Does anyone remember Tommy Ash? He was a drummer who lived for awhile in Arroyo Grande. Although born in 1943 (Lamont, CA) his musical roots were based in Bakersfield during its heyday of the Bakersfield Sound; but, had also backed Tina Turner, Chuck Berry, Barbara Mandrell, Linda Ronstadt, James Burton, and the Beach Boys. Bakersfield Sound Grows Ever More Faint BAKERSFIELD, CA - Saturday June 08, 2002 - As the roll is called up yonder, a lot of the newcomers whove ascended by way of Kern County are answering in Okie drawls. The children of the dust bowl are dying. The evidence is on pages of The Californian almost every day: farmers, teachers, laborers, clerks. Inevitably, it seems, two or three of the newly departed were born in, or were raised by parents born in, Oklahoma, Texas, Arkansas or some other south-Midwestern state. The people who picked the cotton that clothed our troops during World War II and afterward, the ones who riveted together their planes and warships, or extracted the oil that powered their machines, are passing on. So, too, are the people who entertained those workers. Every few weeks, it seems, we read an obituary about a guitar player, a drummer, a singer. Occasionally, its an outright star, but most often its an ordinary, front-porch musician who came to the West Coast to work in a shipyard, or on an oil lease, or in the orchards -- and, seduced by the vibrant, rowdy nightlife of the day, never left. Just in the last few months, weve lost many of the people who helped develop the music that grew into the country-rockabilly hybrid we now call the Bakersfield Sound: Dusty Rhodes, Roy Nichols, Jerry Ward, Gene Moles. Two months ago, it was Tommy Ash, the son of an Okie bandleader and an Arkie barmaid who made his mark with a set of drum sticks. He, like others before him, realized quickly that climbing onto a stage every night beat the heck out of almost anything else. Ash, raised in Lamont, Arroyo Grande and elsewhere in Central California, received his lifes defining challenge one day in grade school. You have no sense of rhythm, a teacher told him, and he set out to prove her wrong from that day forward. He had his own band at 16. Over the years, he played with Tommy Hays, Red Simpson, Billy Mize, Susan Raye, Jolly Jody Keplinger, Bill Woods, Merle Haggard and Inez Savage, among many others. He is said to have also guested on the drums behind Tina Turner, Chuck Berry, Barbara Mandrell, Linda Ronstadt, James Burton, the Beach Boys and Rose Maddox. He turned up on Hee Haw and The Della Reese Show, and worked as a session drummer in Hollywood for Capitol Records. But, as with most of his contemporaries, it was the club scene that paid the bills. In the 1950s and 60s, 12 to 15 Bakersfield clubs were offering live music (country music, generally) at any given time. Ash played in many of them, but it was Texs Barrel House - or, as they called it in the Ash home, the gun and knife club, according to daughter Darla Ash Miller -- that beckoned most often. Ashs second wife, Evalene, usually came out to watch him play, and Ash kept an eye on her from the stage. If male patrons lavished too much unwanted attention on her, Ash would climb down from his drum set -- occasionally, right in the middle of a song - and tell them to leave her alone. Once, at a saloon on Union Avenue, the confrontation moved out into the parking lot and Ash was compelled to settle things with a left hook. But that was Bakersfield in the 60s, when beer taps flowed like oil wells and drunken-driving laws were enforced with considerably less fervor. That was a down side. There were upsides, too. The musicians were good to each other, says Savage, who fronted a band (featuring Ash on drums) called The Savage Sound. Everybody helped each other. If somebody didnt have an amp, somebody else would come to the rescue. Im sure a lot of them are still good to each other like that these days, but I get the feeling, since there just arent as many of them playing live music, its not the same. For years, Ash also worked five nights a week at Pete Jones Music, where he came to be regarded as a mentor of sorts to other drummers. He raised two drummers of his own -- sons Robin and Brian. Ash himself played on, well into the 1980s, performing at the Sheriffs Posse dance and at the old Flamingo Club in east Bakersfield. In the 1990s he was still performing, though it was for a vastly different audience. He was a regular at at the Hope Christian Center on East Brundage Lane, and he played until his heart condition - restricted cardiomyopathy, a hardening of the muscle - made it too difficult. Ash took a fall one day in the early spring and suffered a brain injury from which he never recovered. He died April 9, just 59 years old. Theyre dying off, no question, Savage says. Makes you really appreciate it when you sit down on Monday nights at Trouts to hear Red Simpson. You can just about count on one hand the clubs weve got now. People come in from out of town and they want to know where to hear country music. Forty years ago, you could send them to the Blackboard on a Wednesday night to hear Patsy Cline, Connie Smith, Roger Miller - and for $5. Five dollars! Once in awhile theyd have the Grand Ole Opry Show at what we called the Civic, with Roy Acuff and a whole package of them. Times have changed. The clubs are gone, mostly. And, one by one, the musicians are following. -Bakersfield (The Bakersfield Californian) In 2006, Buck Owens died (heart attack), during sleep at his Bakersfield home, just hours after performing a set at his Crystal Palace.
Posted on: Tue, 25 Nov 2014 22:35:42 +0000
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