My senior year, I met Bob Criswell.

John Lewis, “I Can’t Get Started” (2001)

My senior year, I met Bob Criswell. He’d graduated before I got to Hiram and gone into the service. Now he’d returned, his time in the Army done, not so much because he wanted to study as because the GI Bill would pay him if he went to school and he didn’t know what else he wanted to do anyway. Most of the time that year, he hung out at the piano in the Student Union. At least, that’s where I saw him most of the time.

The Union was at the opposite end of the building from Freddie’s Grill, where I worked. When I had night shift, I’d close down Freddie’s after everybody left. I’d clean up, lock up and walk back through the lounge on my way to my dorm. If Bob was there, and playing, I’d stop for an hour and sing along while he played the piano.

He had a music fake book. I’d never seen one before. It had the lyrics, melodies, keys and chords for twelve hundred some songs. He’d turn the pages until we found a song we both liked and off we’d go. I’d sing. He’d back me, then take a chorus on his own and then we’d close it together. If we liked what we’d done, we might do it over again. If we didn’t, we’d repeat until it got better.

Ours wasn’t a complicated and certainly not a deep relationship, but it was satisfying. We were never friends. We just had this one thing together but it was a magical thing to me. I have no idea how it felt to him or what he thought of me but he must have liked me enough to play piano with me, once or twice for hours. The truth is I never really knew Bob. But I appreciated him and could he play piano!

***

There weren’t many concerts on campus but I went to all I could. The ones I remember are:

the Deller consort, led by counter-tenor Alfred Deller. I liked the music so much I bought a couple of records by them later on.
the Louis Armstrong Jazz All-Stars. Trummy Young was on trombone, Peanuts Hucko on clarinet, Billy Kyle on piano, and I don’t remember who on bass and drums. I enjoyed them but found the music old fashioned, which it was. Good, but old-fashioned.

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