Buck Page; Guardian (followed by a Times article about his retirement community
Hyfler/Rosner
Founder of the Riders of the Purple Sage
Tony Russell
Monday September 18, 2006
Guardian
Groups dedicated to the songs of the Old West have found
themselves many appropriate names, the Sons of the Pioneers,
the Ranch Boys, Riders In The Sky, but none more evocative
than the Riders of the Purple Sage. Buck Page, the group's
founder, who has died aged 84, took the name from a book by
the prolific Western writer Zane Grey. How well he chose is
borne out by the fact that a rival group borrowed it, and
more than a generation later a country rock band called
themselves the New Riders of the Purple Sage.
Page conceived the idea of the group in 1936, when, barely
in his teens, he led a quartet playing cowboy songs on radio
station KDKA in his home town of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
At the time such groups were usually stringband formations
of fiddles, banjos and guitars, following the example of
popular troupes such as Otto Gray's Oklahoma Cowboys. Page,
who played many instruments, among them, fiddle, banjo and
guitar, augmented the line-up with an accordion to "fill up
the sound".
After three years, the band moved to New York to broadcast
over WOR and play regularly at the Village Barn, in
Greenwich Village, opened by Meyer Horowitz in 1930, that
presented downhome country music to uptown sophisticates.
When the United States entered the second world war, Page
served in the US Navy.
Then, in 1943, Foy Willing, a singer working on the west
coast, redeployed their name. His Riders of the Purple Sage
had better luck with the title, both on records and in
Western movies. Eventually Page found out about his
Californian rival, but, according to his manager, Gary
Bright, he and Willing became friends. Besides, Willing
retired his Riders in 1952.
About that time Page himself moved to the west coast, where
he worked as a studio musician, as well as for TV shows such
as Tales of Wells Fargo, Wagon Train and Laramie. His guitar
playing was featured in the theme music for Bonanza and 77
Sunset Trip. He also took acting roles in movies as varied
as Destry Rides Again, Spartacus and A Star is Born. In the
early 1960s he re-formed the Riders of the Purple Sage. Over
the next 40 years he recorded several albums, the most
recent a solo effort, Right Place to Start, in 2005.
One of his last public appearances, in July this year, was
on the National Day of the Cowboy in Scottsdale, Arizona.
His services to Western music were acknowledged in 2001 by a
Country/Western Living Legend Award. As the punctuation
implies, the border between Western music and mainstream
country music can be contested territory. Page made it clear
where he stood on the matter. "You're either country or
you're western," he told the Los Angeles Times. "We sing
about the Grand Canyon, cows and girlfriends back home. We
don't sing about the girl at the corner bar. We don't cry in
our beer."
He is survived by his daughter, Christine Hanson.
· Buck Page, musician, born June 18 1922; died August 21
2006
September 10, 2006
At New Rentals, the Aim Is to Age With Creativity
By PATRICIA LEIGH BROWN NY Times
BURBANK, Calif. - As hairdresser to the stars, Connie
Nichols, an 86-year-old retiree (Apt. 225), has been on
intimate terms with Olivia de Havilland's hair, Ethel Merman's
hair, Doris Day's hair and Natalie Wood's hair, which she
spritzed for her wedding to Robert Wagner.
Ms. Nichols's latest leading lady is her downstairs
neighbor, Helen Miller (Apt. 125), who is starring, at 81,
in "Bandida," a new comedy about an old woman who robs a
convenience store. The movie was written by Suzanne Knode
(Apt. 406), who was inspired to take up screenwriting at 63
after moving into the Burbank Senior Artists Colony, the
country's first apartment community for creative older
people - a sort of "Golden Girls" meets Yaddo.
"To expose myself artistically was terrifying, especially at
my age" said Ms. Knode, whose past credits include raising
two children as a single mother in Boston. "But it was safe
here. It was gentle. I wasn't scared."
In a city that worships youth, the colony is the latest spin
on late-life living. With the understanding that not
everyone wants the old-school model of golf course
retirement, the colony offers artful self-expression: a
digital film editing laboratory, a theater, drama classes
and studios open for inspiration 24 hours a day.
This is a place where amateurs discovering their inner
Picassos in retirement can commune with working pros like
Charlie Schridde, a painter in his 70's from the "cowboy
impressionist" school who resembles the grizzled trappers of
his canvases.
His neighbors include Janice Lishon, 90, a former chorus
girl, and Betty Vincent, 76, a self-described "piano broad"
who is still playing jazz.
"It helps you stay out of trouble," said Ms. Miller, who
before "Bandida" had never been in a movie or held a gun,
let alone had her hair styled by the creator of Doris Day's
French twist in "Pillow Talk."
The colony, which was recognized last month as a model for
creative aging by the National Endowment for the Arts,
represents a profound shift in thinking about aging. In
2001, a study co-sponsored by George Washington University
and the N.E.A. found that people 65 and older who were
regularly involved in participatory arts programs reported
fewer doctors' visits and less need for medication and were
less prone to depression.
"We're thinking beyond the problems of aging to its
potential," said Dr. Gene D. Cohen, the director of the
Center on Aging, Health and Humanities at the George
Washington University Medical Center. "What's emerging is a
very talented group of people who are an under-recognized
national resource."
This is Hollywood, baby. The making of Ms. Knode's first
movie was filmed by Ira Glass, whose radio program, "This
American Life," will soon also be a television series. An
agent recently paid a visit to the colony's acting class,
scouting for talent for "spice of life" television
commercials aimed at their growing demographic. Residents
appear frequently as guests on "Experience Talks," a weekly
radio program on KPFK that is produced by More Than Shelter
for Seniors, the nonprofit organization that conceptualized
the colony.
The show, which reaches 250,000 listeners, features
interviews with celebrities like Andrew Weil, the
alternative health guru, and Studs Terkel-like celebrations
of the residents themselves, the most recent a tribute to
Buck Page, one of the country's last singing cowboys, who
released a CD not long before his death a few weeks ago, at
an effervescent 84.
The colony was one of 15 programs cited by the N.E.A. Among
the others were the National Center for Creative Aging in
Brooklyn, which places older artists as mentors in public
schools; the acclaimed Levine School of Music's Senior
Chorale in Washington; and the Liz Lerman Dance Exchange in
Takoma Park, Md., a Washington suburb, where the virtuosity
of youth is balanced by dancers staving off arthritis. To
Marc Freedman, the founder and president of Civic Ventures,
a nonprofit group that promotes meaningful second careers
for older people, the colony represents the next frontier of
a movement that began in the 1970's, when leisure retirement
typified by golf and shuffleboard gave way to the lifelong
learning exemplified by the Elderhostel program.
The colony, Mr. Freedman said, "is a new hybrid that moves
beyond that to actual creativity, to growth." He added: "It's
not just writing memoirs and harvesting the past. It's about
producing new insights and work that is not only personally
interesting but enriches the lives of neighbors."
The new Burbank colonists include Gene Schklair, a retired
dental surgeon from Chicago who is now sculpting full time.
Before moving to the colony, Mr. Schklair and his wife,
Glorya, both 75, spent a year backpacking around the world
after he contracted a serious illness, from which he has
recovered. "You see them come in with dead eyes," he said of
new arrivals, some of whom are art appreciators rather than
artists. "Then, the life comes back."
The colony is the brainchild of Tim Carpenter, the founder
of More Than Shelter for Seniors, who grew up near Yaddo,
the New York artists' community. Mr. Carpenter recruited an
advisory board sprinkled with actors to hone the concept and
drew an initial core of tenants, ages 55 and older, through
local arts organizations. No tryouts or portfolios are
required, but the artistic ambitions of residents transcend
the flutophone or macaroni-glitter-and-glue crowd.
The colony is a block from downtown Burbank. Seventy percent
of the 141 apartments rent at market rate, from $1,430 to
$2,125. Thirty percent are reserved for low-income
residents, renting from $500 to $650, with 2,000 people on a
waiting list.
The complex was built by a private developer and financed in
part through federal low-income tax credits and a $3.25
million low-interest loan from the city. The colony provides
no assisted-living services, but its arts programs are free,
provided by More Than Shelter. Mr. Carpenter and John
Huskey, the president of Meta Housing, the developer, plan
to take the concept to other cities.
A typical week finds a blues singer performing at the
Tuesday barbecue, a novelist offering a manuscript for
dissection in a writer's workshop, and a buff 72-year-old
coach teaching how to prevent falls. "The same neurons fire
whether you're writing a short story that may or may not be
great or whether you are writing 'Ulysses,' " Mr. Carpenter
said.
In Barbara Beneville's acting class on a recent day,
students practiced inflection to prepare for auditions for
the Radio Cavalcade, a 1940's-style show and benefit for
More Than Shelter that will be performed at the Academy of
Television Arts and Sciences. Residents will star alongside
actors like George Segal and Len Lesser, who, as the
eccentric Uncle Leo on "Seinfeld" might have fit right in at
the colony.
The colony itself can sometimes sound like a sitcom. "What's
a 'tuchis'?" a student asked, puzzling over the script's
Yiddish slang.
"Booty," Ms. Beneville replied.
Artistic temperaments do not necessarily mellow with age.
Even as residents toast at wine and cheese openings, they
jockey to have their art displayed. The preponderance of one
artist's work caused another to mutter, "That's cartoon
art!"
"There are a lot of insecurities about not being good
enough," said Bobbee Zeno, the program director. "But even
dissension becomes an art."
But when Mr. Page died, a shared sense of loss hung in the
hallways. He performed frequently at Thursday jams with the
brassy Ms. Vincent, bringing a level of musicianship to the
colony "that made everybody bring their game up," Mr. Zeno
said. Mr. Page was a singing cowboy with Audie Murphy and
others in scores of films, but he often got the most
memorable line: "They went thataway."
At a recent show at Whisky A Go-Go on Sunset Boulevard, Ms.
Vincent said, "there were babes behind him with cowboy hats
and fishnets and not much else."
Melva Unter (Apt. 124) grew up with Mr. Page's music. An
accomplished commercial artist in earlier days, she drives a
battered gold Volvo, the dents artistically concealed with
black flames. Ms. Unter, 79 and widowed, had been living in
Century City and had started selling her art supplies. "At
this period, I had written myself off," she said.
Her daughter heard about the arts colony, and Ms. Unter
eventually moved in. An easel displays a painting in
progress, a woman kneading dough, a coal oven in the
background infusing the canvas with light.
Like a challenging painting, life at the arts colony has
become an exercise in perspective. "You meet yourself," she
said. "You find out who you really are."