Interview with Jeffrey Dane

AS: When were you introduced to the Alamo? 

JD: My Alamo interest began in 1955 (with everyone else’s, it seems), but the fact is that it lay dormant for nearly four decades, and revitalized only in the early 1990s. It’s something I’m unable to explain (along with, “What’s the meaning of Life?”). Though the decisive Disney trilogy featured Crockett as principal character, I always felt unaccountably drawn more to James Bowie’s persona than to Crockett’s. That’s one reason I so enjoyed the films The Iron Mistress and The Last Command, both of which focused on Bowie.  

When my Alamo interest resurfaced so many years later, it became so pervasive that I often include at least one reference to it (or two, or ten. . . .) even in my musical articles, and so deep and broad is my musical fervor that I’ve included such references in my other (even non-Alamo-related) historical writing. Virtually anything I write for publication will reveal this kind of connection, which will come as no surprise to many of my Alamo siblings. I didn’t choose this interest in the Alamo and its related peripherals. It chose me. When I mentioned to Bill Chemerka a few years ago in Bexar that Chopin died the same year [1849] the Alamo Daguerreotype was made, he said to me, very matter-of-factly and as though it was the most natural thing in the world, “Well, music is your frame of reference.” I suppose his remark encapsulates the situation in the proverbial nutshell.  

That day’s actual encounter warrants retelling. We had met only once before, at the 1996 Alamo Symposium in New Haven (the first one I attended), so I hadn’t seen Bill since then. When in March, 2004 I saw him walking into the Alamo Museum, I got his attention with a comment marked by real originality. It was this paraphrase: “Chemerka! Bill Chemerka! — I is a New Yorker. I met you once. You shook my hand!” Everyone in my Alamo family will know how he responded. Without missing a single beat and extending his hand, he said: “Well, I’ll do ‘er again!” — It was a small aesthetic experience and a great moment.  

Apropós, one day in the early-mid 1960s I passed right by a man on the north-west corner of Third Avenue at 42nd Street; he seemed as tall as the Daily News Building across the street. Since my Alamo awareness was still latent at that time, I didn’t recall at that moment that he was in Wayne’s film (which I had seen several years before). If I did, I’d have approached him to introduce myself and offer a 20-second greeting. I hope this very belated “apology” will make amends to his memory. The man was John Dierkes, who portrayed Jocko Robertson in Wayne’s Alamo film.  

I also loved TV’s Adventures of Jim Bowie, which had its heyday soon after the Crockett craze began but which in its episodic timeline clearly pre-dated Bowie’s Alamo involvement. I almost met the star, Scott Forbes. One day I learned he’d soon appear in person at a local Brooklyn amusement park, now long gone and replaced by condos, completely obliterating the original look — comparable in its change, no doubt, to what the original Sandbar Fight site looks like today if Bowie could see it: totally unrecognizeable. At 13 I didn’t have the brains even to think of picking up the telephone and calling Information for the park’s phone number to get details! They say “almost” doesn’t count, but it did in this case: I learned a good Never Again lesson. — My retrospect-disappointment about it might be what prompted me to learn how to research, though I acknowledge I’m not perfect at it (is anyone?), and there’s no guarantee our findings will always be written in red granite from atop Mt.Sinai.  

Joseph Musso gave me the opportunity, at his magnificent home overlooking the San Fernando Valley in California, to actually hold the prop knife Scott Forbes used in the TV series. Joe also has numerous other Bowies, historical pieces and those made more recently for films. The blade of the Scott Forbes knife was made of aluminum, which was one hell of a surprise for me! But holding that knife — and more than that, the others — was quite an experience, for which I have only Joe to thank.  

There are countless people who know infinitely more about countless Alamo matters than I do. Regarding 1830s Texas, and any other historical era, in fact, I’m drawn more to the character and personalities of those who lived in those times than I am to issues like military tactics and battle statistics (as important as these other matters certainly are, and which I concede I must leave to those who are substantially more well-versed in them than I). I had never even held a musket until a few years ago when Jeff Bearden, dressed as Crockett, was kind enough to let me hold his flintlock. Its heft frankly surprised me.  

Sometimes I feel that people at large have never been more intelligent as they were in the past, and that some of them have never been more stupid than they are today. And I base this observation (not a judgement) only on what I’ve seen. In those former times, people developed extraordinary memories because they had few other places to store their data. The illiterate had no other places to store their data. Most people spent their entire lives within only a few miles of where they lived. Now we’ve developed machines that remember for us, but those machines both serve us and betray us at the same time by alternating between computer memory and computer crashes.  

I’m a city boy but I developed an early taste for living out in the country. An aunt & uncle had a summer home outside Monroe, NY, where I stayed with my paternal grandmother for several summers during my pre-teen and early teen years. (Aunt & uncle would drive up from the city on weekends). The nearest neighbors weren’t “only forty miles apart” and we could see the next farmhouse — but just barely, up on Hunter’s Hill. The area is suburbia today but back then it was out in the country (with farms and cow-pastures), to the extent that I could walk in my underwear from the house down to the road to get the mail. (Do this today, and you’ll get arrested for indecent exposure — which in my case, and at my age, would be very indecent, indeed). It was during those years that I became aware of the concept of relativity — not in the Einstein manner, of course, but in the sense of comparison. It happened the day I realized that a tree has no definite front or back, except in relation to the person looking at it.  

To see TV’s The Adventures of Jim Bowie, I had to go “up the road a piece” every Friday evening to watch the show at a neighbor’s home. They lived there year-round and had an outdoor antenna; we had only the indoor, top-of-the-set rabbit-ears (I suspect only Methusela would remember those), and a major “snowstorm” accompanied on our TV screen any show on WABC Channel 7 (on which Jim Bowie was broadcast). “But it does not snow in New Orleans” is a line from the film, The Iron Mistress. The concept is relevant here: if the show was watched on our TV set, it was indeed “snowing” in New Orleans, or in Opalousas, or anywhere else Bowie might have been during that particular episode, or even traipsing around a Louisiana bayou with Robert Cornthwaite portraying John James Audubon. (Did he & Bowie ever really meet?). Those Friday evening telecasts at the neighbors’ home were an important part of the week for me.  

I’m unable to crystallize just why I have a fascination with the character of the historical James Bowie. He was a human being, just like the rest of us. Maybe that’s one of the reasons. I don’t recall the date but I remember the day I got my first Bowie knife. On a Saturday during one of those country summers my aunt & uncle took me to nearby Middletown for some shopping. We passed a shop (I even remember the store’s name, as vividly as I remember the Alamo: Kurt Barman’s Gun Center), and I was riveted in my tracks by what I saw in the window: a Bowie knife.  

In retrospect, considering the selections we have today, in its contour it was an average and hopelessly prosaic piece, but a cinematic rendering of that moment would show the knife almost glowing, as though it was illuminated from within, and surrounded by small haloed angels hovering around it. It had a 9″ blade, a handle of stag scales, and a slightly S-shaped brass cross-guard decently proportioned in relation to the rest of the piece. It was etched original bowie knife [sic] across the blade under its spine, and was stamped Solingen, Germany on the ricasso. Most of us know this kind of knife. The only real similarity between it and the TV knife was in the general, clip-point shape of the blade; cross-guard and handle (which had no pommel-cap) were different, and it had no brass strip on the blade’s spine — but to me at that time it clearly represented a large Bowie knife, it was a handsome piece and most importantly I liked the way it looked.  

My only reservation about its design was that the handle seemed just a tad longer than I thought it should have been, and that it was just this side of being disproportionately long.  

We went inside the shop and I learned the price of the knife was $5.95 — a tidy sum in the mid-1950s. They had a selection of other knives but this Bowie was the most appealing. My aunt told me we could return the following Saturday and acquire it then. That week was one of the longest of my life.  

For years I treated that knife — and the locked box in which I kept it — like it was the Ark of the Covenant, and my examination of the piece was always accompanied by a silent reverence approaching ritual.  

Within the last few years I’ve been “blown away” twice, not by Twin Sisters (an interesting concept, this), but by knife collections I’ve seen. My first such experience was in 2004 when I saw J.R. Edmondson’s. I was so overwhelmed by their sheer number and quality — many are hand-crafted and are thusly unique — that at one point I had to step outside for a breather and pull myself together. More recently, this past March [2007], I saw Joseph Musso’s collection. The majority of his pieces are actual antique Bowie knives, and thusly have a true historic pedigree and/or provenance, giving most of them a singularity we likely won’t find anywhere else.  

This experience, too, was almost overpowering, to the extent that to avoid hyper-ventilating I had to excuse myself and step outside on the terrace to cool off. This is easy to do in that area, since his house is 1400 feet up in the mountains; and if I had had the coordinates and a pair of binoculars, I’d have been able to see the former Mulholland Terrace home of Franz Waxman in the Hollywood Hills, which also overlooks the valley but from its opposite end. With Joe Musso’s knives, I felt like a novice violinist holding and examining instruments that had been made by Niccoló Amati, Giuseppe Guarneri, and Antonio Stradivari. In this kind of “in The Presence” realm I hadn’t had such a feeling of intensity, of personal historical connectivity, since the day I was in Leonard Bernstein’s apartment at The Dakota on Central Park West in Manhattan — and before that, in historic Weimar, Germany when I was in Goethe’s enormous house on the Frauenplan, and in Franz Liszt’s home on Marienstrasse.  

I’m fascinated by a particular and even peculiar quality ascribed to the historical James Bowie: that he would come to the aid of defenseless men without solicitation. Though they’re exceptional, there are such men, and an unusually distinctive and benevolent trait like this would be remarkably revealing of a person’s real character. The very understandable human tendency is for us to believe that the truest features of Bowie’s real nature were shaped by his most positive points. He wasn’t perfect. Neither are we. But he was human, just as we are.  

With a name like Dane I might have a right to speak for the underdog. . . . A few years ago I suggested the above Bowie possibility to a man I had arranged to meet in San Antonio. I’d never met him before but was familiar with and admire his work. We all know who he is but protocol and even simple courtesy doesn’t allow me to identify him in writing; besides, some things are better left unsaid anyway, at least by me.  

I told the man that my opinion is that tradition has given Bowie a bad rap. A very good man and a professional in his field, this guy lit into me with such vigor that I thought he’d soon haul out a knife because he disagreed with me, and I felt I’d soon have to leave the restaurant — we were having lunch — under a torrent of abuse. I wished at that moment that James Bowie was still alive and was witnessing this exchange between us — so that he might, without solicitation, come to the aid of this defenseless man from New York. . . . Calm returned almost immediately and we continued talking as though none of this had ever happened. He was also kind enough to stand the lunch and we left on friendly terms. Interestingly, though, despite my several follow-up communiqués, I never heard from the man again. Go figure.  

I’m no gambler so I might be going out on a limb by saying this, but we probably know as much about the real James Bowie as he knew about us. I mean this by common usage, not by technical definition, but the concept seems to indicate it by the countless legends and contradictions that surround him as an historic individual.  

Silence can illuminate by implication. It can be much more revealing than even the most detailed explanation, and we can learn, and certainly deduce, a lot more not by what’s been said but by what has not been said. As one example: of the surviving letters of Franz Schubert, not one was written to a woman. Similarly, and very interestingly, there isn’t a single known letter written by James Bowie in which he even mentions a knife. (Frankly, this escaped my attention until it was pointed out to me by Jack Edmondson). Even if nothing else, this seems a very telling fact.  

 

AS: How has the Alamo influenced your life? 

JD: This is difficult to explain and almost impossible to adequately define, but it’s something I can easily recognize in myself as an intensity of feeling. Events that have the most significance for me are those that have a strong human historic connection. Having seen the Washington Monument was an impressive experience; having visited Mt. Vernon — where Washington lived and died — was a personally significant experience.  

The links in the chain that binds us to our own history generally, to American history specifically and to Texas history in particular are larger & stronger than we might think. As a boy, Igor Stravinsky actually saw Tchaikovsky at a concert. Stravinsky lived into the seventh decade of the 20th century, so conceptually there might now be some living centenarian whose grandfather could have known James Bowie, or at least been in his presence and spoken with him. It’s conjecture, yes — but it’s also conceivable. “An idea is a greater monument than a cathedral.” ( — Clarence Darrow, defense attorney at the Scopes Trial of 1925). 

Certain kinds of people pursue their positive efforts in spite of the adversity they encounter from others. They refuse to grovel and buckle. Some would call this stubbornness and decline, others would call it integrity and dignity. This is what the Alamo defenders did, even though in life they were eventually, and even inevitably, defeated by the opposition. They lost the battle, but we still remember them not just in spite of the loss, but maybe because of it. So in a very real way, they won.  

Traditionally the tendency is to focus on the victor, not the vanquished — but there can be balance without symmetry. When Beethoven was composing, pianist Daniel Steibelt was all the rage in Vienna and was making all the money. Daniel WHO?? — That’s precisely the point: he’s now just a textbook entry (in which he’s usually characterized as a notorious kleptomaniac). His work is as dead as he is. We don’t remember Steibelt. We remember Beethoven. And that’s the bottom line. Through what he left us, he’s still very much alive. Except for the western enthusiast, historian, and scholar, people at large know little of the Mexican army of 1836. But we remember the Alamo, and we have the names of every known defender. They lost the battle, but they won their places in Posterity.  

On my first visit to Bexar, which I visited with a years-long friend, Jack Broadfield, and his then-16-year-old grandson, Charles, by design I experienced a dawn at the Alamo on one of the days of my stay. It was end-June 1995, not March, but I knew that would make no difference to the experience. As a matter of fact it actually intensified it for me, since the absence of March 6th ceremony made this private event even more personal. Staying at the Emily Morgan Hotel, I proceeded “past the face of the Long Barracks” (as Ned Huthmacher said about his own first Bexar visit). As I turned the corner, facing the church façade, I found myself surrounded by the sounds of Dimitri Tiomkin’s quietly descriptive music for the film’s opening. No-one else heard it, but I did — in my inner ear. I also thought I had already “been around the block” a few times, but it wasn’t until then — my first Texas summer — that I found out what Hot as Hell really means.  

We had visited Brackettville before Bexar. It was there I encountered the first real Alamo historian I’d ever met: Richard Curilla, who introduced me to Happy Shahan. It was Richard who told me about the Alamo Society and put me in touch with Bill Chemerka. “If all Western historians are like him, I’ll be among good men,” I recall thinking to myself about Richard.  

Sometimes we find we’ve begun our pilgrimages not a month too soon. Happy Shahan died about six months after I met him. His inscription on the photo of the two of us lends to it an ironic poignancy: “Come back and see me, Jeffrey.”  

Two of the more memorable days of my 2007 journey were in Los Angeles last March. I had never thought I’d know what it’s like to shake hands with and address someone as, “Mr. Bowie” — but soon after my arrival, I was taken by Joe Musso to meet Steven Bowie. And several days later at Joe’s home (affectionately called the Alamusso, by those In The Know), a long-standing hope of mine was finally fulfilled, thanks to the “mission” of San Jose Musso himself: I had the unique experience of meeting Bill Redmann — a descendant of the Louisiana branch of the Bowie family.  

Having met Fess Parker in March, 2004 was also a highlight. In the same paradoxical way that opposites can mean exactly the same thing (like “fat chance” and “slim chance”), it follows that a man of genuine warmth can be, in the vernacular, a cool guy. Spencer Tracy was called The Actor’s Actor, and Bela Bartok The Composer’s Composer. Joe Musso has called Fess Parker The Gentleman’s Gentleman. And the description is apt.  

The experience of living can make us jaded, but I got my start as an incurable Romantic. I’ve always had a marked tendency to develop an almost emotional attachment to the people, living or not, and in whatever fields, whose lives and work I study. If I hold someone’s work in high regard, I’d like to know more about that individual; if I think highly of a person, I’m interested in knowing more about his or her work. I feel a very close bond with our relatively recent history (in the sense that the Alamo era is more “recent” than ancient Rome), and I try to evidence this in my work as a writer.  

That the Alamo even exists, as an entity and as a concept, has made me realize that what the defenders did proves that right and wrong exist on entirely different levels, and that while society seems to favor power, wealth and fame, Fate favors those of integrity and courage. “Posterity remembers the intelligent and their accomplishments, not the petty morons who tried to give them a hard time along the way.” — Rod Timanus. I suppose Crockett summed it up very nicely: “Be always sure you’re right, then go ahead.”  

AS: You’re a talented writer. What publications have you contributed to? 

JD: I’m grateful for your sentiment but I frankly consider myself a very small cog in the very large wheel that revolves around the history of the American West. I freely acknowledge that my Alamo contributions, for whatever they might be worth, are modest compared to those of some other people. As one example, if Stephen Hardin’s background would fill a large cauldron, mine would fill a thimble. My work may correspond to a (hopefully!) useful pen-knife, while theirs is analagous to a large Bowie. (There’s a need for each: try cutting and shaping a quill-nib into contour with a Searles Bowie).  

I feel there’s value even in modest accomplishments like mine, and that we can still offer positive and maybe even significant input in a field without being “the world’s foremost authority” in it (whatever that means). My aim is to make a contribution, even if only a peripheral one, to the sum of human knowledge. If I can succeed in offering just one reader even a degree of insight into some aspect of the history of the American West (or of the history of music), then I’ll rest happy.  

I assure you that writing doesn’t come easily to me. I have to work at it very intensely, and think long and hard before actually committing to paper anything for publication. First comes the research, then lots of forethought, and then more thought, about the findings. For me to reveal the number of occasions where I’ve spent an entire day trying to find the most effective way to word one paragraph, would be embarrassing. (When I started writing a long time ago, I had a full head of hair). Some people, like Erle Stanley Gardner, could dictate an entire section of one Perry Mason book to a secretary, and then move on to the next secretary and dictate a section of another Perry Mason book. I can’t do this. And some people, like Mozart, could work in the midst of turmoil. Not I.  

Res Severa Verum Gaudium. This Latin inscription was written literally in stone above the portals of the old Gewandhaus concert hall in Leipzig. Idiomatically translated, it means: There Is True Joy In Serious Matters. I’ve always subscribed to it, and I renew my subscription on a consistent basis.  

I see researching and writing as a reason for living, not as a means of earning a living. Payment for the appearance of a writer’s work in publication is dandy, but that in itself isn’t the motivation. God and writers know this. A lot of them tailor their work to suit a particular publication’s needs, but in almost all cases I research and write my articles first, and then I find published homes for them. That’s one of the advantages of being an independent (i.e., freelance) writer who doesn’t have to do things this way, that way, their way, his way, or her way. I had enough of that, thank you, during my years in the cesspool euphemistically called the contemporary work force. Some of what I went through would make your head spin. I could write a book about it. (Maybe some day I will; it would be a corporate version of Mommy Dearest).  

But now I do things largely my way. I feel I’m very privileged, because I can do what I do not because I have to, but because I want to. And being an independent writer (for which I’m thankful), or even independently wealthy (yeah, we should all live so long), doesn’t necessarily mean you can do whatever you want. It means you usually don’t have to do things you don’t want to do. There’s a difference — and I wouldn’t have it any other way.  

Yes, I have on occasion been asked to modify an article. A word, now, about compromise. I believe in it for the sake of personal flexibility, human decency and consideration, ease of negotiation and smoothness of transaction. I do not believe in compromise if it’s going to undermine the integrity of a person’s work or character.  

To be even a modestly effective writer one must have at least a modicum of awareness of what’s going on around us, and this includes some basic observations of human nature, which sometimes involve an examination of what seems commonplace. A fresh look doesn’t hurt.  

Neither does a certain level of ego. Ned Rorem said that everyone has it, but that creative people acknowledge it more readily than others. The concept is beautiful in its simplicity. Ego is the fuel that keeps the creative engine going. We need only look at the work of the real creative artist to see the truth in it.  

A blank page is the greatest challenge I’ve ever faced, and one of the most fulfilling. I can put down on it whatever I want — but it has to work and make sense before I put my name to it. This principle was crystallized for me when I first saw the audition requirement for the musical composition department at the Juilliard School: “The primary requirement for admission in musical composition is the possession of a creative mind, with sufficient writing technique to make that fact apparent.” At first glance this seems deceptively simple. Guess again.  

The countless discrepancies and conflicting details we can find when, in our research, we face a sometimes overwhelming multitude of sources can create an absolutely daunting trial that’s just as challenging. Ambiguity is not researcher-friendly. (So what else is new?). This is a practical fact of life and the investigator must live with it. The embarrassment of riches that can go hand-in-hand with an abundance of resources can actually become almost a handicap, because it gives the researcher a rich assortment of Take Your Pick obstacles. The problem is that if we waited until we’ve found all the research details, we’d never finish anything.  

Sometimes we find (and even publish!) indications that lead in a certain direction or to a particular location — or even those that point to a specific range of years. Then we encounter contradictory details, even in trustworthy sources, about the exact matter at hand. That “embarrassment of riches” can admittedly lead on occasion to the appearance of conflicting data — and it can happen only after our publication of the previously-available details, when we are sometimes told of updates and other specifics. I’m constantly learning.  

Some of the publications to which I’ve contributed (in both the musical or western history field, both in the USA and abroad) are: American Cinematographer, Arts & Letters Daily, Austrian Culture, Classical Instruments & Composers, Classical Music Magazine, European Cigar Journal (I don’t smoke cigars, but Brahms did!), Film Music Magazine, Film Score Monthly, Global Arts Review, Global Travel Review, Heritage, Literary Traveler, Midstream, New Russia Magazine, New Zealand Film Music Bulletin, Novel Advice, Parson & Parish (some composers were fervent believers, others were not), Pen World International, Periodical, Post Magazine, Pro Musica Sana, Skylines Magazine, South Texas Traveler, Texian Legacy, The Alamo Journal, The Art Bin, The Brooklyn Baron (there are still some historic old Dutch Colonial houses left in the borough), The Inditer, The Inkpot, The Midwest Book Review, The Miklos Rozsa Society Journal, The Musical Performance Journal, The Musical Times, and Tobacco Europe (they picked up and re-published the piece from European Cigar Journal). Some of the publications translated the articles into their own respective languages. It can be a mind-bending experience to see your writing translated and published in another language.  

I’ve also learned that as a rule the European publications pay much more handsomely than those here in the USA. Skylines, the official in-flight magazine of Austrian Airlines, offered me (for my article on where Beethoven lived in Vienna) a sum that would put me up for a number of nights at New York’s venerable Waldorf-Astoria Hotel on Park Avenue. When I told them I’d soon be visiting Vienna, they suggested we discuss the article in person and invited me to visit their offices (within sight of Beethoven’s dwelling on the Mölkerbastei, and where I promptly fell in love with the young lady assigned to my article). Cole Porter lived in the Waldorf Towers for decades and so did the widow of Douglas MacArthur. For a comparable article, most USA publications would offer a sum that might cover a night’s lodging for your car in the Waldorf-Astoria garage. Go know.  

I’ve also been asked to contribute to a number of books, including On The Crockett Trail, An Illustrated History of Texas Forts, and On The Custer Trail, all by artist and author Rod Timanus; The Alamo Story: From Early History to Current Conflicts by Jack Edmondson (a book for which I wrote the Foreword); Technological Inkwells by Giovanni Cattaneo; The Technique of Film Music by Roger Manvell & John Huntley; The Composer In Hollywood by Christopher Palmer; Listening To Music (a college textbook) by Dr. Jay Zorn; and Leonard Bernstein — A Life, by Meryle Secrest.  

On two occasions I was asked to contribute to two different encyclopedias. It may be hard to believe, but on each of those occasions I was also asked (in their contracts) to operatively forfeit to the publisher all rights in perpetuity to my contributions. Let me say once and for all that I will not relinquish all rights to my work — at any time, for any reason, or under any circumstances — so I politely declined in both instances, and directed them elsewhere. The editor of one of the volumes suggested to me in an e-mail, in not so many words but in no uncertain terms, that the prestige of publication in their encyclopedia should compensate for the surrender of my author’s rights. What she could do with that suggestion is something I wouldn’t say to a lady.  

Let’s look at it this way: the only setting in which I’d even consider relinquishing all rights to my work would be if I were given a sum that would enable me to, say, purchase a private island. In other words, more money than I’d ever be able to spend, even treating all of my Alamo friends to an all-expenses-paid journey to Bexar every year for the High Holy Days. Clearly this scenario, as ideal as it would be, is totally unrealistic and is not going to happen. But as things are now, though I’m not wealthy in the usual sense, I have everything I need, I envy no-one, and I’m thankful daily for what I have and am able to do.  

 

AS: How many articles of yours have been Alamo related? 

JD: There are many, and book reviews are among them. My Alamo-related articles include Alamo Impressions (my first such piece) which recounted my initial journey to Texas and appeared in Issue Nr.100 (March 1996) of The Alamo Journal, distributed at that time at the Symposium in New Haven; Man & Myth, published in the San Antonio Express-News concurrently with the March, 1998 Symposium in Bexar (which, alas, I couldn’t attend); and James Bowie — An Historical Perspective, published in the Journal of the West (Dept. of History, Kansas State University, Manhattan, Kansas). It’s a print publication, but the article was later re-published (in revised form) on the website Theoutlaws.com. Man & Myth was written as a kind of mystery; by design, the subject’s identity is revealed only at the end of the piece. I’ve written a number of articles like it for both print and online publications, and I enjoy doing them.  

In the field of the history of the American west I’ve also done profiles of both Joseph Musso and of Jack Edmondson.  

As a reviewer, my fundamental outlook would make me an unlikely and even unnatural critic. I try to see the positive features of a work (book, audio CD, film, whatever), viewing and accepting it on its own merits, rather than follow the easy route traditionally taken by critics who view a piece tangentially and focus on what it is not. That’s a cop-out. I actually prefer silence rather than contention when I dislike something. I believe that to those on whom subtlety is lost, my reviews might lack color; and I hope that to those with insight, my commentary might be interesting and even enlightening. I see no sense in being negative just for the sake of being contrary — and, sorry, you won’t find “celebrity dirt” in my reviews, either.  

South Texas Traveler in Alice, TX has also brought out more of my western history articles than any other single publication. Within the last two years or so, a number of my pieces have appeared in it, including those on San Jacinto, Sam Houston, Lorenzo de Zavala, Deaf Smith, Dilue Rose, Sarah McClure, Juan Seguín, and three different pieces on Bowie, the most recent in the December [2007] issue. That issue is the last one under the current publisher. The magazine is about to have a new director, and whether or not my writing continues to appear in South Texas Traveler will depend on circumstances.  

 

AS: What is your favorite aspect regarding the history of the famous shrine? 

JD: From the intangible human perspective, what I feel most intensely about is that the Alamo represents and exemplifies the ultimate human sacrifice. The defenders made a stand and did what they felt, what they knew, they had to do, regardless of the consequences. And from the tangible historical perspective, that at least some of the mission survived the ravages of change and time, and that it still stands where it is, pure and simple, is something I find both amazing and thrilling at the same time. I tend to focus not just on the structure(s) per se, but on the memory of the largely ordinary people who spent a short part — and the last part — of their lives there.  

Obviously none of the defenders survived the final battle. That’s just one of the myriad reasons the Alamo has such iconic standing in the history of our country. It might be among the pivotal reasons: if they hadn’t all perished on that single morning, the episode might have become an American footnote instead of such a central, defining event.  

Remember the Alamo? I certainly do, and I’m also mindful of its people. I hope I never forget them. Travis, Crockett, Bowie, and all the rest — they were just as alive then as we are now, and they still live in our consciousness. They aren’t just names. They were people.  

By extension, I thusly feel much closer to the documents at the National Archives in Washington, DC, and to Ford’s Theatre and the Petersen House (where Lincoln died) directly across the street, than to the city’s monuments which were never even seen by the presidents for whom they’re named. The monuments, impressive as they surely are, have no direct, human connection to those men. The Declaration and the Constitution, on the other hand, have a much stronger human link to those people: those documents were right there in the very presence of those men when they signed them.  

As an aside, I regret I’ve never acquired a full-size replica of the writing desk George Washington used as president in his house on Cherry Street in New York City (which was then the capitol). I’d consider pawning my soul to have the original; I believe (at least, I hope!) even the reproduction would serve as a kind of talisman and spur me on to an increased creativity. The original is in New York’s City Hall in Manhattan (a building Rezin and James Bowie would have seen during their stay in New York in the early 1830s), but the roughly $4,000 price of the replica itself would be better spent on several journeys for me to Bexar. I do, however, have a replica of Washington’s pen-knife, more affordable and portable; Gen. Washington never held this one, but his was exactly like it. I’d find it more fulfilling to spend time examining Jefferson’s letters than to spend time at his memorial.  

Just as we have businessmen and myopic bureaucracy to thank for the demolition of Bowie’s home, the Veramendi Palace (for the widening of Soledad Street, allegedly in the name of progress), we also have Adina de Zavala to thank for the ultimate salvation of the Alamo Church and (what’s left of) the Long Barracks. From the time of the battle the façade of the church has changed; the Long Barracks’ height has been truncated; the Gallera is no longer there at all, with only a low-walled outline on the ground (fondly known among us Bowie aficionados as The Perch) as the only material reminder for us that it even existed; the perimiter walls surrounding the original compound are all gone — but the site, as an entity, still exists. I’m thankful for this.  

 

AS: Which Alamo film is your favorite and why?  

JD: I try not to see a new film — or to enter any new experience — with a predetermined attitude. It’s of more value for me to let the movie surround me and play freely on my emotions, and on what little intellect I might have. If during that viewing or subsequent ones the movie makes an eloquent appeal, then the film warrants further study for me. This same principle applies when I hear for the first time a piece of music I’m unfamiliar with.  

I suppose my favorite Alamo film is Wayne’s (admittedly maybe I feel this way more out of tradition or even habit than anything else), and I see some very interesting touches in John Lee Hancock’s film — but I still have special feelings for The Last Command and The Iron Mistress, their historical inaccuracies notwithstanding. It’s safe to say I feel this way by the impression they made on me — after all, I saw them during my formative years. I must also acknowledge that my enjoyment of any film, and this has been so ever since I can consciously remember, has always been contingent on the nature and quality of its music. (Surprise, surprise!).  

I eventually learned that the historical James Bowie, at about six feet in height, was conspicuously taller than Alan Ladd (5′5″, who portrayed Bowie in The Iron Mistress) and conspicuously shorter than Sterling Hayden (6′5″, who portrayed Bowie in The Last Command). These conspicuous differences effectively typify the discrepancies we find in the Bowie lore at nearly every turn.  

Coincidentally, each of these two films has a score by Max Steiner. In The Last Command he didn’t use even a paraphrase of the authentic De Guello before the final assault on the Alamo. His musical treatment of this cinematic event is as diametrically different from Tiomkin’s in The Alamo as any two musical passages could be. Tiomkin’s is rhythmic and dramatic, while Steiner’s is polytonal and strident in the extreme.  

This seems a bit of an irony, since Steiner grew up in fin de siècle Vienna and a frequent visitor to his parents’ home was The Waltz King: Johann Strauss (a man held in very high regard by the dominant musical figure in Austria at that time, Brahms himself). Steiner, who as a child once sat on the lap of Emperor Franz Josef and later attended the Imperial Conservatory of Music in Vienna (completing the 4-year course in one year), may have been the most versatile of all the composers in Hollywood. The long-remembered theme (like a waltz, also in triple-meter!) from the film A Summer Place (1959) came from his pen. “What prompted you to write such a lovely tune?” he was once asked. His reply: “I thought the kids would like it.”  

A recent posting on the Alamo Film website mentioned the movie How The West Was Won. This had a score by Alfred Newman, who won more Oscars — nine — than any other composer in Hollywood. During the preparation of the score, Newman was seen leaving the studio one day shaking his head and was heard saying to himself, “How the hell am I going to do something original for another Indian chase?!” — So what do you think he did?: he went home and wrote something original for that Indian chase.  

About Steiner’s De Guello for The Last Command, music played in major and minor keys simultaneously has a noticeable dissonance — and a very unsettling one, when combined with the visuals of a film and particularly as dramatic a story as that of the Alamo. Steiner’s De Guello is a product of his own imagination, and has an almost frightening brutality that seems more in keeping with what the Alamo defenders might have heard (if indeed the De Guello was played at that time). At the sounding of the De Guello at this point in the film, a short but very telling dialog seems to sum up the situation: “It gives me the willies!” said Arthur Hunnicutt (portraying Davy Crockett) to Sterling Hayden, whose response was, “It’s meant to.”  

Carter Burwell adopted a very different, original approach with the music he composed for John Lee Hancock’s Alamo. Burwell’s music for the film is far more understated than Tiomkin’s and has more subtlety. It’s a matter of different musicians speaking their common musical language with their own individual tonal inflections. To his credit, Burwell used the traditional De Guello tune. I had written to him before the film’s release to ask him if he planned to use it in the score, and he responded soon afterward. By now we all know that he even interwove into the embroidery of the score an accompaniment to it, with Crockett (Billy Bob Thornton) playing a counterpoint on his fiddle as the Mexican army ensemble played the De Guello at that moment in the sequence. Elsewhere in Burwell’s score, the inventive instrumentation suggests the very kinds of sounds the Alamo defenders themselves might have expected to hear in 1836.  

Incidentally, the bystander with very long hair and a top hat visible very briefly in the scene is the composer himself. Portions of Burwell’s score for this film have a hymn-like characteristic almost religious in its quality, giving those portions of his music a very real spiritual mood by its resolutions and cadences.  

On the other hand, composer Miklos Rozsa had a marked penchant for musicology and he researched his historical films as thoroughly as possible, thus giving his dramatic scores the additional dimension of musical authenticity. [The “zsa” in his name is sounded as Zsa Zsa Gabor would pronounce her own name; she, too, is Hungarian]. Western films weren’t Rozsa’s primary forte (though he did score Tribute To a Bad Man), but it’s entirely reasonable to presume that if he had composed the music for Wayne’s Alamo, he would have used — even if only in variation — the authentic De Guello tune.  

This is not just conjecture. It’s entirely likely. And I’d wager an entire year’s income on it (all $1,836 of it. . . .). Buttressing this probability is the following. When Rozsa was invited to Spain by producer Samuel Bronston to compose the score for El Cid, the composer consulted with 90-year-old Don Ramón Menendez Pidál, then the world’s foremost authority on the Spanish Middle Ages. Dr. Pidál showed Rozsa the Cantigas de Santa Maria, a collection of music by El Rey Alfonso El Sabio (King Alfonso The Wise), from which Rozsa selected and adapted suitable portions for his score. Since he used authentic melodies and modes in this and other period films (such as Ivanhoe, in which he researched and used medieval tunes, including one by the 13th-century troubadour Guiraut de Bornth), there’s little question he would also have done it for The Alamo.  

A comment was made on the Alamo film website about a particular shot in Hancock’s Alamo movie, of actress Laura Clifton (Susanna Dickinson) immediately after her husband is killed. I have my own feeling about that shot. — Most of us fully understand that war isn’t pretty and neither are some of the incidents that are part of it. I spent two years in the military during the Vietnam era. (Some might have spent more time in the brig than most others did for their entire service tenure, but that’s another story for another time). Those who have actually seen battle will understand it more fully than those who haven’t — even if for no other reason than that they have actually had the experience of witnessing and living through it. The sights, sounds, and smells of battle can be indelibly engraved upon a person’s memory. Ask any battlefield veteran. A rhetorical question: Is it any wonder that some veterans are unwilling to talk about it — or, in some cases, are altogether unable to deal with it, even with their having survived it?  

Very few things can substitute for personal, eye-witness experience. A young composer can be deeply affected on hearing a masterwork for the first time — but when his own first orchestral work gets its very first hearing, the young composer, even after all his intensive training, can experience a full five years’ musical growth with the first downbeat. This is the nature, and the intensity, of personal experience. My having seen the Alamo in San Antonio for the first time had this very kind of effect on me.  

In close proximity to battle, we ignore or altogether forget the general, presentable photographic niceties of daily life and we don’t have the time or the inclination to consciously consider our personal appearance at such moments. Our hair might not be coiffed, our clothing might be torn and dirty — and our mucus membranes might be reflexively working overtime — but these things just don’t matter to us when the adrenaline is going because we are facing the imminent possibility of annihilation.  

I may be mistaken about it but I can only presume that the shot in question was not actually planned as it was filmed, and that Laura Clifton was, as they say, “in the moment” during the filming of that scene. I think it’s to her very great credit, and a testimony to her dedication as an actress, that she merely allowed herself to literally “let it all hang out” right on camera, without overmuch regard to how she might appear at what would, in other circumstances, seem an indelicate and even embarrassing moment — but an entirely understandable one. I also think that Hancock’s having let that shot remain in the film is also to his great credit as a film-maker and director: it might not have been appealing and “polite” in the usual way, but seeing how an hysterical, despairing young wife can react to her husband’s death virtually before her eyes seems to have near-infinite realism in this sequence. This is the kind of thing that can happen in such actual circumstances.  

I’m very fond of Hancock’s film and of his treatment of the event. I wasn’t involved with the film — but in a small but very real way I’m represented on the DVD. Where my friend Steve Hardin is interviewed on the documentary, he can be seen wearing a small lapel-pin in the shape of a Bowie knife. I gave him that pin in Gonzales, Texas, in March of 2004.  

I’m not “religious” in the traditionally accepted sense — there are righteous, earnest people who go to worship only once a year and there are phonies who attend worship every week — but I do feel it’s possible to worship and serve one’s God faithfully without losing human perspective. My favorite film, in the general sense, is The Ten Commandments (an Elmer Bernstein score); favorite science-fiction film is The Day The Earth Stood Still (score by Bernard Herrmann), which does in fact have religious parallels.  

AS: During the Alamo Symposium in March of this year, you read a piece of yours in which James Bowie survived the Alamo siege and how his life may have been if he did. It was very detailed and easy to imagine. Ever plan to write a novel on the Alamo?  

JD: Would I write a novel on the Alamo?, you ask. A very good question. The answer is No — a very resounding No accompanied by fortissimo brass fanfare and a short but vigorous workout for drums and battery.  

By way of explanation: if a blue-chip publisher approached me and asked me for an Alamo novel, I might consider it, but only if the terms were rational and generous enough — that is, fair for them, profitable for me, and equitable for both of us. (Right. — Again, we should all live so long). Now, with this setting in mind, it’s safe to say the day I’m so approached will be the day I get a phone call from James Bowie. Case closed.  

We learn from our experiences, but one thing I’ve never been able to do is reconcile myself with (in my view) the most oxymoronic phrase in the entire English languge. That phrase is “historical novel.” (Following close behind it are “airline food,” “constructive criticism,” and “marital bliss”). To some, this observation might appear severe. It’s certainly not meant as a reflection on the quality of the actual writing historical novelists have produced, but is just my own interpretation of the phrase in concept. It’s contradictory in the extreme. I’m unable to fully understand just how a novel, by definition, can be in the true sense historical. Someone is going to have to explain it to me very, very carefully. We all know of course what is meant by the term “historical novel” but I see it as a self-cancelling phrase.  

But what’s also contradictory — and I realize this doesn’t help my case (look, I’ve got to be honest; I like to sleep at night) — is that the James Bowie “obituary” I chose to deliver at the 2007 Alamo Symposium in Bexar was a kind of historical novel in microcosm: a conjectural obituary, in which I, myself, combined historical fact with plausible speculation. In retrospect, I thusly wound up doing exactly what the historical novelist does. So I’m not perfect. So kill me. . . . but if necessary I’d rather lose a case by telling the truth than win it by lying.  

That Bowie obituary was not easy to write — but it ended up as one of the most personally fulfilling pieces I’ve ever done. I had to very thoroughly consider every possibility I had thought of, and had to be very careful with every detail I included, because every one of the speculative possibilities had to fit with historical accuracy.  

As just one example, the imaginary 1860s encounter Bowie had while waiting for a train in New York had to be with a Pinkerton detective, not the Burns detective I had originally considered: Pinkerton was founded in 1850, while Burns was formed only around 1909. Virtually everything I wrote in that obit had to be thusly verified.  

The comment about the blades being made “. . . in as-yet-non-existent republics on the opposite side of the world” foreshadowed the knives that now originate in India, Pakistan, the Philippines, and other such Middle and Far East areas. And when the voice of Bowie anticipated that “. . . soon they’ll name a hotel after me here in San Antonio. . .” he was unwittingly telling the truth: for a time, a lodging called the Hotel Bowie existed at or very near what is now the north-east portion of the Alamo grounds. The Crockett Hotel had several clear photos of it displayed in the lobby in 2005. I’m just hoping the new management didn’t misplace them — or, worse, discard them altogether.  

The historical links in that obit extend itself to the Santa Anna reference (though he wasn’t mentioned by name at that point in the piece). The Rockwood Portrait Studio, where he & Bowie had that brief but silent encounter, was an actual establishment at 17 Union Square West in Manhattan; the original building is long since gone, but I know the site. The photo of Santa Anna in my article, “Reflecting on an Enigma,” for Alamo Sentry was actually made there during Santa Anna’s stay on Staten Island.  

Even here on the Eastern Seacoast one can walk in the footsteps of people like Bowie, Santa Anna, Dr. Amos Pollard (who practiced in three different locations in Manhattan before going to Texas), and even Ruben Potter, who, before his death in 1890, lived for a time in the 1880s in Brooklyn, at 282 Franklin Avenue. (To visit that area today, though, as a protective measure one would need to have with him the entire Toluca battallion. . . .).  

 

AS: Besides the Alamo, what are your other interests? I understand you have a passion for music.  

JD: Regarding other interests, I collected colored-glass inkwells for twenty years, and though I no longer collect them actively I still have the best pieces from of the collection. At one time I had about 400 pieces. I put some of them up for auction in Houston in 1995, and again in 1999. On my last day in Houston that year, by prearrangement I met Jack Edmondson for the first time.  

For me, history can be dramatic enough without the need for embellishment a-la Hollywood. I find it satisfying to investigate — and sometimes really delve into — anything that piques my interest. A fascinating magazine or newspaper article often isn’t enough for me; I have to go into the books about the subject matter. I look at it this way: I’d want my doctor to examine me, not to diagnose my ailment based only on my description of the symptoms.  

My most recently read books were A Thread Across The Ocean by John Steele Gordon, about the laying of the first trans-Atlantic undersea cable, and Noah’s Flood, a scientific book (despite its religious title) by William Ryan and Walter Pitman, about certain events in the creation of the earth as we know it today. One of the more fascinating parts of this book is about the formation of the Mediterranean. Indications are that at some point countless millennia ago, the Atlantic Ocean broke through what is now the Strait of Gibraltar, and that 40 cubic miles of water a day poured into the valley on the other side, creating what’s now the Mediterranean Sea. (I’d like to have seen it happen — but I’m glad I wasn’t there).  

A passion for music? — Yes, I’d say so. What Bill Chemerka said about music being my frame of reference says as much, I think. A lot of my research and writing has a musical focus — and before my Alamo interest resurfaced, all of it had a musical focus. I studied at the Juilliard School here in New York, and I later lived in Europe for a time and researched in several of its musical centers, mainly in Austria and Germany.  

As a relaxing diversion from the norm of routine, I also collect full-size, color facsimile reproductions of composers’ manuscripts. Usually I’d rather have these than the engraved, printed editions. Original manuscripts in the composer’s own note-hand can hold secrets, and reveal things, that no printed edition of the score can. The originals are mostly in archives, museums, or in private collections. When they very rarely become available for private purchase or at auction, they’re largely priced beyond the reach of all but the most serious collectors, dealers, and the wealthy, but this depends of course on who the composer is. A manuscript by Rossini would be more affordable (though that’s a relative term) than one by Beethoven. A few years ago the manuscript of a symphony by Robert Schumann sold at auction for several million dollars.  

After all, a musical score, in its most basic sense, is just a series of written instructions for musicians, and it’s up to those musicians to bring the writing to life. For me, stress seems to disappear when I’m reading one of these manuscript facsimiles. The realm of genius remains largely closed to most of us. My feeling is that if I can’t kneel at the altar itself, I can still linger respectfully outside the sanctuary, and identify with what I’m fully aware is going on inside. If I do this with veneration and reverence, it can be a wonderful, and even sublime, feeling to stand at least before the portals. And I feel this way when I’m in Alamo Plaza, looking at the structures that grace it, and remembering those who defended it.  

I’m still in touch with a German couple (professional linguists) I met there more than forty years ago, and my friendship with them is one I prize very highly. When I met them, he was president of the student council at an interpreters’ college (situated in a building in which Napoleon had once quartered his troops). He opened a lot of doors for me, even literally in the sense that he arranged for me to be given access to the college’s facilities, even though I wasn’t a student there. I am still touched by his kindness and generosity. By his organizational abilities, diplomacy, and skills at negotiation, I was sure at that time he’d someday become the Chancellor of Germany, but he followed his chosen path and reached the highest governmental linguistic levels as an official interpreter.  

Some time ago I wrote an overview of the work of Prof. Dr. Gerhard Stradner, Curator & Direktor Emeritus of the Sammlung Alter Musikinstrumente (Collection of Antique Musical Instruments) at the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna. I’ve known Dr. Stradner for nearly twenty years and he and his wife, Friederike, were kind enough to host me during my last visit to Vienna. It’s my favorite European city — just as Bexar is my favorite place in Texas; I’d rather be there than just about anywhere else in the USA.  

All the musicians I’ve met and spoken with are just too numerous to mention, but they include Samuel Barber, Pierre Boulez, Elliot Carter, Van Cliburn, Aaron Copland, Lukas Foss, Jerry Goldsmith, Roy Harris, Paul Hindemith, Alan Hovhaness, Aram Khachaturian, Peter Mennin, Eugene Ormandy, Ned Rorem, Artur Rubinstein, William Schuman, Leopold Stokowski, Edgar Varèse, and Franz Waxman. Some were more interesting than others, but there’s a story behind my having met each of these people, and the others.  

Copland, who I talked with on at least half a dozen occasions, spoke the same way he wrote his music: economically and to the point, and with an enviable clarity and simplicity. When asked if he had any particular preference for any of his own works, I’ll never forget his response. He said, “I like Appalachian Spring because everybody seems to, and I like my Clarinet Concerto because nobody seems to. It’s the unwanted child.” With these 22 words he summed up the situation concisely but perfectly.  

In having known Leonard Bernstein when I was a student, I benefitted immeasurably. He was a definitive role-model for me during my formative years, and though I didn’t actually study with him he was still a mentor in a very real sense (just as he himself had been mentored by Copland). Bernstein was the greatest performing musician I have ever met, without any exception. During my student days I sometimes felt he was so far above all of us that the only things he & I had in common were human form and that passion for music. His 19th-century counterpart was Franz Liszt. Both men were lionized in their day, both men were consummate musicians, and whatever they did, musically — whether as pianist, conductor, composer, or educator — was superlative. In his maturity, when Bernstein walked into a room, the temperature changed. Charisma does exist, I assure you, but we either have it or we don’t. I guess I could say that he represented moments in my personal weather, but they were moments that had a profound effect on the entire climate of my life.  

When he found out that the singer who dubbed Natalie Wood’s voice in the film West Side Story was getting no residuals for her work, he arranged for her to receive a certain percentage of his own royalties from the movie. What does this tell us about him? To me, it bespeaks a rare generosity of spirit.  

For a time I knew a young lady, a musician and linguist, who I might describe as The Grace Kelly of Germany. When I mentioned to her that I knew Bernstein, she asked me basically what kind of man he was. The best way I could summarize him was to tell her that he’s a genius with nice-guy qualities. She thought for a moment, and responded, “I think you’re a nice guy with genius-qualities.” It’s certainly debatable whether I was deserving of it but it’s still one of the nicest compliments I’ve ever received.  

Fast-forward to 1989 when I met Elmer Bernstein (no relation to Leonard) at the Meadowbrook Music Festival in Troy, Michigan. He and his wife Eve were kind enough to take me for dinner one evening. At some point during dinner, Elmer told me, “You’d never make it in Hollywood. You’re too honest.” I took that remark as a compliment then, and I do so now.  

He insisted I call him Elmer (maybe one reason was that we were both born and raised in Brooklyn). He became known in some musical circles as Bernstein West, to distinguish him from the other man of similar name: Leonard Bernstein (Bernstein East). Even the pronounciations differ: Elmer opted for BERN-steen while Leonard preferred the Germanic BERN-styne (as in Steinway pianos). 

One of my very few real musical regrets is that I never met Dmitri Shostakovich. (It’s a mouthful, but it’s pronounced Sho-stah-KO-vitch). He was debatably the most important symphonist of the 20th-century, and his work was my introduction to contemporary music. Like all great composers, he had a very recognizable style, and a distinct and highly individualistic Shostakovich sound. “There is a dramatic power in Shostakovich’s music, in a 20th-century Beethoven manner.” This description, by the late musicologist Nicolas Slonimsky, is very fitting. Even the first six notes of Shostakovich’s tenth symphony, for example, identifies him immediately. His music is as recognizable as is Chopin’s, Stravinsky’s, or Mahler’s (whose orchestrations actually influenced Shostakovich’s own).  

His memoirs, said to have been smuggled out of what was then the Soviet Union, were published in the west under the title Testimony. A storm has surrounded the book ever since its appearance, with accusations leveled at the editor, Solomon Volkov, of having essentially fabricated the work. The controversy about it continues to this day.  

During my student days I asked one of my teachers if he had ever met Shostakovich. He told me that during the 1950s, when he himself was a student at the Juilliard, a delegation of Russian composers, including Shostakovich, visited the school (as well as several other such entities here in the USA). The student body was told they may greet the Russian composers informally, as long as general protocol and dignity was observed and that the eminent visitors were not socially molested. “I said ‘Hello’ to him in the hallway,” my teacher told me about Shostakovich. “He seemed surrounded by this green smoke from his Russian cigarettes.”  

My book about the pianos of Beethoven and other composers was published by New York’s Museum of the American Piano. The entity is now long-defunct and the book long out of print, but a much-revised rendering of the book’s typescript is available online.  

Most recently, my book, A Composer’s Notes: Remembering Miklos Rozsa (iUniverse, Lincoln, Nebraska), was published to coincide with the 2007 centenary of Dr. Rozsa’s birth (he died in 1995 at 88). Though best known for his film scores (Ben-Hur among countless others), unlike most of the other composers who worked in Hollywood he also wrote several dozen works for the concert and recital hall. I knew him quite well, and was also privy to the events surrounding the world premiére performances in Pittsburgh in 1984 of his Concerto for Viola & Orchestra, his last major orchestral work.  

I was recently asked to give an on-camera interview that’s part of a documentary for a re-mastered digital DVD rendering of the film El Cid, one of Dr. Rozsa’s scores. How a mug like mine could lend any distinction to a video-camera lens is Heaven’s guess, since I have a good face for radio (a concept I heard and adopted from Terry Todish). Here again, as above, my having gotten to know Rozsa’s music led, ultimately, to my friendship with him.  

I’ve seen comments about my book. They run the gamut from the perceptive and lucid (from those who, whether they liked the book or not, clearly gave some earnest thought to what they were reading), to the most ill-considered mishigahss, and predictable, and even juvenile, knee-jerk and self-indulgent reactions from others. Some of their remarks are long on zeal and (dare I say it?) even resentment, but short on intelligence and literacy.  

A word of clarification here: my own experience has shown me that a personal success for some can be as dangerous as a professional failure for others. Umbrage takes many forms. For example: ever notice how some people wish you luck and then actually resent you when you find it? And I say this even at the risk of sounding paranoid. But if you’re walking along a dark street, you are not paranoid if you become aware that someone is actually following close behind you. That’s an awareness of your surroundings — not paranoia.  

The drivel I’ve seen from some is prompted, it seems, mainly by their desire to kindle in themselves the warm glow of superiority their own comments would bring them. Ravished at last to have a public outlet for their absurdity, it simply shows right through in their remarks, which are transparent enough for Louis Braille to have seen through them. One shmoe openly revealed his own stupidity when he commented that “anybody could have written a book like this.” Well, it may be so — but no-one else did. Professional jealousies have always existed — in all fields — and to pretend that they don’t would be, at best, naïve, and at worst, foolhardy.  

The sentiments and kind comments I’ve received from the composer’s daughter, who asked me to inscribe my book for her, and letters and e-mails even from people I don’t know, have shown me that all the blather I’ve seen or heard from the self-appointed critics (i.e., bloggers) don’t matter worth a flip. I have this quote on the gallery above my desk: “It is easier to perceive error than to find truth, for the former lies on the surface and is easily seen, while the latter lies in the depth, where few are willing to search for it.” Goethe said it. I feel that everyone should make a contribution, even a small one, to the world before he leaves it. A fool’s contribution comes when he leaves it. And everyone who wishes to, has the right to be foolish.  

Many of the comments I’ve seen come from the convergent thinkers who take the easy way out by jumping on a moving bandwagon and just agreeing with what others have said, rather than make an effort to truly consider what they’ve read and voice an original notion. Most of what I’ve seen in these media easily meet the Laurel & Hardy standard: Two minds without a single thought. It’s actually the motto of Sons of the Desert, the organization devoted to them. The results of their bumbling were very funny. But the bumbling of these “critics” (such as they are) isn’t funny at all. It’s very, very sad. Even sadder is that they actually think they’re smart. And sadder than that is that so many people actually take them seriously. They’re too close to the finger-painting stage to be considered by me as anything more than a joke. “No-one ever erected a statue to a critic.” — Sibelius.  

It’s said that in Hollywood “you’re only as good as your most recent success.” Unfortunately it’s often a common guideline for the shallow. The view I take of others I recognize as earnest, sensible, intelligent people is that you’re always as good as the best thing you’ve ever done. It’s a view I adopted from Rozsa himself. I think earnest, sensible and intelligent people will recognize the contrast. He was probably the finest human being I’ve ever met.  

In the publishing sphere (and in other fields, including that of music), it seems no good deed goes unpunished, but what characterizes — and very literally distinguishes — my Alamo family in this context is that no good deed goes unnoticed. I also feel the Western enthusiasts and historians are among the sanest and most enlightened of all the sometimes convoluted folks I’ve met, in whatever fields. They’re just too numerous to specify here, but (to paraphrase a remark from Wayne’s Alamo film) I’d pick any one of ‘em to side me when the goin’ gets rough.  

In the musical sphere, if I could meet anyone in our history, my first choice, without hesitation, would be Johannes Brahms, whose character fascinates me (along with Beethoven and Mahler) more than that of any other composer. For the same reasons, in the sphere of the American West, if I could meet one Alamo defender, it would be Bowie — and if I could experience one historic event, it’s the siege and fall of the Alamo (but only as an observer, not as a participant. It’s a religious conviction of the Devout Coward. . .).  

I have to take an active role in telling the following true story. — Brahms accomplished more in a single year than most of us do in our own lifetimes. The twelve intermittent summers he spent during the 1880s and 1890s in the town of Ischl, near Salzburg, Austria, were fruitful: he had an absolutely towering musical intellect, and he graced the world and posterity with treasures that outlived him and which will outlive us.  

He often met with friends for dinner at Zauner’s Restaurant (still a popular establishment; I’ve been there), but the dwelling he occupied in Ischl was in a private house at Salzburgerstrasse 51, a short walk from the center of town, in keeping with his need for seclusion and privacy. We should remember that he had already reached iconic status as a composer and was beseiged even then, before the era of mass media coverage, by autograph hunters.  

The house he chose was owned by the Gruber family, who rented the second, uppermost storey to Brahms and gave him the use of a Bösendorfer grand piano. It’s now displayed in the Brahms Collection at the Kammerhof Museum in nearby Gmunden, where I played it.  

The Grubers had a young son, born in 1875.  

During his summers at the Gruber house Brahms would compose for most of the morning and often part of the afternoon. During his first summers in Ischl, when leaving the house Brahms would address the young Gruber boy, “Hello, child.” As the boy grew older, Brahms modified his greeting to, “Hello, young man.” He’d occasionally talk with the boy, asking him how he had done in school that year, and so on.  

On his last day at the Gruber house in the fall of 1896, as the carriage waited to take Brahms to the railway station for his departure from Ischl, the 63-year-old composer approached the now 21-year-old man, shook his hand, and said to him, “Goodbye, Mr. Gruber.”  

The passage of time and sad sequel show us that Brahms had cancer of the liver, and he might have sensed that he’d not return to Ischl. Fate verified this: he died in his Vienna apartment less than a year later, on April 3, 1897.  

The foregoing was told to me in the fall of 1987 in Ischl, by the elderly lady who was then living in the Gruber house. The young boy Brahms had seen grow to manhood was her father.  

 

AS: Any future projects in the making? 

JD: Always — but roosters crow at morning, not at night in anticipation of morning. I don’t like to cackle before the eggs are laid, so details would be premature at this point, but at the moment I can say this. — Firstly, an article of mine (it has an Alamo connection), is scheduled to be published this spring — unfortunately not in time for the Symposium in March — in a magazine very prominent in its field. Let’s say it’s a pretty sharp publication. The publisher told me he plans to bring out the article in two parts, and he & I are now in the process of trying to acquire early photographic images for it. Secondly, I’ve co-authored a book (we’re awaiting a publisher) on a particular historical subject regarding the American West. My colleague, by coincidence, is a descendant of the last surviving signer of The Declaration of Independence (d. 1834 at the age of 95), and the only one who actually identified himself on the document by specific location.  

Additionally, I had hoped to be able to write to Emilio Echevarria and propose that he might join all of us in Bexar for the events in March. Unfortunately I was unable to track down even secondary contact information for forwarding, and although it’s never too late, by this time it’s late in the game and with each passing day the possibility becomes slimmer. I was able to get contact details for Richard Widmark last year, and I wrote to him with such an invitation, but that didn’t work out (he’s in his 90s). I also tried it with Ernest Borgnine (Mike Radin in The Last Command) more recently for the approaching events, but if I haven’t heard from him by now it’s unlikely I will (he’s 90). Nothing is lost by trying (except a 41-cent stamp), and there’s no shame in not succeeding. The shame comes when we just don’t try.  

By the way, not long ago I was addressed in conversation as Corporal Dane by someone in period garb dressed as General Houston, while a few minutes later he addressed another of our number as Captain Todish. (Well, the captain was in period uniform while the corporal was only in modern mufti). My first thought was to interpret this as being a positional travesty. After considering the matter, I realized, first, that we can’t all be chiefs — there do have to be some Indians — and second, that maybe my unexpected designation was really an accurate reflection of my admittedly narrow skills as compared to the background and experience of others (including Captain Todish) in this Alamo family. I have to acknowledge there might be more holes in my Western history background than in a slice of Swiss cheese and would earn me a tiny Texas Star on a little-known lane called the Hollywood Walk of Blame. But most importantly, I also further concluded that I’d rather so serve as a corporal with, say, Col. Bowie than as a colonel with Gen. Santa Anna. And I’m proud of having been accepted (or at least tolerated) by so many of my betters in this field as a part of the Alamo family. I have no complaints.