Georgia Dentel and Grinnell Concerts History, 1960-2001 - Interviews

John Peterson: I kind of respond to whatever I'm called, which is what happened at Grinnell because everybody started calling me, Wa, right? And after a while, even the professors did. So it was like, okay, you know, just respond to whatever.

Miles Brown: Okay, this is great stuff. Um, I think we can start recording now. Have we started recording, Faye? Okay, incredible. Yeah.

Peterson: Let me make sure of who I'm dealing with then. Are you, Miles?

Brown: Yes, yes, I'm Miles.

Peterson: And you are?

Faye Henn: I'm Faye. I'm also working with Miles. But for this, I will be turning off my camera and just taking notes. So you won't remember I'm here.

Peterson: All right. Ready to boogie?

Brown: Yes. Thank you so much.

Peterson: Yeah, and I don't care. I don't care.

Brown: Okay, great.

Peterson: People call me Dr. Peterson, only when they're, I recently became the chief health officer for the county.

Brown: Congratulations. Okay.

Peterson: People in that capacity call me Dr. Peterson.

Brown: Okay.

Peterson: And everybody else, it's Doc. Or... And anybody from the Grinnell days and the 60s call me Wa. And anybody from the Grinnell days and the 60s call me Wah.

Brown: Call you Wa. Okay, right, right right.

Peterson: Some people call me, my family call me Dr. Wah and um Papa Wah.

Brown: Papa Wa, okay.

Peterson: And Grandpa Wah.

Brown: Many names.

Peterson: Grandpa Wah.

Brown: Oh, okay.

Peterson: Very confusing. I'm sorry.

Brown: No, no, no. No worries.It's it's quite a story. Um I guess kind of to start off, if you could talk a little bit about, you know, your background, The Pete Klint Quintet, and when you kind of first came to Grinnell, and what you remember from that?

Peterson: Uh sure. Um, I grew, um... the... well, I was born in North Dakota, and I grew up in the northern part of Iowa, in a town called Mason City, Iowa. And it was kind of famous because it was the home of The Music Man, Meredith Wilson, who wrote The Music Man, who ended up in California and New York, and very, very prominent composer of musicals, grew up there. He was friends with my mother, as a matter of fact. And so everybody was music crazy there. Out of a high school of 1,500 students, 500 of us played instruments. So it was that way, you know. And so in the early 60s, the Beach Boys started coming out and popular radio, and then the Beatles, and just about any kids with any musical interest decided to start a band. And so that's what we did. In the mid and early 60s, we started this band. We ended up getting the best players that we could... uh... in northern Iowa to come together and who could play their instruments really well and also sing, so we put together a five-part, five-member band. The oldest in the band was Pete Klint, who was the guitar player. And we just picked his name because he was the oldest one. He wasn't really any, that much better, right? And we decided, let's go for it and do three, four, and five-part harmonies along with our musicianship. So we did that. My mother was a concert pianist, and my father was an organic chemistry professor. So um I grew up with a lot of music. So I was kind of the one who organized the music part, did the arrangements, assigned the vocal parts, and took those parts into the studio when we finally got to that point. So we started playing out, and we were basically doing covers of old Beatles and The Stones and Beach Boys and then we started getting into the old Motown rhythm and blues, Chicago Sound, Memphis, Stax Volt. I don't know if you know any of these names? And then we got the opportunity to play throughout a three-state area. Got kind of a reputation going. and then it got an offer to play in the old Chess Studios in Chicago, which is uh very well-known, actually. Muddy Waters and Howlin' Wolf and Etta James. We were a little bit intimidated, but anyway, our appointment there to do this recording was uh in uh , it was in South Chicago. And Chess, who owned the studio, had just died in a car accident, so at that point, we thought they were going to close it down. But there is this letter saying, yeah, you guys are still on, so we came. There was this old building, ready to fall apart, uh cement block. And we knocked out the door. Nobody there. And after five minutes, this old guy comes up and unlocks and he says, "Are you guys the PKQ, the Pete Klint Quintet?" And we said "yes." And he says, "I'm the engineer." And I said, I asked him, "How long have you been the engineer?" and he says "Since it started." In other words, he had seen it all. Right?

Brown: Right, right, right.

Peterson: Ands... and so that's so we went in to the studio and he says, set your gear over here. I'll set the mics. I'm going to be behind. And we'll do this song. We found an old Lou Rawls song that we really liked. We changed it around, uh added some doo-wop harmonies, and that became our song, along with the flip side, one that we made up, and uh, so we recorded it. And um, it was at a time where you couldn't just punch it in. If you made a mistake, you coudln't just stop it and punch it in with the correction. You had to do the whole thing from the beginning from the end. And, it was a difficult... I thought it was a difficult piano thing that I came up with. And, so it's a very... and I made the same mistake over and over. So finally after the tenth take, the old engineer, he looks at the band, they're getting really ticked off right. They're getting ticked off. We're spending all this money, right? It was like $200 an hour which would be like 2... $20,000 an hour, nowadays, right?

Brown: Yeah

Peterson: So the band... the band is totally upset, and the engineer says "Alright, the rest of you guys out of here. It's just me and the kid at the piano." So they left. He turns the lights down. He says "It's just you and me kid." And he says "I want you to just close your eyes, and let's do this thing." And so we did it. And then it was fine. And everybody else came back in. The... the song was real catchy and it took off. It was called "Walking Proud." It took off. It was a hit in the Midwest. They started playing it in California and New York. We were getting offers to play the Hollywood Bowl. I mean... it was just amazing what happened with it. And that's when other people got interested in us. So at that point, there is a booking agency called William Morris Booking Agency. It's still in operation. They do the Tonight Show, take on a lot of bands. And the head of the Chicago branch of William Morris came to see us. He was the guy who had discovered the Beach Boys about eight years, nine years before. And he listened to us and he turned to our manager. He said, "these guys could be the next Beach Boys, five-part Harmony, all that stuff." And he says, "and we really like your recording." He says, "What we need to do is promote you guys." So whenever there was a well-known band that would come through the Midwest, they would tag us with that band. We would be the opening act or sometimes even the backup band for the vocal Sonny and Cher and people like that. So that's what we did for about a year. We did... we opened for uh... The Beach Boys and uh... The Doors, and uh... backed up Sonny and Cher. And we were like 18 years old, right? It was... it was pretty crazy. Um... and just through that then, the band got some popularity. We had more recording opportunities. They didn't quite have the chutzpah that "Walking Proud" had. Uh... so anyway we lived off of that for a while. We started playing all over the Midwest including Grinnell College, and then you know, this is where it got interesting for me was because um... Georgia was uh... the one who is booking. And she had a great relationship with William Morris Booking Agency and our manager who was a entertainment attorney. And they started dealing with her, and she was superb. And so we started playing Grinnell College every year, um.... in fact, every six months for a while. And I just grew to love it. I said, "You know there's something about the student body here that's... really kind of special." And they're into music, they were... you know some of the colleges where we played, they couldn't have cared less. You know... I mean it was it was all women and alcohol basically. Yeah. Whatever was happening there. And um but Grinnell, you have people come out... we started playing some Chicago blues, everybody just go towards the front and and it was something Muddy Waters had done or Howlin' Wolf or somebody like that they knew it. We're gonna do some Howlin' Wolf for you. "Yeah!!!" I mean it was it was so great and then uh... after I kind of burned out on the PKQ then that's that's when I I thought "you know I'm thinking about going into the sciences, I'm thinking about medical school, maybe I'm gonna have to transfer from this two-year school to a four-year school. Grinnell is the coolest place ever. We already had a lot of friends there from playing there. And uh... they... and so I transferred in I, and after about six months of playing in the PKQ and going to school at Grinnell, I realized I wasn't gonna do well at Grinnell. I was going to be gone three to five days out of each week, playing in this band. You know I wasn't going to be able to do it. Academically it wasn't going to happen. And uh... so I just... and they didn't... the band didn't like the my original material much anyway. So I thought "eh," time to time to move on and uh transferred in and then, there I was, a Grinnell student.

Brown: So and I want to get to Independent 398 in a sec because I'm very interested in that second bit. But but, quickly just to loop back, you talked about almost on a six... every... almost twice a year with the PKQ um you're performing at Grinnell that first impression it's very musically-based. Can you elaborate a little more on what kind of blew you away? Or what kind of your first experience was at Grinnell? Your first memories there?

Peterson: Heh, well you gotta,.. you gotta remember... that this is the the mid to late 60s, okay. And I was a musician on the road. You know, I mean so it was like uh... recreational drugs, you know all sorts of stuff. And uh... so uh... when we went to Grinnell, it was almost like, I... I'd we take a break and I'd be talking to people, and they would they would be interested in. And and if I was listening to music as to what was happening, you know just like The Doors. The Doors, where they got a lot of their ideas were from the jazz players of of the day. You know, John John Coltrane and Herbie Hancock and and the great players. And most of their ideas were coming from that.... and uh... let's see I was there's one. Oh yeah, especially uh McCoy Tyner, who is the pianist for uh John Coltrane. Oh you know, The Doors were just using this stuff, and so was I and and so I would talk to Grinnell Students and they said, "Yeah! You're right. Yeah. They're they're stealing all this stuff from from the great Blues and jazz players" Which we all knew anyway. Right? I mean especially the Blues players from the Delta who were playing at Chess Studios. Everybody was stealing stuff from them. Um.. and but it was same way with the jazz. The jazz keyboard players especially. And um... so anyway it was that kind of consciousness that I ran into at Grinnell where people were able to take a step back and see the bigger picture. And... enjoy... and of course, I knew that they had had Louis Armstrong there a year before. Uh... Michael Jackson was there a year before with the Jackson Five. I mean... it was... and they played in you know... James Hall or something. I mean... it was... it was phenomenal. I kept hearing these stories, and the more stories I heard, the more I liked it. Uh... there are some people in my class who are very well-known musical critics: Gary Giddens was one. Super cool guy. Peter Kiepnews was another one from the New York City area. I think he wrote for the New York Times Magazine. Uh... did a great book on Thelonious Monk. Charlie Doherty, who played drums sometimes with Independent 398, was a great critic. I mean so it was there was all this you know here... look what 1300 students? And here are three of the great jazz critics... um there were these people coming into play that you know a Big 10 University wouldn't wouldn't have been able to get. And it was even more so when I by the time I got there.

Brown: So you get to Grinnell I mean and like could you kind of elaborate more on how your music experience kind of unfolds? Like the acts you had to see? Possibly Herbie Hancock among many others? like what exactly happened there? And then a bit also talk about Independent 398 if you get the chance.

Peterson: Well um Herbie Hancock. He played a couple of concerts… solo concerts there. And in fact, my the first date with my wife was to a Herbie Hancock concert. So it was it was really pretty cool. She didn't understand a bit of it, and yeah, and she's looking at me and I am just mesmerized. Right? Yeah. I am floating away, no contact at all with her. And then of course she learned a lot about me. There was there was going to be a priority here. If there was going to be a concert or a gig, that's where I was going to go. It didn't really matter what she wanted to do. Uh, we worked we worked this out. You know. By the way, we've been married what? 54 years. That was something um... so anyway uh you know so Herbie played there, and I had a chance to talk with him. And then every time I saw him, since then, uh mainly at um University of Michigan where my brother-in-law does the concert series there um, and he'll bring Herbie or Chick Corea when he was live. And uh... for a concert or two and so I'd go up we'd get front row tickets. And then I'd go backstage afterwards, and Herbie and I would talk for five, ten, twenty minutes sometimes about this and that, same with Chick Corea. Um great... great... great opportunities and and and he would I would talk about some older album. You know they did with Miles. In the late... Miles in the Sky or something like that, in the late 60s. And he says "Oh yeah, we were doing some pretty weird things back then." And I thought, "I liked it." You know, and and we you know we talk about the ergonomics of piano playing. And you know, the chairs and you know your fingers and how you take care of yourself when you're playing a lot. And anyway it was so fun. And um, so we kind of kept that relationship and of course every time we talk we talk about Grinnell, Grinnell College. And and and I said, "You remember that old grand piano in Loose Hall? Uh in the area... uh the waiting area kind of?" And he said, "Oh yeah!" and I said, "Did you did you write um Watermelon Man on that?" And he says, "I could have!" I said, "I don't remember. I don't remember." But it was that kind of stuff right?

Brown: Yeah right right right. We still have some of those old pianos.

Peterson: That old... that old piano in Loose Hall! Probably still there!

Brown: Yep. We got one in Loose. There's one still in Main. There's one still in Yonker. There's there's a couple still floating around... so oh my god.

Peterson: So you're a piano player?

Brown: Am I a piano? No no, I play the guitar, but I have friends that play the piano. So I'll we'll... get a concert every once in a while I have a friend or two but not Herbie Hancock unfortunately. Um so..

Peterson: That's great, that's great. I love it.

Brown: Yeah it's uh it's it's pretty incredible. So I'm hearing, that the Concert scene at Grinnell, kind of the music scene in general, you have you have Herbie Hancock and some individual acts. But you also had student bands playing at the same time, could you kind of elaborate more on how your music kind of grew in that moment and kind of your individual band that you played with?

Peterson: Yeah I think you know I came in because the the PKQ had a reputation at Grinnell but throughout the Midwest especially. And um... it was just kind of weird to be, you know, introduced to people as Captain Wa Wah. I mean, that was my nickname and so right there it was like... what do we do with this? Of course everybody had nicknames... right... yeah you know Fat Jack, and you know, on and on and on um, Moby Grape. That was the name of a band back in the 60s. one guy was called "Grape." I mean it it was that kind of thing, and of course, as soon as you're introduced then all the musicians who are there then come out who have have their own bands and stuff. And then everybody said "Hey since you're here, I mean you know you dropped out of that... yeah you're not gonna be able to do that anymore... you want to just have some fun and goof off as a as a jam band?" "Yeah," I said. "Sure, I still got my B3 and a Holder, Holder piano." Um so yeah, they and... I remember the day that the PKQ van, this big bus and van that we traveled in, they came by Grinnell and took my stuff off and put it right there. And so the new band members came picked it up and took it off to the music building. They let us use uh one of the rooms there to practice a little bit and yeah.

Brown: That's, that's great. Now during your time, so you perform every once in a while. But you're going to concerts as well. Did you ever talk or work with Georgia while at Grinnell?

Peterson: Uh no. You know, I had very little contact with her for some reason. I mean she she was doing her own thing. She was working these uh these internationally- known musicians and kind of had her own group of folks who were helping her out. So I didn't really do too much, but the because the band was so interesting, Independent 398, it had an immediate huge following. I mean every time we played it uh we played the which we called the Forum. Now it's it's now the Forum looks like it's a mausoleum or something. Um but but the the Forum and especially on the uh north side, had this playing area and we'd play there probably once a month. And the place would just get packed in with all these, you know, stone hippies.

Brown: Doing a ton of research um for this project the big thing is we found all these like black and white photos, and like every Forum performance in there on the North or South Lounge or kind of on that outside porch area that place is packed with Grinnellians. It's just like a whole a whole group, and you'll find the occasional like at the Harris Center, you know, the new one on the North Campus or Gardner they'll have performances, but the Forum really seemed like the heart of where music and kind of concerts were at the time. Would you say that's accurate?

Peterson: Oh yeah, and and when the PKQ played there, we quite often played in the Forum in the north North lounge of the Forum. And of course the place would be packed you, know you, you couldn't get in but it made it fun. It made it a totally fun place to play.

Brown: It just seems like such an intimate and close venue kind of to be like that close to the performers and everything that's yeah that's kind of that's pretty incredible that you got to experience that.

Peterson: So where where where do you guys uh play? What's the what's the latest...?

Brown: Right, right, so so the main places we perform now like some of the really large band performances will happen at the Harris Center. Um which is like that large gym area, but I don't know if Main Hall, the basement of that it's called Gardner. Um and it's a pretty compact closed area, and we'll get a lot of of our local performances there. So we had like The Smashing Pumpkins, The Police, The Ramones performing that over there so we've we've had some bands past that area.

Peterson: Um yeah, that's great, that's cool.

Brown: But uh... It's it's uh it's it's a pretty special place, and I... I've really taken away from that. But you mentioned that you kind of got more into experimental music as well as you came to Grinnell? I mean I know that some of the stuff the PKQ wasn't exactly loving. Um how did i kind of adapt and develop at your time at Grinnell? Um and how'd you get to experiment kind of with music when you arrived?

Peterson: All right well, you know, I've always... since I was a little kid, like I said my mother was a piano teacher and a concert pianist before the World War Two came on. And I my sister was a prodigy pianist and flute player. And she started playing flute I think at age four and was in the Washington Symphony, played the White house. Um and she was she was really really good. Um, President of the American Flute Association for like 15 years. Um and so every night, my mother would play the orchestral um transcriptions of of of these flute pieces, and my sister would play the flute. And they worked up a complete flute repertoire um and i would go to sleep every night on the stairs, listening to this. Every night. Every night was this and I just got to the point where I realized what needed to happen where in you know with all the you know the classical uh composers. And just was in love with classical music and still am. And if I'm gonna listen to anything it's it's going to be uh Bartk or Brahms or yeah Bach of course. So so so you have all these ideas and then, yet you know how to play Rock N' Roll and you know how to do the timing of it and where things are intersperesed. And do things like the Beatles did when they made orchestrations and added symphonic parts. That was more George Martin, their producers. More than The Beatles but it's what they did, and that's that's what I wanted to to kind of do. And so that's when I wrote a lot of stuff. In fact, I just recorded three songs in the studio that I wrote at when I was at Grinnell. 60-something in whatever it is... god awful years ago.

Brown: I mean you're at Grinnell... I mean you're hearing like.. are you hearing like Pharaoh Sanders like Herbie? Like you're hearing these like major influences and and then you're getting to record music. That's that's pretty incredible. Did you do you have like your big takeaways from Grinnell when you graduated and kind of left that area? Like like when you think about it today, or when you think about like how it's impacted your career what what are the big things and what how did it really impact you?

Peterson: Uh you mean the music side of it?

Brown: Yeah, I'd say the music side, but also more in general as well.

Peterson: Yeah... the music the the thing that I loved about it is that there were people who really knew good music and knew how to listen to it. They weren't necessarily the faculty. Um, one of my best friends was uh Leo Berenstain uh you might have heard The Berenstain Bears. These children's books that's his uh parents... and the stories are about him and his brother. Right, so he was a really good friend and every night... he was a Classical music buff. And every night, we would listen to another symphony that he would know and then he would tell me to direct different parts. We'd be just stoned out of our garage right and he'd be directing the parts and uh Bartok's Concerto for orchestra was our favorite one. Because it has so much going on and has such beautiful melodies and dissonance at the same time. And uh, and then, we're we would end up with some Sonny Rollins right? And just to top off the night, and then and then go to bed. And and it's like that you know, you you couldn't really substitute a class for that. Yeah. It was yeah, so that I think I brought that it certainly brought that away and realized that you could do all sorts of things without necessarily being within the system. Um and that really just about anything goes, but you really want to keep your audience in mind because you don't want to lose them. I mean that you know only people like Cecil Taylor could get away with it, right? Where, he he couldn't care less about the other musicians or the students or the the concert goers. This is what he was going to do, and and he could do it, and yeah and, be considered one of the greatest jazz pianists ever. But I mean, and I was introduced to Cecil Taylor at Grinnell. I knew about him, but I never really listened very very uh well to his pieces and his recordings. And it was it just isn't a concert that just totally blew me away. You go to the concert did you feel like other people

Brown: You go to the concert did you feel like other people were also having that experience? Or was it kind of... did you feel like kind of a part of a sub-genre in Grinnell that was really in love with this new kind of music style?

Peterson: Yeah i think the um with Cecil Taylor it was different. Because even the critics didn't know what to do with it right? They didn't know where to put it you know, he had all these atonal riffs that would go so fast you couldn't really connect with them. And you could tell some of them were very Bartokian uh with a certain dissonance. And the way it was thrown together, he had listened to everything Bartok wrote. I know he did um... and he didn't really care too much. So it was so people would go to his concert because he was becoming famous, and he was avant-garde and it was the thing to do. But in that particular concert I remember there, he did three pieces there, each a half an hour long, and the first piece was you know, acceptable to people's ears, but about a third of the crowd left after the first the first piece. Second piece was just... oh he was playing with these avant-garde sax players who had uh come in from Paris. And heard he was going to be in the Midwest and had friends in Chicago I think Chicago Art Ensemble. Uh remember yeah, this is obscure avant-garde um band from the 60s and 70s, and they had come, but they were extremely famous. I didn't know who they were and then Char Charlie Doherty uh ended up recording with Cecil's um uh okay, he recorded this this piece with these two well-known avant-garde sax players from France from Paris. And there they were Grinnell doing this thing, and Charlie's just he knew what was happening. And he records it. It turns out this was a very important historic recording of that concert. And uh... it's now at the Smithsonian, a copy of it is at the Smithsonian because some jazz lovers really wanted that there. Charlie was that part of that history of of getting that recorded.

Brown: It's incredible I mean like in the fact that you have all the Taylor's presence... like it's happening in rural Iowa...it's just kind of what's about all of this. I mean it's the last place on Earth to suspect Butt it's it all comes together...

Peterson: So that so he played three three pieces the second one was just by himself. The third one was with the whole group exactly and everything it was totally chaotic. It was like uh... it was dissonant and harsh and it was like I thought it was like he was punching our guts. He was just punching our guts with these sounds and and,when I looked around I said, "I I can see why he's punching our guts." You know? Here we are some progressive, White hippies who are getting into this crazy music that nobody totally got, and we deserved it. We deserved to be to have our guts punched out you know, and at that point everybody left except I think there was eight of us. And it and it, and it was Gary Giddens...

Brown: Of course.

Peterson: Of course my my current wife and I, and Charlie who was right, doing the sound. And when we were about it. And then it finished, and they went off the stage, and we stood up and we applauded and screamed. And then Cecil came out on the stage and put his fingers up like a victory salute to us. You know, I'm almost in tears. Yeah yeah it's like what just happened here?

Brown: That kind of sounds hard to top. For like, I feel like as as incredible performances go to get that intimate with a performer like Cecil Taylor is is kind of astonishing. Um did you ever get...

Peterson: I mean the fact that you can talk about Cecil Taylor is this huge plus for me relating to you. I mean it really does, it really is

Brown: Well I mean that's that's honestly my favorite part of this project is just getting to rediscover some of these incredible musicians and artists and kind of seeing them come up and grow, um. Like I'm studying this while i'm like sitting in a building next to the Forum. Just look outside, and I see the Forum it's it's it's pretty crazy. Um but I mean that that's a pretty close interaction. Did you have any, I mean, with these performances now close as they were, did you ever get to talk with any of these performers? Or see them I mean the Cecil Taylor one sounds kind of incredible but was that kind of as close as you got to talking with them?

Peterson: Yeah I think I probably had more contact with Herbie Hancock when he would come through.

Brown: Right.

Peterson: Then then um the other ones. We do we tried to relate to Pharaoh Sanders a little bit which again was very chaotic and and, it's but you know this... Do you know enough you know some of Pharaoh Sanders work?

Brown: I'm familiar with Pharaoh Sanders. I've listened to a bit although I I would not call myself an expert.

Peterson: That's all right that's all right, but anyway, I was cramming uh Comparative Anatomy exam right right and had the campus radio station on which had an eight block radius right. It was the coolest ever some of the best music ever. And um all these people I talked about, these critics were the ones who were the djs right, playing this stuff. And anyway, so I was cramming. Fat Jack was with me. He was cramming for tests. There... "Creator Has a Master Plan," this uh classic piece comes on and we're just listening it's like wow you know you know free form but it's like it floats it expresses itself. And and and and after the first 15 minutes of it we just put our stuff down and then because it was going to go on for a whole album and then the flip side too. Was gonna be one song. And and "Creator Has a Master Plan" and and then at the end of it I, you know, I said, "Jack what did we just listen to?" And he said, "It created Pharaoh Sanders, and they're coming to Grinnell in two weeks." And and and I go so all right we go and it's the same experience you know? Only it's live and they've got bags of percussion stuff and people could play it. And and and and it was great now and now it's such a classic that John Mcgloth and you know Mahavishnu Orchestra? And you know you know him well as a guitarist um? Uh whenever he plays concerts now he ends with "The Creator Has a Master Plan."

Brown: Really?

Peterson: Yeah yeah every every concert that I've seen of his in Europe. Uh the video usually will end with that. With Pharaoh Sanders "The Creator Has a Master Plan" and that's the effect it had on musicians.

Brown: I mean and it's also like it's not like you have the internet back in the city you can't just like look up that song and play it on repeat, so the fact that he's coming to Grinnell after you hear it for the first time... that's... yeah that's a good radio station right yeah yeah

Peterson: The Grinnell radio station. It was a big deal.

Brown: Right, KDIC.

Peterson: It was a big deal. I mean I thought, "What kind if radio station is this?" When I first got there. I thought, "I'm gonna be introduced to a universe of music that I never had acess to growing up."Another part of it.

Brown: Now was that Pharaoh Sanders interview uh performance... is that also in the Forum? Right almost all the major concerts you're seeing here being performed in the Forum, you think?

Peterson: I'm not sure about that one. It might have been in the music building, and the auditorium in the music building, and I can't remember the name of the music building.

Brown: No worries, no worries, that's I'm sure we can find that later... but that's, yeah.... that's so incredicble. I... I'm thinking back to some of your earlier work like "Very Last Day," these huge hits with the PKQ. And I mean like just the range of music, classicall music early on to this like very classic rock to this really... very... Pharoah Sander, Cecil Taylor...um. It's just such a wide genre and range, but it really comes out of now where, I feel like in Grinnell. Um..

Peterson: That's true. Grinnell gave me the opportunity to to really develop that.

Brown: Right and you're cramming for... you're prepping for med school if i'm not mistaken at this time, as well?

Peterson: Well... I wanted to leave the door open because I wasn't really sure you know you know. I'm still you know a Rock N' Roller you know right? I just happened to have a dad who's an organic chemistry teacher. I did pretty well in science so you know and I loved it I loved biology and so it got to be the senior year and they well fiirst of all, they said, "They're going to have to declare a major." I didn't have one until my Senior Year. They said, "We're not going to let you graduate until you until you have a major." And I said, "Okay Biology because I really like it." And and then and then a month later they said, "Well, what are you planning to do with this with this major?" And I said, "I'm not sure." I said, "You know, I might apply to medical school." And then all these the chemistry and biology professors that I've run into, they say, "Hear, hear you might be applying to medical school." You know, here I am right, recreational drugs, hair down to my waist, you know. 1970 what do I do with this? And they and they they decided that I just I wasn't the type. I wasn't the right type to go to medical school, and so I thought, "Okay." So I applied. I said, "You know why not?" And I applied to four or five places, and they have these interviews and uh and I got accepted in three places. And I remember going to my interview at University of Iowa just down the road, and I walked in I said, "I'm not going to clean up for this." You know, shave off my hair and wear a suit and tie and everything. I mean come on now they're going to take me like I am or or not. I was interested in alternative medical systems, and I thought it would be really fun. I thought medical school would be fun, so I walk in. The head of the Psychiatry Department, um was doing my interview. Winaker, he'd done a lot of great research on depression and alcoholism and stuff, and we sit down and uh and he said, "Oh you look pretty good. Your test scores are good. Your grades pretty good. Grinnell's a great school." And this was this is all good, and and and he says, "and what do you... what do you like to do?" I said, "To be honest with you, I'm a professional musician." And he goes, "What do you play?" and I said, "I play keyboards mainly some other things, but keyboards mainly." Um and and he says, "Did you... have you done anything with that?" and I said, "Well, we did some recording in Chess Studios in Chicago and Universal Studios in Chicago. And we did this, we had this song. We did this tour and stuff. He says, "what was the name of the band?" And and I said, "Well it was the PKQ. Pete Klint Quintet." And he looks at me, and he says, "My son loves you guys. My son absolutley loves you guys. He won't even imagine me talking to you today." And uh, I said, "Yeah it was a lot of fun." And uh, and then he just cancelled the rest of the hour or so. And we started talking about musicians and studios and all this stuff. And two weeks... three weeks laters I got my acceptance from...

Brown: The most fun med school interview I've heard ever. I don't think it normally goes like that, but that's, that's pretty incredible.

Peterson: It was really incredible because I didn't have to do anything. It was you know, it was uh um yeah, this was just, I call them gifts from God. You know, the epiphany part of life.

Brown: You know it's really interesting. It feels like the more interviews we hear and listen to like there's just this continuing theme throughout the decades of people having incredible music and concerts experience. Personal favorite of the Cecil Taylor, very very jealous of that. But you know you have these incredible concerts, and then you gotta go cram for a final because the academics here are very tough. And, trying to find that balance is something that, even as a Fourth Year, I think we're all working on so.

Peterson: Absolutely, I you know and I don't envy you I mean I really thought that the the academics at Grinnell were as difficult as anything in medical school that I went through, yeah. And I appreciate are you thinking of medical school?

Brown: I'm thinking of law school but if it's as hard as medical school I'm in a good position. I feel like...

Peterson: No, I could see you uh in law school, all right. You have you have that way about. You're very articulate and very precise, systematic. I I do body typing through Ayurvedic medicine, so I'm everybody I see I can't help but categorize a little bit. I don't mean to but so um but anyway you have great attributes for that, so I would definitely do it.

Brown: That's good to hear but um yeah. No I I think I think the Grinnell ethos of of being yourself and working incredibly hard at the same time um I think worked out almost perfectly speaking. It sounds like with this uh with this uh interview in med school. But uh did you I mean this this aura of I don't know if counterculture hippie would be like a way to properly categorize at least 60s early 70s time in your life period but was that something that you were when you were with the PKQ? Or was that kind of growing out the hair and accepting this music genre was at Grinnell that they really developed?

Peterson: Yeah I mean it was one reason that I left the PKQ was that the rest of the except for Pete, the rest of the band was not with me on this. You know I was uh you know we were Pete and I especially but we you know we were exploring things. We were exploring music uh. We were exploring a Cajun stuff and Dr. John - The Night Trippers, and you know all that stuff. And the rest of the band was not not into that, and I said, "Pete, we got to do more of the original material I'm writing." And and the rest of the family, and they weren't so sure, so I had you know this accumulation of material um and the the more that that happened the more different we became, and it was just a matter of time before uh and then and then the band then split off into different other bands and made nice contributions but in totally different directions. So it was um, I mean it was a good thing for everybody but but they didn't like the... the band did not like it when I quit because I was uh in a way retrospectively I was the glue. I was like I did the arrangements. I did the harmonies. I did I directed on stage.

Brown: Keeping it together...Do you think the same dynamic of the PKQ carried into Independent 398? Or did you kind of feel like you had more freedom to kind of... was everyone kind of on the same boat for what they kind of wanted to try out and work with there?

Peterson: 398 was really an open book. It was so good. Yeah, it was so good and you know it was interesting because it was happening at a time where jam bands were just getting started on the West Coast. So it was relatively new idea in the mid 60s to have a group of jam band who would you know take some song and then play with it. And then it'd be unrecognizable and go off in a different direction. And I think the thing that really made Independent 398 really fun was when the um the faculty members from the Music Department heard about it. And I I never took a music class at Grinnell. Um so so when the when the faculty heard about this band and this Captain Wa Wah on this stuff the um, the violinist-in-residence, David Abel, who is in the classical trio, the Francesco Trio from the Bay Area, he came to listen to us and he brought with him his electric violin, and I said, "Now where are you guys from?" He says, "Yeah, we're from the Bay Area. I used to jam with with the Dead and and all these bands in the in the San Francisco Bay Area. I said, he says, "Could I sit in with you guys?" And I said, "Sure! You know, here's an extra slot on my amplifier." So he plugged in, and he then he played every gig from there on out with us.

Brown: You performed with the faculty? That's that's crazy that's really cool. Now did you perform with you guys like the Forum or like a student concert ever?

Peterson: Yeah just at the Forum.

Brown: Wow.

Peterson: We're just we're just at the Forum and so after the second or third gig, David comes to me, he's a very cool. I think he's died. Um, he was a Buddhist, and he spent the last 15 years in a Buddhist monastery um near Big Sur I think um, but after the I think it was about the third gig he came up to me he says, "You guys should be getting college credit for this." And I said, "You're right and and so we sat down with the college uh catalog and went through and found music and went down the list. And found "Music Independent Project." And it had Independent and it would have to be Independent 398.

Brown: Oh okay, oh man.

Peterson: And the name of the band, and we ended up getting uh two units of uh per semester of college credit for this independent project.

Brown: Yeah, that's only at a liberal arts college gonna get away with it. That's that's really nice.

Peterson: And it wasn't even our idea

Brown: Oh my god, Yeah

Peterson: It was the faculty, it was the faculty's idea.

Brown: Yeah, your faculty/bandmate proposed you get college... wow that's incredible. That's not heard of right.

Peterson: That's not heard of, right.

Brown: So do you do you have memories of performing for Grinnell audiences? I mean what was it like to perform for the fellow Grinnellian? Like at the Forum or anywhere in on campus?

Peterson: It was really fun um and uh and I think we just reflected the community. And the community reflected us, right. That's really basically all it was and when we get together for like every 10 years for a reunion or something... that there are a lot of people won't come to the union unless we're playing. It was kind of weird how that how that happened but that's that's kind of what what happened and there is there was a recording... let's see I think it was about 15 years ago.. uh recording hit the internet of um a hidden recording of Independent 398.

Brown: Really?

Peterson: Yeah.

Brown: We'll definitely find that, okay.

Peterson: It was, I think it was the last concert we played, and it was a reel-to-reel tape recorder in the back of the room. So the quality is awful, but it but it was so fun so fun to hear it because when the when the B3 Organ, uh solo started, yeah I didn't know who it was. I thought it was some jam band from somewhere right?

Brown: Right, right?

Peterson: Where it was and then they the the organ started taking over and there was this run and some stuff and I said, "God, there's only one player who plays like that." And that was me. And then I realized that that's what happened that they had just reel-to-reel and then somebody converted it into digital thing. So it's somewhere and some of it some it's absolutely awful dreadful and some of it is so cool especially the electric violin solos. So fun, so cool.

Brown: The electric violin in the late 60s early 70s that's that's pretty incredible. I mean when I think of like some of my favorite concerts I've seen at Grinnell personally. Like I think of like some of the major touring acts that are up and coming, but there's something special about seeing someone that you just have like a history class with shredding on the guitar that's just like it's pretty incredible it's hard to beat.

Peterson: Yeah that's true. No you are right, that's true. It's that whole rounding out of the personality and the character of that person

Brown: Yeah, yeah well thank you so much for your time. I I just i do you have any final comments or like takeaways? I think we've already kind of touched on this on Grinnell. Or do you think we've covered anything you'd like to us say for the record?

Peterson: Let's see, I was looking at a couple of things. Oh uh... there was a concert that it right it was the first year in medical school that I came back to see that maybe some other people have talked about, but it was uh John Mclaughlin. Mahavishnu Orchestra. Yeah, has anyone talked to you about it?

Brown: You mentioned, you mentioned oh I didn't know so he came to Grinnell? You saw him as an alumni returning?

Peterson: Yeah so I was, it was 1971, so it was my first year out of... I graduated in 70.

Brown: Okay.

Peterson: And then 71, we heard that Mahavishnu Orchestra and John Mclaughlin were going to be playing. And they were playing in Darby Gym or something right?

Brown: Okay.

Peterson: Right. And and I thought, "Vicky we gotta this this is historic. This is going to be a historic." And they were just getting started and um trying to remember the names... uh oh yeah... there there's this drummer that kind of made a name for himself put in the name of Billy Cobb.

Brown: Billy Cobb, okay.

Peterson: Billy Cobb, and he was the first kind of flashy big fusion jazz drummer jazz anyway um. So we'd heard and David Abel, the violinist, had invited us to come. He said "You don't want to miss this." This is because the the violinist who was playing with them uh was the violinist for a band in Chicago called, "The Flock" that we knew about. And that was really good. It was really good, and I thought, "Wow how did Mclaughlin get the violinist from The Flock and Jan Hammer from Europe?" And and there's I mean these these great players and then Billy Cobb. So we went and people were coming in from St. Louis and Chicago. And yeah the word got out.

Brown: Yeah, right.

Peterson: And so big crowd, gymnasium right? Darby Gym, and so the lights come down just a little and Billy Cobb, the drummer, has a basketball, and he starts dribbling between the crowd and goes up and makes a layup.

Brown: Okay, okay.

Peterson: Then sits down at the drums and starts a drum solo. And after after about 10 minutes of this super cool drum solo, then the Mahavishnu Orchestra comes out and they start playing and that's...

Brown: So wait, a six minute drum solo at the beginning of that?

Peterson: Yes.

Brown: Wow, that's amazing.

Peterson: "Just give me the basketball." Shimme , shimme, boom!

Brown: Lights up and gets going man and i'm guessing the crowd you get that gets them started right or?

Peterson: It was just... chaos at that point. It was just chaos and at that point only a third of the people there were from for Grinnell students.

Brown: You have so many people out of town, right.

Peterson: Yeah they're coming from everywhere and because it was historic, you know, I mean the really first major fusion band was that, you know. Of course, then you had Weather Report uh with Joe Zawinul who I also met, which was fun. That was that was a fun vist.

Brown: Yeah, wow Grinnell or is this a separate?

Peterson: Yeah, yeah.

Brown: Well did you meet him at Grinnell?

Peterson: No, actually um, they uh this is a fun story, when's wild the tape never ends right? Um the um so the PKQ was we're recording at Universal Studios in Chicago um and finished up and we thought, "You know we got some time before we go back to the hotel. Let's let's go to a club." And there was this club called, "The London House" and they said Cannonball Adderley was playing there. And I thought, I said, "We're going." I said, "We're probably going to be the only White people there, but that's all right. We're going." So we walk in, and we are we're the only White people there and it's it's very uh up upbeat and up tempo very ritzy everybody's got their tux on. And they're... Cannonball Adderley is in the corner and they have Nat Adderly, his brother, is a trumpet player, really good , um played with Miles right? And and then there's this guy sitting at the keyboards, a White guy with hair back and Cannonball Adderley introduces him, Joe Zawinul. And all the crowd knew about him, right. Because he had written this uh song called, "Mercy, Mercy." And it really hit the black charts, the black jazz charts so and and cannibal said, "Yeah, the writer of this song Joe's audio is right here." And Joe starts playing it, and the whole place gets on its feet and starts clapping. And we're sitting in the White PKQ, sitting at the side. We're going, "Lord" and uh and then finally the concert ends it was it was beautiful. I mean it was uh it was really good jazz players and and so afterwards I said, "I gotta meet this guy." So I went up. I introduced myself, and he had this Austrian accent, which is where he's from right off the boat, right, he didn't, his English wasn't that great and and I said, "Well, how was it playing with Cannonball Adderley? What did you do? What did you have to do to you know make the shift and you're playing and stuff?" And he said, "Oh, it was easy, and they love my songs. They love my song." And uh we talked for about five or five ten more minutes. He says, "I got to go we've got a party to go to." And then he puts his arm around me and he says, "We'll have to get together sometime." You know which is what you always say right. "Well we'll have to get together sometime." And I go, "Yes." Yeah, well of course never did oh.

Brown: Right, I mean

Peterson: Glorious and yeah... you know... all that..

Brown: Late teens early 20s, that sounds like the greatest invitation ever. You're on top of the world, oh man. That's incredible.

Peterson: I do these songs right? At the Juke Joint where I play and it's at some point during the the middle of I'll start telling stories like this while we're doing, "Mercy, Mercy"

Brown: And it's like now like every single one of these people has like a 10-page long Wikipedia page,, 20 albums to their name. But you know back then like you're like the fact that you're not just only seeing them in rural Iowa but Iowa but when they're first starting yeah incredible incredible um...

Peterson: Incredible, and you know, I I by the nature of being there and the nature of things you do, they'll be interviewing you in 50 years and then you'll have your own story.

Brown: I would hope so. I would, I mean like that I'm thinking I'm thinking back to the Cecil Taylor, and I'm thinking of the other seven people in the crowd. I mean like two of them are famous jazz critics. One's writing for the New Yorker like and it's it's I mean I mean... just that room itself is just chock full of history in a way that like you you wouldn't know it at the time. But man, yeah.

Peterson: A quick, one quick follow-up and then we'll stop this thing, but um Cecil Taylor then got a great reputation, right, a building reputation and the University of Wisconsin hired him to be a guest faculty and maybe you heard about, this okay um uh, so there are all these music majors especially pianists but also jazz, concert.... all these people wanted to take this class from Cecil Taylor. Well, he was a real ding when it came to teaching. It was extremely demanding right of what you had to know how you need to know it what went where and all that. And anyway, after the first year he ended up flunking 30 percent his students.

Brown: Wow.

Peterson: But they let him do one semester, again. He flunks 25 percent of his student, and then they said, "You're out because you can't be flunking all these paying students."

Brown: He failed...

Peterson: He says, "They weren't they weren't very good."

Brown: He knew great views, like he was gonna he was gonna push people to... no matter what. That's uh.

Peterson: No matter what. He didn't care about whether he was hired or not.

Brown: Wow... that's uh... that's sounds... that's just a great Cecil Taylor story. Wow. Thank you so much. If you could stay on for one second. Um. Faye, could we stop recording right now. If you're there?

Henn: Yes. I am ending the recording.