verdigris

[Horace Greeley]

Hi, Tim,



At 08:31 AM 8/14/2004, you wrote:
>Horace,
>
>Thank you for the words about Fred Drasche.  The older I get the more I 
>appreciate him.  He was Class (with a capital "C").

Yes, on all counts...truly first-rate.

>  His wife Mimi always traveled with with.

Mimi was a real sweetie...I could imagine her knitting (I have not idea if 
she did, but I can imagine it) away while Freddy taught.  Last I knew they 
were living in Florida...what a long time ago that seems like now.

>   I first met him as I said previously in Chicago at Hendricks Music.

Ed Hendricks had been a VP at S&S (don't remember of what).  He left to 
open up retail store(s) in Chicago...and pretty promptly ran into the same 
dealer-manufacturer problems that most competent folks have.  Things got 
very nasty and ended in a horrid law suit...no one wins.  S&S retail in the 
Chicago area has not been the same since.

>Otto Keyes was lucky enough to spend a week with him and then technicians 
>were invited to one of his seminars at the store.   Otto invited Michael 
>Wathen, myself, and I think Conrad Hoffsommer to the seminar.  Conrad, do 
>you remember that?  We all drove from SD to Chicago in my old VW 
>camper.  We were all quite a bit younger then (and I mean quite a bit).

Ouch...indeed....

>   He seemed to like the younger technicians along with paying attention 
> to the seasoned techs.   Information flowed out of him without talking 
> down to others.

That was part of his charm...I think that he saw what he was doing as a 
"calling", missionary work, if you will.  He fully understood that, with 
the demise of the older factory/apprentice-type training that so many 
earlier technicians (of a couple generations back) received before going 
out into private work, there really was no good place for people to learn 
what they needed to in order to do good work.  Plus, he was a gifted 
teacher, truly interested in what each person had to say/ask...importantly 
he, himself, continuing to learn from the interactions...not small 
shoes.  Mimi was always reminding him that it was time to take a break, or 
eat lunch, or to simply quit for the day...

More later.

Best.

Horace




>Tim Coates
>University of South Dakota
>
>Horace Greeley wrote:
>
>A couple of other thoughts on Freddy, while we're at it:  With due respect 
>to a few others, he was probably the last person at S&S could 
>(metaphorically) have started at one end of the factory with raw wood and 
>personally produced a finished, playable, musically useable 
>product.  Anyone who had the chance to attend his classes came away with 
>more than they bargained for...or, they simply were not paying 
>attention.  Whether he was making his needles "sing" (which one could 
>still do with factory hammers in those days), or taking great delight in 
>the shocked faces as he beat sostenuto mechanisms into submission with an 
>8 oz. ball peen hammer, there was an artistry in his use of tools and his 
>hands that was truly spectacular to watch.
>
>If your memory is long enough, you may also remember that, in the days 
>when the factory was busily telling everyone that, if there was a problem 
>with their fancy new Teflon action, it was obviously something that they 
>(the local technician) had screwed up, Freddy was the guy who was going 
>around teaching people how to make their own crude-but-effective parallel 
>reamers out of center pins rolled between files...Nope, it wouldn't fly at 
>all in our latter-day, post-modern world of techno-nonsense piano 
>work...but, it kept a large number of instruments functioning that would 
>otherwise have died on delivery while the marketing folks figured out that 
>they had made a mistake and tried to catch up.
>
>Ah, well...I suspect it might be time to raise a glass in his general 
>direction...
>
>Best to all.
>
>Horace
>
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