A Tribute to Bruce DeMoll

Bruce Stockwell DeMoll

I got word from a fellow musician earlier this week that my Uncle Bruce DeMoll had passed away on October 12. He was 86 years old.

Bruce wasn't really my uncle, just my dad's oldest and best friend. He and my dad formed a music trio with their friend Tom Vadakin in their mid-teen years and continued to play together whenever possible until my dad's sudden death in January of 2011. In fact, my dad and I were scheduled to play a gig, subbing in for Bruce, later in the week that my dad died. It was the last thing Dad and I spoke about—he was eager to get better so we could play.

Growing up in a house full of music had a profound effect on my life. My dad playing piano and my mom singing were a more regular soundtrack for us than the TV or stereo. This immersion in melodic sound and the joy that music brought to our family was always heightened when Uncle Bruce was around. In my very early days Brucie would only visit once a year or so, but these occasions always resulted in all-night jam sessions at our house in Pella, Iowa, and later in Marietta, Ohio. I never saw my dad so excited and full of life as when he and Bruce were playing. My dad was a consummate jazz piano player, but he revered Bruce DeMoll as the musical ideal.

A New Year's Eve jam session at 306 Warren St.

Bruce played many instruments well: paint, guitar, flute, clarinet—but it was his saxophone playing that took him around the world, playing with big bands, including the Glenn Miller Orchestra. In the mid-70s when his touring time was over and the club scene in Miami was shifting away from jazz, my dad and Tom Vadakin persuaded Bruce to move back to their hometown of Marietta. It was then that Bruce's life really took shape and his profound influence on generations of area musicians began.

Bruce (with the guitar) was in the band my parents (lower left) formed after they were married in 1956.

Bruce and Dad formed the Duck Creek Ensemble, a sort of jazz dance band that played a few showcase gigs a year with resounding success. With his own combos or solo, Bruce performed thousands of times for weddings, reunions, parties, you name it. He was the first-call player for any show that needed jazz. Any band that was playing a show was thrilled to invite Bruce up on stage to
sit in. He was The Man.

Bruce sitting in with my band The Swinging Orangutangs in 2006.

Yet Bruce's humble demeanor and gentle personality belied his talent. He could play rings around anyone, yet I never heard him brag or gloat. He was a sweet and talented man and I will always think of him as my uncle because he was family.

Once, when I was about 6, I recall being sent to bed during one of my parents' music parties, I had just completed my "star" turn playing brushes for one tune on a metal TV tray in the music room while my dad played some swing blues on the piano. I think Dad was proud to show off my sense of rhythm. I was nervous until we started, then elated as we played. Playing music for people is an addicting feeling. On my way up to bed, I stopped on the stairs, just out of the pool of light coming from the music room, and I watched the lower halves of the adults swaying and dancing. I listened to them laughing and heard them singing to the music being played. I realized in that moment that I, too wanted to be a musician.

My dad didn't make it easy on me. After a few flawed attempts on the trumpet, he sent me away, telling me to come back when I could play. Eventually I settled on the bass guitar and that's when I not only got to play regularly with Dad, but also with Uncle Bruce. About that time, Bruce was coming over to our house several nights a week for dinner. He was a bachelor then and only lived two blocks away. We'd hear the chug of his VW wagon coming up Warren Street and we'd instantly set out another plate for dinner. After dinner he and Dad would ease into the music room and the music would begin to flow. Jazz standards. The music of my life.

There were legendary New Year's Eve sessions at our house—despite the fact that many of the players only got there after finishing a gig at some hotel or party. More than once the music went on until dawn.

Dad and me playing on New Year's Eve.

Bruce's playing always thrilled my dad.

I have recordings on reel-to-reel tape, on cassettes, and on my phone of my dad and Bruce and me playing, and often, my mom singing. Since my dad's death, it's been hard for me to listen to those recordings, because I lost so much music with his passing. I've tried to keep the music alive in my own way, but I'm not nearly the jazz player my dad or Bruce were.

About 10 years ago, Bruce called me to ask if I'd play bass in a trio he had that played a regular Sunday jazz brunch at the Blennerhassett Hotel in Parkersburg, WV. I jumped at the chance. And for the next six years I was there as often as possible, sitting just to his left, watching his left hand. When I joined the trio, the drummer was Chet Backus, another profoundly influential musician who settled in the Mid-Ohio Valley after touring professionally with a variety of bands, including Glen Campbell. To be playing with two giants was a thrill. To listen to and learn from and be surrounded by the music they played was a profound honor. I was in the presence of masters.

When Dad died in early 2011, I took a break from playing in Bruce's trio. The songs and the memories they conjured made me unbearably sad. By the time I was again ready to play, the band personnel had changed—as they are know to do—and, aside from a few substitute gigs, my days of playing with Uncle Bruce were done. The last gig we played was for a charity auction event in Parkersburg, about a year and a half ago. Bruce was his old self, quietly goofy, somewhat spacey, playing piano chord voicings that often buried the melody inside a beautiful bouquet of notes. I didn't know it would be the last time we played. He continued playing gigs until just before his death.

Uncle Bruce at our last gig together, February 7, 2015.

When I heard the news I was sad. "It's the end of an era," I wrote back to my friend Bill, who had told me of Bruce's passing. Then I smiled, thinking how happy my dad would be, because Brucie was coming over to play.

That evening I went out to my dad's grave, in the old orchard on my farm, and I talked to my dad about how much he and Uncle Bruce had meant to me. How much I loved them for the men they were and the music that they gave to me and to the world. And I told him how much I still missed him, my musical North Star. I played Dad some recordings of me and Bruce and Chet Backus playing at the Blenner. And then I put in a request to Dad for our favorite song—one we often started off our gigs or sessions with:—and asked him to play it with Bruce on tenor (not soprano) sax: There Will Never Be Another You.

Here's a song file of my dad and me playing that song.

I love you Uncle Bruce. Let's play the first ending again and then through the verse and chorus one more time.




Here are a few of my favorite recordings from gigs with Bruce.

Song for My Father
Bruce DeMoll, piano
Chet Backus, drums
Bill Thompson, III, bass

The Nearness of You
Bruce DeMoll, piano
Bill Keller, drums
Bill Thompson, III, bass

Round Midnight
Bruce DeMoll, piano
Bill Keller, drums
Bill Thompson, III, bass

My Bird of the Year, Part 2

Picking up where I left off in my last post (from just before Christmas!) I've been scrolling through the images I downloaded onto my computer during 2011, trying to select my bird of the year. It's tough because all of the birds I'm choosing as finalists are ones that were particularly memorable for one reason or another. Like the male ruddy duck (above) that put on a show of extreme courtship, doing the bubble dance/display on a North Dakota slough last June. But for whom was he performing? There were no other ducks on that small patch of water. Yet he kept at it and I shot his picture over and over. Perhaps he was posing.

This adult male ruby-throated hummingbird let me get very close to him as he rested on a plant hanger in our garden. It was my best hummingbird photo of the year, taken on a fine July morning in southeastern Ohio.

On a pre-dawn birding outing at St. Marks NWR in the Florida panhandle in September I had to stop to snap this photo with my point-and-shoot Canon G12. The heron's silhouette on the dawn-brushed, still water was vastly more stunning than the camera's sensor and lens could capture. It was one of my more peaceful moments in the field in 2011, despite the mosquitoes and no-see-ums.
Back to North Dakota for an outing during the Potholes and Prairie Birding Festival on which we found a Sprague's pipit—a lifer for everyone in my group. Sadly there were no photos of the pipit, which was sky-dancing 300 feet above us.


And back to Oklahoma for another life bird for yours truly, a male black-capped vireo in the Wichita Mountains NWR. My friend Eric Beck knew just where to go to find vireo territories—a long hike up a canyon. And although we were on the early side of their spring return date, we did manage to find three different singing males. This was my best digiscoped shot of a male black-capped vireo—not great but a great adventure and memory!

In November I was on a birding tour in Israel and while there I got to enjoy hundreds of bird species that I've rarely, if ever, seen. I could make an entire BOTY list just from birds on that fantastic trip. But in the interest of staying focused, I'm going to narrow it down to just a few highlight birds, one of which is the male Palestine sunbird (above) which came to drink nectar on a flowering shrub just outside my hotel room in the Hula Valley. This is as close to a hummingbird as it gets in the Middle East. Lovely, active little birds.

The most stunning avian attraction of the Hula Valley where I spent most of my time in Israel was the giant flocks of common cranes that migrate through Israel in winter and spring. Some stay in the Hula for the winter and the local farmers and communities, along with local preserve/refuge managers are devising ways to keep the cranes from damaging crops while letting them spend the winter foraging and roosting. It's an ingenious concept—humans and birds coexisting symbiotically. On two separate mornings and several evenings we witnessed between 15,000 and 20,000 common cranes in giant, noisy, swirling flocks.

Here's a photograph of a tiny bird I found in the Agamon Valley in Israel. Believe it or not this is a warbler known as a chiffchaff. It's named for its onomatopoeic call chiff-chaff. This little guy (or gal) was foraging in some low weeds outside a viewing blind at the Hula-Agamon Park. After watching large mega-birds like cranes and eagles all day, it was a nice change to spend some time with a small songbird.

My closest-ever look at a merlin occurred in the Negev Desert near a birding hotspot that's basically a power highline cutting through agricultural fields. A small copse of pines were the only cover for miles around and our guide, Israeli birder Jonathan Meyrav had just said "This can be a good place for merlins" when we spotted this beauty in a tree.

As I flipped through the Middle East bird field guide on the flight over to Israel, this bird (above) was tops on my list of most wanted: the cream-coloured courser. We found a flock in the Negev Desert, just as a huge approaching storm made the afternoon seem like dusk. These coursers were digiscoped at a great distance, but were a thrilling sighting nonetheless.

Here we are at the end of a year of wonderful birds. These are only MY very subjective highlights and, as I said in the beginning of this post, it's really hard to choose just one to be my Bird of the Year. But I think I have one. It's the Bohemian waxwing, above. This was a life bird for me—one that had eluded me for many years. Bohenian waxwings are birds of the far North. However, the winter of 2010-11 was something of an invasion year for BOWAs and I did not want to miss out on my chance. So my friend Geoff Heeter (a native Michigander) and I made a road trip north, nearly to the Upper Peninsula, seeking a flock of these wandering fruiteaters. Every lead we chased came up empty, until a kind birder on the Mich-Birds listserv sent me a direct message with a hot tip for a place in Traverse City, where she'd seen Bohemians the day before. We got there, found a flock of seven, and I had my lifer (and so did Geoff).

This quest took on added significance because it came shortly after the rather sudden death of my dad, William H. Thompson, Jr. Shortly after Dad's memorial service, Geoff and I left Marietta, Ohio, headed north, and even if we hadn't seen a single Bohemian waxwing, the healing power of birding helped me to overcome my grief.

It's funny. Bird watching means different things to each of us. In 2011, as exciting as my birding experiences were, the one bird that sticks out is a life bird that helped me escape the agonizing pain caused by a death. Without birds, I'm not sure where I'd be right now. I'm so thankful for the wonder of birds, and for the joy that comes from watching them with my friends and family.

I'm looking forward the the birds of 2012!