Larry Golder was a great musician, an incredibly well read and erudite man and a good friend. It seemed like he knew every kind of music that was ever played, every kind of aircraft that ever flew, every kind of food ever cooked and every style of ballroom dance ever danced. Name a subject and Larry could amaze you with his knowledge and insights. And he hid all this behind a grumpy and gruff exterior that belied the gentle, sensitive man within.
The first time I heard Larry Golder play was at my boss's wedding. There are two things you can generally guarantee at a wedding; one, the wine will be ordinary or worse and two, so will the music. Consequently when these three guys fronted up in their tuxedos, one with a trumpet, one with a guitar and one with a double bass I wasn't expecting anything too special. How wrong I was.
My wife and I had been in Adelaide only a short time and hadn't yet built our acquaintantship with the Adelaide jazz scene. Little did we know that Fred Payne (trumpet), Larry Golder (guitar) and Jerry Wesley (bass) were top jazz players in the town. There aren't too many weddings you go to where the band plays Scrapple from the Apple or Lester Leaps In, with the trumpeter doubling as scat singer. The boss's new wife had chosen well. (The wine was pretty good too as I recall.)
That was fourteen years ago. The next time we saw Larry he was playing electric bass in Tommy Richardson's Adelaide Stompers at the Union Hotel. By this time Larry had taken to shaving his head, and this along with the big bushy beard and the large gold ear ring made him look for all the world like a bikey (biker); a pretty rough and tough customer. That night at the Union, Larry introduced his daughter Joey Elkins to the audience. Joey would have been around fourteen at the time. She wowed the audience.
Some time later we went to hear Paul Grabowski and the Adelaide Chamber Orchestra at the Adelaide Town Hall. They were playing Rhapsody in Blue and there was Larry in the orchestra on banjo; the bikey in the tuxedo. From then on it seemed we kept bumping into Larry all over; playing banjo at the Central Market, playing with Mike Bevan in a tribute to Hendrix and the modern guitar greats at the Gov, depping in Freddy Payne's band at the Green Dragon, and playing in Beverly Sands band. In all these contexts and across all these styles of music, Larry's talent shone.
Over time we got to know Larry well. It was pretty apparent that Larry was going through a low point in his life at that time. With the general decline in live music, the gigs began drying up, not just for Larry but for all musicians. The heady days of the seventies and eighties were over. For some years Larry had been battling addictions and depression. He'd been living in a series of digs, each dingier than the last. Although he was by nature a tidy person, his surroundings became more and more squalid. Some days he just could not be bothered getting out of bed. But whenever the phone rang, Larry was ever the professional, getting his act together and rising to the occasion. Music was the most important thing in his life.
Then Larry moved to the Bay Hotel Motel in Glenelg, Adelaide's famous seaside resort. He lived in a motel room there and during this time he started getting things back together again. He was a great mate with all the regulars and was fondly regarded by all who knew him. Very much a local character.
His room was small and orderly. On the wall beside his bed was a print of that famous photo of Dizzy and Miles, and photos of his mother Mavis and his daughter Joey; on the wardrobe a poster of Larry himself, from Winterjazz; on the bathroom door, and various other locations around the room, quotable quotes of jazz musicians, philosophers and poets, written out in Larry's impeccable script; his guitars, banjo, mandolin and electric bass on their stands by the window; and spread out on the bench the latest scores he was rehearsing, or the books he was reading.
I used to drop by for a chat whenever I could, and share a glass from the cask of the Stanley Reisling that accompanied Larry most places. We'd talk about anything and everything. Larry amazed me once by telling me how he was heavily into nineteenth century French organ music. He raved about it. (As it happens my Dad was into organ music too. It was a standing joke around our place, Dad and his bloody organ music. Perhaps my old man was hip after all!)
Larry's taste in food was also pretty surprising. It's fair to say if he had to make a choice between food or cigarettes it would generally be cigarettes. But when he did have the cash he wouldn't rush out to buy plebian crap. A couple of fresh artichokes were much more Larry's style than a good old Aussie meat pie. (Surprisingly Larry and I shared a predilection for, of all things, lamb brains, rabbit and of course oysters, all of which were specialties at the Bay Hotel.)
Larry talked fondly of his mother Mavis and his boyhood days on Kangaroo Island. Mavis had obviously been a great influence in his life. He gave me a little book his mother wrote on Golders' Gremlins, the family band that played dances, weddings and parties on the island. In the photos of the book, Larry is a fresh faced, almost angelic young lad on guitar, along with brothers Michael and Brentley, dad Les on saxophone and Mavis on piano. Larry had a thorough grounding in music. Mavis obviously taught him well.
He told me how later in life, when he had moved to Adelaide, he used to sneak into lectures at the Adelaide Conservatorium; sitting up the back and soaking up the theory. I'm really not sure if Larry ever had any formal musical education in the normal sense but he certainly mastered music theory. His sight reading was without equal. Likewise his improvisation. He wrote out his arrangements by hand in the classic style with a chisel point pen. (He once told me that the reason he got so many gigs was that he was the only guitarist in town who could actually read!)
It was during his time at the Bay Hotel Motel that Larry and Beverly made their CD, "The Nearness of You". I was privileged to be involved in the project. We did the recording in two sessions. I'd pick them both up in the car and we'd head out to Cran Wilton's Sound Works. In the thirty minutes drive they would manage not only to fill the car with smoke but to have at least one minor skirmish. They enjoyed goading each other. But it was clearly evident that they had a close and enduring relationship. Beverly, Joey, Cassie and Miles were Larry's family. He told me that on several occasions. Most weeks he would spend a few days at Beverly's place before, exasperated, she would order him back to the Bay.
The recording sessions were great. Recording engineer Cran Wilton made his name firstly as a radio producer for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation and more recently as the owner of the Sound Works, a recording studio well known around Adelaide. Mainly Cran has been dealing with rock bands, thrash bands, grunge bands and so on. I have a feeling Beverly and Larry caught him by surprise. Two musicians walk in, plug in, cough a bit then nail it in one take. One or two tracks we did twice but in most cases it was the first take that made it to the CD. Cran certainly rose to the occasion and did himself proud.
Largely for Larry's benefit we put on a tasteful spread of delicacies and of course a cask of Stanley Reisling. During the breaks Larry and Beverly would stick their heads out the door to smoke (Cran has a strict no smoking policy in the studio) while we all listened to the play back. Both Larry and Beverly had a passion for the classic songs of the Tin Pan Alley era and originally this was going to be the title of the CD. I can't remember why we eventually changed that to the Nearness of You, but I'm glad we did because it has so much more meaning now.
I'm also glad that we were able to capture Larry and Joey on tape together; once at Beverly's place for Spring Can Really Hang You Up the Most and again at the Green Room for My Funny Valentine. Larry was devoted to Joey and was her number one fan. For all the shortcomings of the recordings, this empathy shines through in their performances.
In many ways it is presumptuous of me to be writing all this about Larry. In all, I knew him for less than ten years. There are many who knew him for a lot longer and are better placed to talk about him. There is no doubt a lot more that could and should be said. Just let me say that Larry epitomized all that I admire in jazz musicians. In my line of work I meet many so called successful people who have made it to the top in business. Rarely do they impress or inspire me. Jazz musicians by comparison, despite their un-worldliness and shambollick ways, have intuitions and perceptiveness that at times are breathtaking. Larry was such a person.
Larry died in the early hours of April 17, 2002. The post mortem showed that he died of an hereditary condition, the same condition that claimed his mother several years earlier. Apparently it most often occurs with people of aboriginal descent.
It's now April 17, 2004, two years on. I promised Beverly I would get this all finished today and I will. Wherever you are out there Larry, we hope we have done you justice. And wherever people are listening to you around the world, we hope they are enjoying some of the music that gave us so much enjoyment.
Bob Cother