The Musical Kaleidoscope Story
by Don Robertson
Hello. I’m Don Robertson, an American composer an author currently living near Nashville, Tennessee (Music City). Because I have spent my life discovering music and sharing it with others, I consider Musical Kaleidoscope to be my ultimate music-education project.
My Musical Kaleidoscope story is in four parts. Click the four buttons above to read my story.
Don Robertson
The Years 1942 Through 1970
1942 - I was Born in Denver, Colorado
I was born in Denver, Colorado on April 4th, 1942. According to my Baby Book, I was playing rumba and jazz records by the age of three. My main love was classical music, however. “Listens to symphonies and operas by the hour,” Mom wrote.
1944 - The Zenith
Mom and Dad had a big Zenith phonograph that played 78-rpm records. Because I listened to records all day long, it was soon moved into my bedroom. One day, when Mom was “scanning the dial” on her radio in the master bedroom, she discovered a frequency that when I played my records, she could also hear them on her radio in the master bedroom. I had no idea why or how this happened, but it did. Somehow the Zenith was modulating its signal onto an AM radio frequency carrier wave. I was elated to find that not only could I play music for myself, but for Mom as well. I began to think about the Zenith as a small radio station that broadcast my records throughout the house. That’s when the idea that I could have my own music radio station began.
1944 - My Favorite Records When I Was Two-Years Old
My favorite records were the four 78rpm 12-inch records in the Beethoven Fifth Symphony album that Mom and Dad owned. Mom told me years later that everyone puzzled at how I always knew the order in which the records were to be played, as I was only two years old and had not learned numbers. This is how I did it: each record had a different amount of groves, leaving the area between where the groves ended and where the label began different for each side. I memorized the proper order of the sides by looking at the lengths of this area, equating the size of these with the days of the week, the order of which I had already learned.
Listen to the 78rpm album of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony HERE
1946 - I Begin Collecting 78rpm Records
I began collecting records when I was 4 years old. My first were classical music 78rpm 10- and 12-inch singles, along with a few 78rpm albums. Additionally, my Uncle Ernie Schlenzig, who had a jukebox business in Denver, would bring me boxes of used records from his jukeboxes. The classical-music records were provided by Grandma Robertson, who supported my love of music by taking me on what she called “bats”, our special record-buying shopping expeditions.
1946 - Dr. Brico
Because of my unusual interest in music, in February, 1946, my mother took me to the famous symphony conductor Antonia Brico who agreed to teach me. We called her Dr. Brico. Dr. Brico told Mom that I would be a great composer someday, and that summer, Mom took this photo of Dr. Brico and me. Dr. Brico was going to Finland to conduct the Helsinki Symphony Orchestra and wanted to give the photo to Jean Sibelius, the great Finnish composer. Meanwhile, my father was convinced that “this Brico dame” turning me into a child prodigy would ruin my life forever. When she returned from her trip, he forbade me to take any more lessons from her. The damage had already been done, however: Dr. Brico had already gotten me started on my journey as a composer of classical music.
LINKS:
1948 - The First LP Records Arrive Next-Door
Walter Slagle and his family lived directly behind our home. He owned the Denver dealership for Philco, the company that produced early 33-1/3rpm “LP” record players. One day in 1948, Mrs. Slagle summoned me to her home and introduced me to perhaps Denver’s first LP record player, with records that had been produced by Columbia, the inventor of the LP record format. I spent many hours every day in her home listening to music. I marveled at how slowly the records turned, compared with the 78s and how much music was on each one.
Listen to Columbia LP Records HERE
In February, 1949, the RCA Victor Corporation introduced the 45rpm record player, creating a third format for commercial recordings. Two months later, for my birthday, my Grandmother Robertson bought me one of these early players, along with a stack of RCA Victor classical record albums: box sets of 45rpm red-vinyl records. Over the next six years, my collection of 45rpm records continued to grow.
1950 - My First Tape Recorder
Take a look at a 1950 Eicor Tape Recorder HERE
In 1950, my father gave me an Eicor tape recorder, one of the earliest commercial tape recording machines. The 1/4″ tape onto which it recorded was grey colored and made of paper. Soon, the brown-colored plastic tape that became standard for all tape recording became available.
The following year, my parents gave me a 3-speed “record changer” for my birthday. It played records of all three standard formats: 45rpm, 33-1/3rpm LP (long playing), and 78rpm records.
1950 - KDMC RADIO
In the winter, my mother took me and my sister to the ice-skating rink at the Denver Country Club, where there was a record player that played 78rpm RCA Victor classical “Red Seal” records for the skaters to skate to. You could not hear the music inside the rink house where the record player was, but you could hear it outside in the rink. That told me that there was a way that one could connect wires to a phonograph and play music that would be heard from speakers located far away. Following this logic, I rigged up my own homemade radio station in my bedroom, interconnecting the two record players that I owned by that time, the Eicor tape recorder that Dad had given me for Christmas in 1950, and the microphone that came with the tape recorder. I strung wires from my bedroom to the homes of my neighborhood friends using the telephone poles in the corners of our yards, and gave my friends some intercom speakers that a friend of my dad and mom had donated to the cause. I called my radio station “KDMC Radio”. My parents were shocked at the apparent dismembering of my “formerly good” equipment, and they were terrified that I would set the house on fire.
1950 - The Knight-Campbell Music Company
Denver, Colorado ca.1950
My Grandmother Robertson used to take me shopping. We rode in her big Cadillac downtown to the Charles E. Wells Music Company and the Knight-Campbell Music Company, Denver’s two premiere music stores, and then, following this, we always had a fantastic lunch at the Denver Athletic Club, where Grandpa was one of the directors. I loved going to the “DAC” because of the piped-in music provided by Muzak. Music from Muzak in those days had not yet become the “elevator music” that the company would especially create for dining and shopping ambiance in later years. Instead, classical and semi-classical records from RCA and Columbia were featured.
1951 - Milton Shrednick's Record Rack
November, 1951 - From Mr. Schrednick
About 1950, Denver band leader Milton Shrednick opened a record shop on East 8th Avenue, about a mile from my home. I went there any time that I was able, and I probably drove poor Mr. Shrednick crazy. In those days, you could listen to records in listening booths that record stores provided, and I did just that. I was intent on hearing every record in the store, if possible. This photo shows one of the classical music promotional records from Columbia that Mr. Shrednick gave me every month after he was finished with them. Every penny of my allowance went toward buying 45rpm single records from Milton Shrednick, but LP record albums were beyond the means of my youthful budget.
1951 - The Record Library
I catalogued and assigned a number to each single in my collection. I purchased the same green sleeves that “real” radio stations used and stored all of my records on a shelf in my bedroom radio station. Meanwhile, my childhood friend and home radio-station co-conspirator, Rob Wilfley, sat at his fathers’s typewriter and wrote letters to every major record label in the USA, requesting their free demonstration record service, as was the practice in “real” radio stations. For about a year, we received every popular 45rpm record that was issued by the Dot and Coral record companies.
A Musical Kaleidoscope VIDEO
Forgotten Dreams by Leroy Anderson
1951 -The Transmitter
Soon, my childhood friend Rob Wilfley joined my interest in operating a small radio station. His father was a smart guy who loved to tinker with electronics. He built Rob a low-powered AM radio transmitter from drawings and instructions in an article that he had found in Popular Science magazine.
This device transmitted a signal over an area of several blocks. Rob named his station KROB, and together we formed a network called the “Western Broadcasting System”. I figured that I could build my own transmitter, and I gave the list of electronic parts from the magazine to Mom as my only request for the 1951 Christmas. After Christmas, we went shopping for parts. I attempted to build the transmitter myself, but I could not get it to work. Mom and I finally took it to a technician to complete. He worked in the transmitter building for radio station KPOF in Westminster, Colorado, just outside of Denver. Once completed, KDMC radio went online, and I began sharing my collection of 45-rpm records: music that I had discovered from my hours of radio listening: Leroy Anderson, Nat “King” Cole, Doris Day, Frank Chatsfield, David Rose, Hugo Winterhalter, and so on.
1952 - Up on the Rooftop
This photo of our house was taken about 1949.
I needed an antenna to make my transmitter work. I could get to the roof of our two-story house by first climbing to the top of the garage, and so I climbed onto the roof of our house and strung a wire to one of the chimneys. After Dad found out that I had been walking perilously around on our rooftop, he called a carpenter friend and he built a real antenna for me, running from chimney to chimney. Soon I was broadcasting to our neighborhood. Alas, one evening, probably in 1954, lightening struck the antenna and burned out my transmitter. That was the end of KDMC Radio.
1952 - My Aunt's Record Player
My mind was always filled with music. I composed new music in my head, humming it, trying to mimic the sounds of various instruments of the orchestra. I could replay complete records in my mind also, exactly as they sounded when I played them. All of this was a big part of my inner world. On a family trip to visit my Aunt Dorothy in Cape Cod, my aunt asked me to pose for a photograph. Being a painter, she wanted to create a charcoal portrait based on this photo. I asked her if I could sit for a photo in front of her record player. Here is the result.
1952 - KFEL-TV
On July 18, 1952, Denver got its first TV station: KFEL-TV. I do not remember how I obtained permission to do so, but after school, Mom would drop me off at the KFEL-TV studio, and I hung out there for hours, watching live TV broadcasts being made. All of the on-air and the other people at the station seemed to like me and let me sit quietly behind the cameras while live television was underway. I used to bring home no-longer-needed advertising props and black and white slides that had been used for Denver’s first TV commercials.
1955 - A 13-Year-Old Denver Radio DJ
In 1955, my neighbor, Mr. James Fresques, telephoned to tell me that his friend Paco Sanchez had invited me to do a weekly half-hour program on his radio station – KFSC Radio – Denver’s only Mexican-American station. Called “Teen Tunes”, my show lasted about six months.
I have occupied my life with music, and my love of music is epitomized in the collection of recordings that I have gathered along the way. Always in the back of my mind was the thought that I would someday produce a radio show, from which I could once again share my musical discoveries.
Listen to a 3-minute excerpt from my radio show “Teen Tunes” from Sept 10, 1955
1955 - Lou Morgan Music
LINKS:
Music from the Early 1950s
About 1955, a new music store appeared near my home in Denver. Located at 339 Holly Street, it was operated by the wife of a Denver bandleader, Lou Morgan, and she was just my kind of lady. Fascinated with me, my radio station, and my love for both classical and popular music, she would go to any length to find records for me. She was my source for records that nobody else in Denver sold. She called executives at record labels to find a rare pop 45 or 78 RPM record that I had heard only one time on the radio. My 45 and 78 RPM record collection expanded greatly, thanks to Mrs. Morgan. One time, it took months for her to locate the original German 78-rpm records by piano player known as Crazy Otto. Another time, the distributor for Mercury records did not have copies of a record that I liked by A&R director David Carroll, and so she got the record label to send me a free copy of the 45-rpm record.
1956 - Elvis Presley
With the arrival of Elvis Presley in 1956, I abandoned all forms of music except rock and roll. While riding in the back seat of my fathers 1956 Oldsmobile, I heard Elvis Presley for the first time. The song was “I Was the One”, the flip side of “Heartbreak Hotel”. Elvis had just been signed by RCA Victor records, and this was his first big hit record. When he came to town that year, travelling with the Faron Young Tour, I got front row seats for my girlfriend and me. The music of Elvis Presley was a transforming experience for me and for my schoolmates at Hill Junior High School in Denver.
My First Record – Be Bop a Lula & Hound Dog (1956)
1959 - Jazz Guitar
I discovered the guitarist Django Reinhardt in 1959 and left rock and roll for jazz. The amazing guitar music of this gypsy jazz guitarist from Belgium, who had died just six years before, changed my musical life. In September, I joined the US Navy. I continued to collect records, but now it would be Jazz that I was interested in. I carefully studyied the music of jazz quitarists Johnny Smith and Wes Montgomery.
My Navy Jazz Quintet, with me on guitar:
1963 - Classical Music Composer
In late 1961, I rediscovered classical music. I do not recall the exact circumstances, just that while stationed aboard the US Naval Vessel USS Los Angeles, I began to recall my former love of the great European classical music from the 19th century Romantic Era. This return to my interest in this music occurred while I was also discovering the great works of literature. I was rising culturally. While walking the beach of Waikiki during a few days liberty in Hawaii, I had a very powerful premonition that I would become a both a writer and a composer.
When my ship was tied up at Long Beach, California, I used the public library to check out books on music theory, harmony, and orchestration and began writing small pieces for orchestra. My final work before leaving the Navy was a four-movement poeme for orchestra called “Moments avant de partir”, mostly composed in 1963. Through a very supportive member of the Long Beach community, I was able to hear the first movement performed by the Long Beach Symphony in rehearsal.
1965 - The Contrasts
After I was discharged from the Navy, I started using money that I made playing guitar in bands and combos to augment my growing classical record collection. After my nearly four-year Navy hitch, I enrolled in the music school at the University of Colorado in Boulder and formed a jazz/blues trio called The Contrasts. We became a very popular band in Boulder, came in second in a big band competition in Denver, and ended up in Las Vegas, Nevada. Dissatisfied playing in casinos, I finally left the group and drove to California.
Listen to The Contrasts live in 1965! HERE
1966 - World Music
Venice Beach, California
In 1965, while attending the music school at the University of Colorado, a man who worked in a Boulder record store on University Hill had introduced me to North Indian classical music and the great North Indian musician Ustad Ali Akbar Khan. Immediately upon hearing this music, I had realized that I had discovered a very important music tradition. It had such a profound effect on me that I decided to study it seriously. After leaving The Contrasts in the Spring of 1966, I moved to Venice Beach and enrolled in the School of Ethnomusicology at the University of California Los Angeles (now the Herb Alpert School of Music). There, I was introduced to the music of great classical music traditions from around the world: India, Japan, Greece, Persia, China, Africa, Java, and Bali. Only a few recordings of what became known as “world music” were available in the US at that time, and I searched for them diligently. I also began studying the Indian musical instrument, the sitar, becoming a private student of Harihar Rao.
Jack Sheldon (trumpet) & Don Robertson (sitar) perform “Nature Boy” (1968) HERE
1966-68 - New York City
In 1968, I wrote the first instruction manual in the Western World for the Indian drums called the tabla. It was published by the Peer-Southern Music Corporation in New York City.In the fall of 1966, I moved to New York City to attend the Juilliard School of Music. I played guitar, tamboura, tabla and sitar on recording sessions for national TV commercials and on albums by artists such as Harumi, Bobby Callender, Chamaeleon Church, and Ultimate Spinach. I studied privately for two years with composer Morton Feldman and was among Ustad Ali Akbar Khan’s first American students. I continued collecting records. At a store in downtown Manhattan called Sam Goodies, I purchased imported record albums from all over the world. It was in this store that I first found the great recordings of the master vocalists of North Indian classical music. The records that I purchased from this store form the heart of my Indian music collection of recordings. I continued to collect North Indian classical music in the form of LPs, CDs and cassettes for many years to come.
1968 - I Discover Positive and Negative Music
Being the student of both American composer Morton Feldman and Ustad Ali Akbar Khan, the great musician from India, placed me in a very unique situation. One one hand, the music that I was studying with Morton Feldman was basically discords: one after another, while the Ustad was teaching a very old spiritual music that had transforming powers. Studying ancient astrology, I discovered that there was such a thing as positive and negative music. This realization changed my life and changed my musical direction.
1969 - The World's First New-Age Music Album
In 1968 I moved to San Francisco to study tabla with Pandit Shankar Ghosh and to prepare for my own first album called Dawn. I had been signed to Mercury Records’ subsidiary Limelight label and worked with Abe “Voco” Kesh, the producer of the first heavy-metal band called Blue Cheer and guitarist Harvey Mandel. In this album, I created what I was calling New Age Music. I also unveiled my discovery of positive and negative music. Side One explores the positive side of music, opening with a long improvisation on zither using the pure pentatonic scale – the most harmonious scale that exists. Side Two features the duochord – a term that I had coined to represent the root chord of discordant music – and my ultimate heavy-metal “bomb” that anticipated the negative music that would later arise from heavy metal bands in the 1980s.
This album, now a classic, was re-released on vinyl and CD in Italy in 2001.
1970 - The Kosmon
I moved back to my home state of Colorado in 1970. There, I teamed up with childhood friend and graphic artist John Fresques to create our self-published book called Kosmon. In this book I detailed the reality of positive and negative music and warned of a coming onslaught of heavy-metal music, the negative music that used distortion to create discordant overtones. I presented in this book for the first time the theories that I had been evolving since 1962 concerning historic cycles in music and art, a theme that I will further expand in 2005 with Music Through the Centuries. In the Kosmon article Musical Numerology, I discuss the numbers 3,6, 9 that 40 years later I will discover were the special numbers of Nicola Tesla and the number pattern 142857 that during the 1980s will become the basis of vortex math. In the Kosmon, I also presented ideas about climate change, organic food, and ancient civilizations.