The following is a short rundown of the beginning bands that I played with. It is not as detailed as it will be might be but for those interested in another thread in the fabric of the Des Moines and Iowa music scene it might prove interesting.

I previously talked about George Clinton and how he basically introduced me to the music scene outside of my house. His band The Upsetters got me involved in music however there were more sides to George’s outlook and influence on my experience. He also introduced me to the Jazz Festival which used to be held at the First Unitarian Church off S.W. 9th st. At these events I saw my friend pianist Speck Redd, who was often a headliner but I wasn’t prepared for my introduction to guitarist Don Archer and Hammond organ player Sam Salomone and their trio jazz groups. Also the Darling brothers, Wayne and John (bass and piano) were often featured in this local festival. Sam would have a tremendous influence on my development in later years as I patterned a lot of my bass lines from left-hand basslines that he would weave to support songs of almost every genre. 

In 1966, I met Harlan Thomas, Rick Lussey, Gene Jackson and played bass with the original Soul Bros. bass for a series of gigs.

"These guys gave me my first chance to get out of the basement and really play with pros. I'll always be grateful for the chance they took on a kid who wasn't really hittin' on too much at that time."

1967-8 I met Sam Salomone at the First Unitarian Church Jazz Concerts. I also heard Speck, Wayne and John Darling, drummers Jim Ganduglia and Jim Ecklov,pianist Helen Gale, and bassist Francis “cigar” Bates, and many others. I came to these events with George Clinton and through him was introduced me to DM’s world of art and culture.

While at Drake University (1967-70), I co-led a group called the Black and Blues Band. Drake students all, our aim was to play original material as well as music by The Paul Butterfield Blues Band, Freddie King and Horace Silver. The Black and Blues band  included Saxophone player Rick Arbuckle from Jefferson, Paul Micich from Des Moines on trumpet, Cleveland guitarist Frank Tribble (who would play w. Dartanyan for the next 15 years) and Des Moines drummer/keyboardist/accordionist Sy Strother. Of our most memorable gigs were shows with the great Willie Dixon and the psychedelic soul band Rotary Connection featuring a young and sassy Minnie Ripperton. (They actually came to our house after the concert for a jam and ‘hospitality’ session. Great days those. So did Three Dog Nite, Crow and countless others who fell by to either jam or crash.)

We shared a house near the Drake university campus (1127 28th St.) with John Rowat, Brian Smith, Bill Jacobs, Frank Tribble and one guy who is was not a musician, We were all students too. The unnamed non-musician who already had a real job and a real need for consistency in life--wasn’t exactly compatible with our  “stay up all night jamming and testing the barriers of music, art, life and experience ethic.

This band house, was the site of quite a few significant potentially life and/or mind altering events which will be the source of later blog posts. Our house on 27th street became part of Rock ‘n Roll history as a place connected. more or less,  to the now legendary hoax concerning the “death of Paul McCartney.”

Before rampant worldwide speculation began in the late Fall of 1969, two kids with  “sourced information” about Paul’s untimely demise were traveling through DM en route to San Francisco from Michigan. The boy and girl spent the night at 1127 and proceeded to demonstrate the ‘irrefutable’ evidence that the cutest Beatle (well, unless you were John Rowat whose allegience was to John Lennon) had died a horrible traffic death and (horrors) Brian Epstein and the others were trying to cover it up.

Yep, we played songs from the Abbey Road album backwards and heard/imagined  for ourselves the scary “turn me on dead man.” phrase on which hung ‘evidence’ of Paul’s passing..... right?

Well the story raged for months until poor Paul had to be tracked down and practically wrestled to the ground to do an interview and restore the sanity of world gone wacky with Paul-is-Dead induced depression.

I told one of my cub reporters, at the Drake Times-Delphic, named Tim Harper about it and he actually interviewed me about it,  The resulting story and book, became a major career builder for him.  It still draws interest and mystery to this day. Those were, in fact, pretty insane times. In Des Moines. 

In 1968 for a short period I joined guitarist Phil Steffen and drummer Joe Eberline, in a Zepplin/electric blues band called Seth. Eberline and I had great communication and even though we didn’t play together that long, we made some great noise together. Steffen a great guitarist and singer was from Williamsburg in Eastern Iowa. We had some very interesting times together.

The beautiful, and I believe unique, thing about the late 60’s in central Iowa is that we created a mini-scene where musicians, songwriters, scene makers and hippy entreprenaurs were all hanging about and that made for a scene that was richly diverse in it's musical breadth. Coltrane, Butterfield, Hendrix, Deep Purple, Crosby Stills and Nash, Miles Davis, The Sons of Champlin, Herbie Hancock, Mountain, The Fourth Way, James Brown, Doc Watson, Muddy Waters, John Handy, Santana, and many many more influences all worked their way into our jam sessions because everyone brought something to the session and we were, by definition, dedicated to an open exchange of ideas artistic and philosophical, and political. This was a racially integrated scene which was indicative of the something significant in our time. While I was aware of problems with discrimination in my father’s generation, the young musicians of the late 60’s in Des Moines were not really hampered by racial division. It was great that young musicians from many ethnic roots could find common ground in our music and so groups with guys named hernandez, ackerson, perowsky, salamone, or jackson would play some great music together. 

From 1967 until 1978 the Des Moines scene was monstrous because country, blues, swing Jazz, free Jazz, Rhythm & Blues, and folk musicians all jammed, recorded and interacted with each other in dozens of jam sessions where seasoned jazz pros jammed with rock musicians who may have been less capable technicians but who were dead-on in connecting to the burgeoning young audiences of the coming 70's who were hungry for 'relevant' music. 

I started playing the blues because it was then, and still is the ultimate truth of music in America. The Des Moines I know has always been integrated and music scene was always populated by a rainbow coalition of characters who wanted to jam.

The fact is that this music, birthed in the African community, now belongs to and is fed by almost every culture in the world should make us all feel more connected to each other. After all, we all get the blues, whether you live in San Francisco or Cedar Falls.

My first band got a big break, opening the show for blues legend Willie Dixon at the old Fieldhouse on the Drake Campus. It was the first time we got to share the stage with these legendary Chicago cats and there was no longer much doubt about what path I would follow.

Graduations, Viet Nam, Kent State, Woodstock and real life intervened and I played with a number of local players of all styles like Harold Luick, Speck Redd (a family friend), John Rowat, Teja Bell, Sam Salomone, Don Archer, Catfish, Tom Tucker, Bernie Fogel, Jimmie Brown, Wally Ackerson (thanks for the lessons wally) Val Carroll, Louis Carroll, Jack Dawson, Jay Alcorn, Jack Oatts, Toad Stewart, Ross Cornelison, Bill Jacobs, Mike Watts,  Ray Burlingame, Joe Eberline, Phil Steffens and Bobby Dawson, Joann and Bobby Jackson, Del Jones (perhaps my longest friendship and a true pro. I bow to you brother) 

My most important local groups were:

1967-68 The Black and Blues Band (opened for Paul Butterfield Blues band and Willie Dixon at Drake University in 1967-1968.)

1969: Mothership: at The Point at Drake University. Craig Dewitte, Lynn Willard, John Rowat, Bill Jacobs, Mike Watts.

1970-72 Wheatstraw: Ron Dewitte, David Bernstein, Craig Horner, Dartanyan

1972 Dynamite: a band with Tommy Gordon, Phil Aaberg, Rod Chaffee, Dartanyan

1973 –1974 Chase Band Chicago

1975- Midwest Express

1977-79 Dartanyan Band: John Grguric, Danny Nicholson, Rod Chaffee, Frank Tribble guitars, Lynn Willard, Sam Salamone, G.T. Clinton, Bobby Parker Keyboards, Marcia Miget horns, keys, Big Mike Vocals. Peter Triolo, recordist  (Dartanyan band records album titled Influences on indie Sularue recording label in 1979. It garners rave reviews and yields two songs for a Midwest compilation album entitled Pointy Feet Beat (Pacific Sun Records). Concert and club appearances with Chick Corea, Grover Washington Jr., Sons of Champlin, Kenny Loggins, Luther Allison, Delbert McClinton.

1976-78 All Iowa Jazz Quartet: Will Parsons, drums, Don Edelbrock, woodwinds, Lynn Willard, keyboards, Dartanyan, bass, vocals. Iowa City- and Des Moines-based free, experimental, new music unit that played several highly acclaimed concerts.

1980 Rickie Lee Jones Video project Los Angeles -

1980-85 Montana Arts council Artists in Residence. University Of Montana, Missoula, Mt.

1986 Electronica and Jazz vocal performance Des Moines Restaurants

1986 – Engineer, Producer Audio Art Recording Studio Des Moines (First MIDI/digital audio facility in Iowa) Designed by Roger Hughes, Pat McManus and I to integrate both traditional analog recording with then-revolutionary digital editing, storage and mastering tools.

Well, there is a skeleton timeline of the last 40 years. I’ve left off the last 20 years because you can go to http://www.dartanyan.com/resume.html to check out my California chapter. But these pages are all about Iowa and in the next post we’ll get down to why Des Moines’ scene was key to the development of American music of the last 40 years.

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