Have you ever considered how some of the decisions you made in your youth dramatically affected your adult life? I’ve always been fascinated by how the threads of my life and Harry’s seemed to be tied together so many years before we met. In fact, we never would have met if I hadn’t fallen in love with the marimba when I was in the sixth grade.
Barbara Brabec, dressed for entertaining in 1960
by Barbara Brabec
Adapted from The Drummer Drives! Everybody Else Rides
PRIOR TO WRITING MY MEMOIR,I was known as a home business expert and author of several books on that topic with nearly forty years’ involvement in this industry. In all those years of writing, however, I never had occasion to talk about my other life back in the late fifties and early sixties when music was my passion, and I was performing professionally in the Chicago area. In my memoir, I’ve described the path I took that gradually led me to Harry, and written about the lessons I learned as a novice entertainer and some of the cold realities of the music business in those days.
It was only during the writing of my memoir that I began to think about what Harry was doing at different stages of my musical life (an exercise other couples might enjoy exploring when they contemplate how fate or circumstances brought them together). For example, In 1949 when I picked the marimba as my instrument of choice, Harry was performing in the National Symphony Orchestra. Shortly after I graduated from grade school in 1951, he was joining the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and getting married, believing that both the marriage and the job would be for life.
WHO COULD HAVE IMAGINED that Fritz Reiner would fire Harry from the Chicago Symphony Orchestra in 1956, the same year I was getting situated in Chicago. I was continuing my marimba lessons with James Dutton at the American Conservatory of Music, participating in his percussion ensembles, and preparing myself to present solo marimba recitals.
Losing the Symphony job destroyed Harry’s career as a symphony musician and ultimately led to the failure of his first marriage in 1959, the same year I was just “breaking into the business” as a musical entertainer at women’s club meetings, private parties, and weddings. When I finally got my first union job at the Surf & Surrey Restaurant on Chicago’s South Shore, I felt like I had the world on a string. I didn’t know it at the time, but every musical step I had taken to this point was bringing me one step closer to Harry.
I HAD NEVER HEARD OF HARRY BRABEC until I got a call out of the blue in August, 1961 from this guy who was asking to meet me on a blind date at the suggestion of a mutual friend. Three days later, Harry proposed and we married just 18 days after we met. I will always believe that the marimba was my divine connection to Harry, and that only God could have orchestrated our individual journeys so we’d end up together in the same place at just the right time in both of our lives.
I ceased performing after my last job in May 1962, figuring that one professional musician in the family was enough. But I was always grateful to have had a little taste of the music business before I met Harry because it helped me to understand what he was going through as he struggled to make a living as a freelance musician.
My interest in playing marimba even for my own enjoyment diminished once I found my true life’s work as a professional writer. We kept my marimba until 2000 when Harry began to sell his instruments, and I thought it a good deal when we were offered twice what I paid for it. But now that Harry is gone, I wish I’d kept it. I play a little piano from time to time, but every once in a while I yearn to once again hold four of my handmade yarn mallets over a beautiful keyboard and bring forth the sweet melodious sound that only a marimba can make.
* * *
WHEREAS I’VE SPENT MOST OF MY LIFE working in a homebased office dressed in comfy old clothes with slippers in cold weather and bare feet in the summer, in my glory days as a musical entertainer, fancy dresses and three-inch rhinestone heels were the norm.
CLICK HERE FOR A PDF DOCUMENT OF OTHER PICTURES, a copy of the brochure I designed to promote myself as a provider of background music, some newspaper clippings, and a few more nostalgic remembrances. (This document will be of special interest to women who appreciate vintage gowns and dresses of the sixties.)
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Tags: James Dutton, marimbists
