she'd heard correctly, but later that day, Crow's birth date and birth locale was repeated.

"I thought, 'Oh my gosh!'" Muhlhauser recalled. "I'd never known that. As far as I knew, no one in Othello had ever known that."

Muhlhauser got online and began conducting her own research, ultimately finding an e-mail address for Crow in a profile online. She sent off a message to the man best known as a bassist playing with many of the great musicians of jazz, telling him she was from Othello, not knowing if she would get a response.

"Sure enough, the very next day, I got an e-mail from him, and he said, yes, he had been born in Othello," she said.

'Treasure trove'

Bill Crow was born in the back of what was Knepper's Novelty Store, owned by his maternal grandparents. His parents were living in Kirkland, where he grew up, but his mother had come to Othello to be with his grandmother when she had him.

Growing up, Crow would accompany his parents to Othello almost every summer, at first by train, and then one year his father picked them up in a Model-T Ford truck in Othello and drove home to Kirkland.

"We had 15 flat tires on the way home," Crow recalled. "The car did not like the hot weather."

One of Crow's favorite things to do growing up was to read the comic books his grandmother saved for him in the novelty shop, which sold, amongst other things, hardware and dry goods. All his grandmother had to do with the comic books that didn't sell was send their covers back, so she kept their contents for her grandson.

"It was a treasure trove," Crow recalled.

He also recalled having Sunday dinner at a house outside of town and playing with the other Othello children.

One of the most popular activities was go to the roundhouse at the Milwaukee train station and watch the trains turn around, trying to get somebody to give them a ride on a handcar, Crow recalled, or just sitting.

"There was an optical illusion on the loading platform when there was a full train of freight cars," he remembered. "When it started to slowly move, it gave the impression that where you were sitting was moving, instead of the train. That was a little cheap thrill."

Seeing as how Crow lived the majority of the year in rain country, the heat also took some getting used to, he said, remembering seeing tumbleweeds go by, alkali lakes and being careful when barefoot not to burn his feet on the sand.

Crow said he has not returned to Othello since graduating from high school, and noted he also has not returned to Kirkland very often since his parents retired and moved to Arizona. The last time he returned to Kirkland was for a high school reunion of the class of 1945 with his wife, who had never been to the area.

Crow would like to return to Othello, though, noting that his grandfather, Sam Knepper, was a great enthusiast about irrigation arriving in the area, in a time when the area was mostly desert.

"He said, 'If they ever get water here, this is going to be an Eden,'" Crow said, noting that the same year his father brought the Model-T Ford truck to Othello, he and his family drove over to where Grand Coulee Dam was being built.

Crow's grandfather was instrumental in getting many trees planted in Othello. The city's old wooden water tower leaked, and Knepper cultivated the area around it, creating small irrigation ditches to create a park.

"When they replaced that water tower with a metal one that didn't leak, the family was very concerned that there would still be a water source to irrigate the park plants," Crow remembered. "Whoever was in charge of the town at the time promised it would be called Sam Knepper Park, but it never was. Some politician got in there."

'I grew up loving music'

Crow said he has been a musician since the day he was born. His mother was a singer in church choirs and on the local live music radio in Seattle, and taught elementary piano to children.

"I still have an image of myself standing besides her while she ironed clothes, so short I could see under the ironing board," Crow said. "I grew up loving music."

When Crow's family got its first radio, a secondhand table model, they sat around and listened to everything from opera to pop music, comedy shows and soap operas, he recalled. His mother started him on the piano when he was 5 or 6 years old. When he began to struggle with the instrument, she thought he might not be able to learn anything more from her, and sent him to another teacher, but he had trouble there, too.

In school, Crow wrote down that he wanted to be a trumpet player, and was later upgraded to a better trumpet when he had trouble getting his lips together on the mouthpiece, receiving a baritone horn when he complained.

Jazz was heard often on the radio, and Crow found he had an affinity for that kind of music. In junior high school, he learned the high school swing band teacher had formed a jazz band, and he wanted to participate. There were no parts for baritone horns, so he learned saxophone and the drums.

When he went into the Army, he discovered valve trombone, which was more acceptable in jazz bands. It was the instrument he played upon his arrival in New York in 1950. He began to learn to play string bass that same year, and gradually abandoned the valve trombone.

"I didn't play a brass instrument for 25 years, until I began to work in the Broadway theaters, where I was asked if I could double on tuba," Crow said. "I got one, practiced for a while and began to take jobs." The tuba is now Crow's second instrument, after the string bass.

"I like the rhythmic feel of it, the swing of it," Crow said of jazz. "(There is a) dancy feeling that makes you feel like physically moving to it." As a bass player, he always enjoyed being in the rhythmic section, he said, enjoying what he calls the game of listening to a song's chord structure and inventing his own melodies to it "endlessly." He also enjoys the game of getting together with other musicians and creating "something that is a surprise to all of you. It is a wonderful adventure."

'Talent still comes here'

Crow continues to play bass in jazz clubs around New York. He also wrote columns for "Jazz Review" for many years, and is the author of two books — "Jazz Anecdotes" and a personal memoir entitled "From Birdland to Broadway." The former has recently been revised, and a new version is entitled "Jazz Anecdotes Second Time Around."

Crow also writes reviews, articles and a monthly column for the musicians' union, Local 802, accessible under the heading "Band Room" at http://local802afm.org.

"We're all older, both the jazz scene and me," he said. When he came to New York, it was easy to hang around the jazz scene. It was easy to find cheap places to live and cheap food, he said, and there were many places where he could go and play music, with a number of bars catering exclusively to musicians. It was also easy to network, with the union maintaining places where musicians looking for work could go find their favorite groups and pick up places to work.

Today, networking is primarily done by telephone, Crow said, and there aren't so many open jam sessions, although there are several places where it's possible to just wander in with a horn and hope to get a chance to play.

New York City remains a big magnet for the musically inclined.

"Talent still comes here, because this is where a lot of good players are," Crow said, noting that jazz is an accepted art form now, taught in schools from elementary through college. "When I was a kid, nobody was teaching jazz in a formal education situation, it was not considered proper for anyone to study."

Attending the University of Washington for a short time, Crow found it was possible to find jazz sessions or individual teachers who might tolerate an interest in jazz.

"What I learned about jazz came from phonograph records, radio and personal contact," he said. "(Now) there are jazz programs out of colleges, and some devote their entire curriculum to jazz."

'I have very sweet memories of that town when hardly

anybody lived there'

Laurie Muhlhauser and her husband Larry had an opportunity last fall to attend one of Crow's jazz sessions at Club 17 in New York.

"It was a wonderful experience," Muhlhauser recalled. "Bill is a talented musician and captivated us with the interesting stories he had to tell about his memories of Othello and his illustrious career in jazz."

"I have very sweet memories of that town when hardly anybody lived there," Crow said. "There was one little main street, one block of stores, some houses up the hill and then that was the end of town. The railroad was everything … I really liked it, I always enjoyed coming there."