- [Voiceover] This Gumbands podcast is made possible by the Buhl Foundation, serving Southwestern Pennsylvania since 1927 and by listeners like you.

Thank you.

- Four, three.

(piano plays) - [Rick] Tom Roberts plays the piano.

I first got in touch with him in the Fall of 2017 when our QED Cooks host, Chris Fennimore who plays the banjo, suggested that Tom might be available to compose some music for my upcoming series of programs called Nebby.

Tom was willing and able.

We recorded him in Studio B here at WQED, playing his compositions on the same Steinway grand piano that Johnny Costa played live for most episodes of Mr.

Roger's Neighborhood.

Tom created music specifically for the first two Nebby programs then we ended up using those compositions in all eight Nebby episodes and in many other places, and we learned to love the guy.

We were happy to get him for this episode of Gumbands and we talked so much, it ended up being a two-part interview.

We recorded both episodes on a beautiful sunny morning in April of 2023 on the ground floor of WQED.

- We're speeding.

- This is Gumbands' 006, Tom Roberts Part One.

All right, Frank, we're rolling?

Rich, Cassidy, everybody good?

So Tom, I always wanna start by, because I think these are questions you don't always ask your friends, even though we've been friends now for many years.

- We've friends for quite some time.

- Where did you grow up?

Where did you start?

- I grew up in Swisshelm Park, which is- - Sort of under the Commercial Street Bridge.

- We lived underneath in a little shack.

No, we lived in Swisshelm Park and that's where I grew up and we used to play baseball on the slag dumps down there.

There's lots of great stories about the slag dumps, which, I think, are now expensive houses.

- It's now the, what's the name of the development there?

Summerset at Frick Park.

- Probably.

We discovered one year that you could go sled riding in the summer on the heaps of slag but you would use piece of cardboard.

- And you might die.

(chuckles) - It was one of the stupidest things I ever did in my entire life, because we figured, "Look, the slag, it goes down."

So we took cardboard and climbed up to the top of the slag dump and started going down and picked up a lot of speed and we didn't stop to think that the cardboard, we're going down metallic, very jagged, sharp pieces of metallic material that started shredding the cardboard and we were going really fast at that point when the cardboard had given way and then the jeans gave way and- - And then the skin was there.

- And then the skin gave way at that point.

So it was not a happy thing.

My childhood was kind of dark, so we'll just.

- Slag dumps are things that we don't think about that much anymore, I don't know.

There's that one that is now Summerset at Frick Park and then there was the big one over on 51 that became Century III Mall.

Century III Mall was built, I think, on part of that slide dump.

But before that happened, I can remember a visitor.

We were driving around and this girl had come to visit from Eastern Pennsylvania and as we drove down 51, she saw the slide dump for the first time and she said, "What is that?

A volcano?"

(Tom laughs) And I thought, "That's excellent."

Yes.

- Very close.

- That's what it is.

- My legs and buttocks felt it was a volcano when I was a child.

- So Swisshelm Park, I think of, when I hear about Swisshelm Park, you often hear that a lot of cops live there.

Your dad wasn't a cop.

- No, my dad was a mill hunky.

- Work in the mill.

- In fact, my whole family worked in the mills and it was kind of a dark childhood.

It was a real rough neighborhood when I grew up there and it was not a happy time, but there was a good thing that occurred.

I remember coming down to eat breakfast one morning when I was in fourth grade and my mother said, "Jack Bogad has been playing something on the radio that I think you're gonna really like."

("The Entertainer" by Scott Joplin) And it played.

That was the year that the Sting came out and they played "The Entertainer" and I heard it ("The Entertainer" by Scott Joplin) and I was transformed.

- Scott Joplin.

- Scott Joplin.

I heard that.

And I was in a different time and I was in a different place and I became obsessed.

I became obsessed with the sound.

The sound really struck me in a very profound way.

And so that summer, I had injured my leg.

My grandparents lived across the street.

They had a player piano.

I think I had messed up my knee or torn an Achilles tendon or done something bad to my knee.

You and I both know about having knee injuries, we're the quadricep brothers, and part of the rehabilitation was pumping my grandmother's player piano.

And my grandfather bought me the player piano roll of The Entertainer and also the real sheet music.

And I didn't know any better.

So I just saw that and I looked at it.

This is the truth.

I'm much brighter than I look.

But I'm sitting there and I'm pumping the thing and I'm looking at the sheet music and I'm watching the keys go down.

I said, "Okay, that means that's this one and that's this one and these one, they're stacked on top, that means you play them all together."

I put my hands over top and I taught myself how to play the piano that summer.

I'd get up in the morning, I'd walk across the street, learn the first part until they'd say, "Tommy, it's time for lunch."

I'd go up and I'd eat lunch and I'd go back down and I'd play the piano again.

They'd say, "Tommy, it's time for dinner."

I'd go back up, I'd eat dinner, I'd go back down and they'd say, "Tommy, it's time for bed."

And I'd go to bed and that was an entire summer and that's when I learned how to play the piano.

- I wanna bounce back, 'cause why did your mother know that you'd like The Entertainer?

- I have no idea.

- She wasn't a musician?

- She was not.

- Your dad, at all?

Music?

- No.

- You are a child of two non-musicians who's built this whole life around music.

- Although when I was in eighth grade, I was selling newspapers on the corner of Forbes and Murray with Stewie Weissman.

We had all discovered girls at that point and you could stand there in the summer in eighth grade and watch the girls walk by.

That little newsstand was right in front of the Squirrel Hill Cafe known as the Squirrel Cage and sometimes, they'd see these two skinny little eighth graders and they would give us a hard time with all this money.

And so two guys started watching over us to make sure nothing bad happened to us.

One was a guy named Lenny.

I won't tell you the nickname we had for him, but he was very funny.

And then the other guy named Joe, we don't know if his last name was Boyd or if his name was Gaston, but he would just sit there with us and he would talk to us about various things.

He was a very intelligent man and he found out that I played the piano and he would ask, "Well, what kind of music do you like?"

And I said, "Well, I like Scott Joplin and I like Jelly Roll Morton."

He says, "You like all that black music?"

Now remember, he is a black man.

And he said, "You like all that black music?

What do you know about Bach?"

And I said, "I don't know anything about Bach."

And so the very next day, he came with an LP of Bach organ works and he said, "Go listen to this."

And so I listened to it.

The next day I came back up there to sell newspapers and he said, "What did you think?"

And I said, "I loved it."

He said, "Which pieces did you like?"

I said, "Of course, I love the Toccata and Fugue in D minor," (Tom scatting) That one.

I said, "But I really liked the," and I probably mispronounced it, but it's Passacaglia and Fugue in C minor.

I just read it, I didn't know how to say it.

And he said, "That's great."

The next day, he came back with a pile of music.

I still have this music to this day.

It's not here with us today, but I have it and it was Hanon, The Virtuoso Pianist and he said, "Play through this and it'll make your fingers like little hammers.

It'll even out your touch and all these things.

And here's a Bach book that I got for you."

And he said, "But this is a little hard.

Here's Clementi Sonatinas."

And I look at him and I said, "I could play this in my sleep."

And he said, "No, give me your phone number."

And so he called me that night at home and I played through these things for him and he says, "That's not you, who's playing that?"

I said, "It's me.

I'm playing this.

I understand how this all works."

And he started crying.

And then he showed up one day and he had been probably watching someone's house and took me to the house and put a piece of music in front of me and said, "Play this."

And I was able to play it and he started crying again.

And so he, Joe, whatever his last name was, was probably the closest thing I had to a teacher, because he simply provided me with this material and a sound of something.

I knew what it was supposed to sound like and I was able to use that same thing to connect with those little black dots.

- So that's your first important teacher?

- That is my only teacher.

- I think you said eighth grade, so junior high.

- Went to Reizenstein Middle School at that point.

- And then to Allderdice.

- Allderdice.

- Yeah, I read that.

- And I was at Allderdice for a while and started playing for the musicals.

I started doing shows at the JCC when it was right over here in Bellevue and mostly just to meet girls, honestly.

The thing was, all this music that I loved was unable to connect with people with it.

I kept making all of these discoveries of music that I really loved.

First I said it was Scott Joplin and then I started really, really reading into all of the history of this music.

I found they all played ragtime, I found all these books.

I started to idolize all of these people.

I would buy records.

I remember one record I bought.

'Cause remember, I grew up in kind of a tough neighborhood and it was a rough time, I would get beaten up, fights every single day.

First, they started beating me up and then my grandfather taught me how to fight dirty and then it became like competitive fighting all the time.

So I'm reading these books and I'm trying to connect Pittsburgh to all this music I'm falling in love with and there's nothing.

There's no mention of any of it in anything.

But my dad, after one day of getting attacked by a gang, went to National Record Mart and got an album by the New Orleans Ragtime Orchestra.

- Knowing that you liked that kind of music.

- Knows that I love that music and he brought it home for me.

The New Orleans Ragtime Orchestra was started by two guys from Sweden.

They fell in love with this music.

They moved to New Orleans, they discovered all these orchestrations at Tulane University and they started this group with a number of very famous musicians in town, reading and playing these orchestrations and I was just so enamored and I was so inspired by these two Swedish guys that had left Sweden, moved to New Orleans and started playing music and developed these international careers.

- And were they contemporary at that time?

Were they from an early- - Oh, they were contemporary.

They were there.

- They weren't from an earlier era.

- They were not.

They were at that time.

And the beautiful thing is, when I finally moved to New Orleans, I got to play with them all the time and now Orange Kellin, who is one of my heroes from when I was a child, is one of my dearest friends, but that's further on down the road here.

- You go to Allderdice and then I think you went to Duquesne for a while.

- I did.

- And is that the normal progression?

After high school, you went to Duquesne?

And you studied music?

- It should be.

I did, but I didn't want to go, I wanted to move to New Orleans and learn how to play the New Orleans things and when I went to Duquesne, it was just like, they didn't accept me as a piano major.

- Because you didn't know how to read music?

- Oh, I knew how to read music.

I could sight read anything.

It's 'cause I hadn't taken lessons with anyone and they didn't accept me as a piano major and they took me as a trumpet major.

(Rick chuckles) I played the trumpet, too.

I did do a recording session on trumpet in New York.

- And that was something that you played in high school?

- Yeah.

- The trumpet.

- Yeah.

- Like at the marching band?

- Yeah and the concert band and things like that and the all city band and orchestra.

I was pretty good at it.

Again, it was all this stuff that I really loved, I couldn't really connect with anyone and it was very frustrating that I have all this music that I love and all this stuff that I, like, oh my God, I love Jelly Roll Morton.

I love Harlem Stride piano.

I love all the New Orleans stuff.

I love all these guys and there's no one to talk with about this It was kind of frustrating, it was not a happy time.

- So you actually graduated from Duquesne?

- I graduated from Duquesne attempted to be a music teacher and I loved the kids.

I taught at Schenley High School.

I'm still friends with my students.

From Schenley High School.

- From Schenley High School.

- And we connect at Facebook and we all get, it was a great connection, but it was not what I wanted to do and I knew what I wanted to do.

- Which was move to New Orleans?

- Yeah.

And I also knew that I wanted to, because there was really nowhere to play what I wanted to play here and difficult to teach people to play what I like to play, 'cause we're not aware of this.

We're not taught music prior to the 1950s.

And they don't teach it in the music schools and people aren't aware of it.

I was so longing to connect where I was with this music I love, but in every book that I read, there was nothing.

Still to this day, there is nothing.

You will see that there is a lot.

So what I did was Leon Redbone came through town performing.

I had tried to go to New Orleans.

- Can we put a date to this?

Late Seventies?

- No, I was still in elementary school.

No, I was in high school.

This would've been Mid-Eighties.

- Mid-Eighties.

- Mid-Eighties.

Leon Redbone comes to town and I had made a tape.

I went to New Orleans for a couple of weeks and tried to connect and ran out of money and came back to Pittsburgh.

And Leon Redbone comes through town and I give a cassette to the guy that was playing drums with him.

He was performing at Graffiti, I think, which is now the- - It's a Porsche dealer.

- It's a Porsche dealer now.

Everything is being erased.

He came there, I was afraid to talk to him, but I wasn't afraid to talk to his drummer and I gave him a tape and I said, "Please give this to Leon."

And I made the inside with him.

I walked up to the drummer who eventually ended up playing and recording with and doing all these things.

I mentioned the word Jelly Roll Morton and we started talking about Jelly Roll Morton and it was like, "Oh."

Here's someone that I can talk with about this.

So he gives the tape to Redbone.

A couple months go by, my card was on it.

I was no longer living at home.

I was living with the girl who had become my first ex-wife.

(chuckles) Just another fun thing, the multiple ex-wife story and Redbone calls my mother's house and she answers the phone.

He says, "I'd like to speak to Tom Roberts, please."

"Who is this?"

He says, "Leon Redbone."

"No, it's not.

Who is this?"

"I assure you, madam, I am who I say I am."

"No, it's not.

Is this Rogie?

Is this Garvin?

Who is this?"

"Madam, I wish to hire your son.

Is he there?"

"Oh no, he lives here."

- She thinks it's one of your buddies.

- Playing a trick on her.

- April Fool.

- And he eventually calls me, he says, "I'm coming through Pittsburgh again.

I'm gonna be playing at Graffiti.

I'd like to hire you for that event."

So I did that event with him at Graffiti and the show was great.

And I met some great guys that were in the band who eventually, I got connected with later on as well.

And he had asked me where I was going to be playing and I told the audience I'll be playing at the balcony And he says, "Isn't there room for you at the veranda?"

(Rick laughs) And then when we got off stage, he made a comment about that and I said, "Yeah, I didn't have the balls to say that."

And he said, "$50."

I went, "What?"

And then Dan Levinson, the clarinetist said, "You're in."

I said, "What do you mean?"

He says, "Leon hates profanity."

There's lots of things that you could get fined for in front of Leon, profanity was one of them, $50 and Dan knew I didn't know that I was in when he fined me $50 for using the impolite word for testicles.

- Wow.

- And so a couple months go by, his manager, who is his wife, calls me and says, "We'd like to hire you for eight weeks on the road.

The first job is The Tonight Show."

So I fly out to Los Angeles, they pick me up.

The first thing I did was The Tonight Show.

- The first thing you did was the Graffiti.

- Well, the first thing I did outside of here was the Tonight Show.

This is on YouTube.

You can Google Leon Redbone with Tom Roberts, The Tonight Show.

And there I am, I'm there in Hollywood.

- But I think your back is to the camera.

- Because I didn't feel.

See, the person that's talking to you now is not the person then.

I honestly didn't feel worthy to look at the camera.

- Oh, so it was your decision to face away.

- And I didn't wanna look at the camera.

- No, I understand.

- I was afraid.

Because of the way things had been set up for me, I didn't feel like I deserved to look at the camera.

So that's on YouTube, Leon Redbone with Tom Roberts, Tonight Show.

You can all see, it's wonderful.

But the thing that happened was one of the guys in the band was from New Orleans.

Scott Black was his name.

And everybody in New Orleans was tuning in to see Scott Black.

And then they saw this little mill hunky playing the piano.

And when I get back to the hotel room there in Hollywood, there's offers from all these band leaders in New Orleans.

I'm gonna start crying now.

This is very profound stuff that this happened, but Leon made this happen.

Not him personally, but Leon is a big force throughout my existence.

- No, getting ready for this today forced me to look up the first time I saw Leon Redbone.

- And where was that?

- It was on Saturday Night Live.

- I saw that, too.

- It was May 26th, 1996, I think.

It was the 22nd episode of Saturday Night Live.

- That would've been '76.

- '76, I'm sorry, I said '96.

It's '76, yes.

I was in New York, probably looking for a job.

I would've been recently graduated from college.

And somebody, one of my roommates in college had been an early fan of Saturday Night Live and he said, "Oh, you can go see it live in New York City," and so I went and I stood in live.

I saw him live, Elliot Gould was the host that night.

It was the 22nd episode.

I don't know that I had heard Leon Redbone but I instantly loved him.

- I know, me too.

I saw that on TV.

- It was such an unusual sound.

- I know.

- I wanna know, can you remember enough the cassette that you, I mean, what was it about the way you played the piano that might have made him say, "Oh, this is the real thing."

Do you have any idea?

- I know, there's Jelly Roll Morton on it.

There was Fats Waller on it.

There was all the James P. Johnson.

I improvised a little bit on some blues for it.

I played some ragtime stuff.

It's just the stuff that I made to give to someone in New Orleans to let them know I knew what I was doing and I ran out of money.

So I gave it to John Gill who gave it to Leon and that's what he connected with.

He actually said, "I had been looking for this tape for several months.

Mr.

Gill, what have you done with my cassette tape?"

And he had been looking, he wanted to call me right after he got it, but he lost it, Which is not too surprising since the van- - Not out of character.

- The van was also filled with thousands of keys from hotel rooms where you would stay.

Back in the day, you would have a hotel room key to go in and at the end of every show, inadvertently, someone would've forgotten to return their keys, so they'd throw it on the dashboard of the van and there were thousands of keys from thousands of hotels, everywhere within this van.

So you were talking about the first time you saw Leon Redbone, I saw that, too.

When I first saw that, I was like, "What is this?"

Who is this person?

- But I mean, I was so surprised that, and just with a minimal amount of research, I mean, that's what happens now, the internet lets you know everything.

He's saying, I think, "My walking stick," - "Without my walking stick."

It was probably with Jonathan Dorn on tuba.

- Oh, which means Joel Dorn's son?

- Joel Dorn's brother.

- Brother.

I knew, as a early music fan, that if I ever saw produced by Joel Dorn, - It's gonna be good.

- It's gonna be good, yes and that was the only- - It's gonna be good.

- Producer that I saw like that, but so many of my favorite records said produced by Joel Dorn.

- Mine, too.

See, this is why we like each other.

- Maybe so, who knows?

So you start to tour with, they hired you for eight weeks.

- Eight weeks.

- But it extended beyond that?

- Well, no.

So the first show was The Tonight Show.

Then we just toured all through California.

We were all through California and- - Playing small clubs?

- Playing huge clubs.

- Not the Hollywood Bowl?

- No, but the Roxy.

In these things, I'm meeting people.

The guy from The Monkees, the drummer.

- Micky Dolenz?

- Micky Dolenz was there.

I can't remember all of the people.

- All these people that you just encountered.

- They were all coming to hear Leon and there's a photo of me, I should have brought it, I should have brought it, from the Hollywood Reporter of all these people that were there at the Roxy to hear us do that show.

It was just amazing to connect with all.

So there were some small clubs, too.

We played in a converted barn at one point, too.

- I'm interested to know.

You said you flew to to LA and the next thing you know, you were on the Tonight Show.

But I mean, did you have rehearsal time with them?

Were you playing everything by ear?

Did you know all the songs?

- Leon did not like to rehearse and that was the key.

He did not want to, we did rehearse one day for a show and then when the show started, nothing was the same.

Leon wanted to do everything- - Spontaneous.

- Spontaneously, because he realized the excitement was there.

The excitement was started by him doing what he needed to do and he hired people that were capable of listening to what he was doing in that moment and reacting to that one moment and accompanying him and occasionally commenting upon what he did in that moment.

It was the most amazing musical education I have ever received.

- I mean, I think of him principally as a vocalist and guitarist.

- And guitarist.

Oh my God, was he an incredible guitarist.

And he's even better than you think he is, 'cause we would be sitting, this was years later when I got back with him and he'd be sitting there in a dressing room.

"Oh, this is how Reverend Gary Davis would do this."

And he'd play, it was like, oh my God, he sounded like Reverend Gary Davis.

"This is how Mississippi John Hurt would do it."

And he'd play the same thing like Mississippi John Hurt.

"This is how Charlie Patton would do," and he would do it.

He studied all of those great Mississippi Delta and Piedmont Blues guitarists and knew what they were doing and then would incorporate it into what he did at that moment to accompany himself.

- Cool.

You say after the eight weeks, what happens?

- I come back home, I'm a little depressed.

But then I said, that's it.

I'm gonna audition for these bands in New Orleans.

I just gotten married.

First ex-wife, my favorite ex-wife and we went down to New Orleans and did an audition and found a place to live and that was it.

Moved to New Orleans, lived in the Garden District, was playing with Jacques Gauthe and his Creole Rice jazz band and there's lots of videos with me and Jacques Gauthe on YouTube now, too.

- Jacques Ote?

- Jacques Gauthe.

- Gauthe.

- Gauthe.

- G-A-U-T-H-E with that little weird French thing over the top.

- Accent the uh.

- Watch your language, this is a family show, Rick.

(Rick laughing) So we were playing at the Hotel Meridian six nights a week.

- Wow.

- And my dream had come true.

And then I met other musicians and started playing in other clubs and then I got to play with Orange Kellin from the New Orleans Ragtime Orchestra.

I got to meet all my heroes and play with my heroes.

Not only play with them, not one time.

Work with them, become a colleague with those people that I had idolized.

- Was your dad still alive at that point?

- He was still alive.

- Did you say, "Remember that record you bought me?

I'm playing with those guys now."

- I probably did.

- And how long do you stay in New Orleans?

- I was there for five years.

I made a mistake to leave New Orleans.

That was ex-wife number two.

- So you moved back to Pittsburgh?

- No, I moved to Annapolis.

I was living in Annapolis and had a beautiful home right on the Chesapeake Bay.

I could walk out my door, walk a hundred feet to the right with my dalmatian, who I named Bicks Biter Bark.

(Rick chuckles) And we would cavort in the Chesapeake Bay and Leon Redbone, again, Leon Redbone found out I was living on the East Coast and he contacted me and said, "We're going out on tour again.

Can you come meet me?"

And this is when I drove up to New Hope where he was living and stayed with him.

Drove up to Chan's in Rhode Island and did the first show with him in the second part of my career and there was something really profound.

Can I share this with you?

'Cause I think this is the one.

So we're driving up there, it's just he and I in this show.

There is a Chinese restaurant in Woonsocket Rhode Island called Chan's and it's not a Chinese restaurant, it's like a nightclub.

It's a big opulent nightclub that has lots of people playing there all the time.

- C-H-A-N-S?

- Yes.

As we're driving up there and he's driving and I want to ask him a question and I said, "Leon, there's a question I've wanted to ask you for years."

And you could just see him, "Oh, yeah."

And I said, "No, no, not that.

You had played a recording of Blind Boone piano rolls on that first tour I did with you."

And you just see him relax, totally relaxed.

"Were those really Blind Boone piano rolls?"

"Oh, yeah, Blind Boone made a series of recordings, a bunch of piano rolls, they're quite wonderful," blah blah blah and we'd just talk about that.

That was my serious question for him.

I could care less about what his real name was, what his real identity was.

That was his mystique was who the hell was this guy?

Where did this guy come from?

That's exactly what I thought.

Who is this person?

And I didn't ask him that, even though I knew.

(Rick chuckles) - You already knew that in the advance.

- We all knew this stuff.

We did the show, it was great.

- Just you and him?

- Just me and him.

We did a lot of tours that was just me and him.

And I learned a lot about music by just doing those things with him.

- I've never heard of Blind Boone, so I don't know, is that someone?

- Blind Boone was a blind piano virtuoso from the 1890s who was an absolute genius.

He's from Missouri.

Was another African-American and was a huge concert artist.

Would play classical music and had all of these amazing pieces that he could play and it's proto ragtime.

We hear a lot of the roots of ragtime and jazz music in the things that he was doing around the turn of the 1890s.

- And the way you recorded then was to make a piano roll?

- He made a piano roll, which is probably the best way to make a recording.

Pianos produced too many overtones.

It was very difficult to record a piano with the technology that was available at that time.

And piano rolls were the ways of doing it.

- 'Cause I think we have Gershwin piano rolls.

- Of course we have Gershwin piano rolls.

We have Scott Joplin piano rules and all these.

Gershwin was able to record.

Gershwin is late enough that he's able to make physical records, I have most of them.

I've got the first recording of Rhapsody and Blue.

It's all up there in Spring Hill, but that's all part of the high club of Pittsburgh.

We'll talk about that later.

- Yes.

- Blind Boone was this great blind pianist who would tour around the world and people were just enamored by him.

There's photographs of him sitting at a railway station, surrounded by hundreds of people, because they were so just enamored of what he could do.

There was another blind pianist at the time, his name was Blind Tom, who was very much a special needs person who had been trained to play and he had this amazing ability, as most autistic people do, to hear something and be able to play it back.

And they were like battles of music between these two blind black piano players that thousands of people would come to hear.

It was amazing stuff.

So I asked him, "Were those really Blind Boone piano rolls?"

And he relaxes and at that point, we're driving back to New Hope.

I'm getting chills right now, even remembering this.

I knew something was happening.

"Roberts, what do you think of this?"

It was a cassette in the van.

And he puts in this cassette.

"What do you think of this?"

And it's John McCormack, the great Irish tenor.

- Irish tenor, yeah.

- And it turns out, it's his very last recording session, singing, and this really connects with us here, "I dream of Jeanie with the light brown hair."

- Stephen Foster.

- Stephen Foster.

And I listened to it and I'm embarrassed when I hear it.

And I start thinking, "He's playing this for me," even though I'm not the person that I am right now who's aware of things, I was aware of some things at that point.

He's playing this for me because it's important to him and there is something in this that I need to be aware of.

And why am I embarrassed by this?

Why am I embarrassed by this?

- You mean at the moment in the car?

- At that moment, I was embarrassed by what I was hearing and it ended and he said, "What do you think?"

I said, "May I hear it again, please?"

And he played it again.

He actually had a cassette that had I dream of Jeanie sung by John McCormack over and over again for 90 minutes.

That's what it was.

So we listened to it again.

And as I listened to it, I realized, why I was feeling embarrassed was it is the most pure utterance of emotion.

I felt like I was gonna cry.

I feel like I'm gonna cry right now just remembering this moment.

When I play this record for people whose hearts are open, who do not have the facade of what they think they are supposed to be as a grownup, I think you would have this, 'cause I sense this about you, they weep because it is so emotionally pure.

And I think that was his test to see if I was gonna be with him for the next few years.

- And you passed?

- Of course I did, because I was so moved by it all.

I sought out that record, I finally own that 78 right now, which is the closest thing for you to actually be with him in that room.

Those 78s are the closest thing.

There's one step, there's only one step between you and that performer.

There's no editing, there's no going to digital, there's no going to a tape.

The needle goes into the groove and that person sings or plays and that moment is captured within those grooves.

- There's no multi-tracking, it's just pure.

- It's like an insect trapped in amber.

- And what's playing with John McCormick?

- Just a piano.

- Just a piano.

And the pianist is playing the exact thing that Stephen Foster wrote.

And it's the most moving thing you've ever heard in your life.

So that was the second moment that I got back in with him.

To go back to the car bomb thing now, to bring it all back.

After the bomb went off in the Allegheny Mountain Tunnel, yes, it was tied in with the odometer.

- Ooh.

- Yes.

I thought I was going to die at that moment.

(laughs) I'm driving, I hear a sound.

I think it's my tire.

I think it's the transmission.

I think it's the car next to me.

And I get into the tunnel and the odometer switches to zero, zero, boom.

Boom.

- An explosion.

- It was an explosion.

And I looked in the rear view mirror.

(chuckles) All right, I'm going into this now.

I said it was a different time.

And I looked in the rear view mirror to see how close the truck was behind me and I couldn't see the truck, 'cause all I could see was orange and I realized, "Oh my God, I'm on fire."

- The car's on fire.

- And I'm in a tunnel, this is how I die.

(chuckles) - But you didn't.

- I didn't, so wait, let me go through the whole thing since we got into this, this is a great story.

And I think, "Oh my God, this is how I'm gonna die."

And so after I didn't die, I call Redbone and his entire family gets on the phone.

His two daughters are on two different phones listening.

His wife is on another phone, he's on one phone.

His cleaning lady is on another phone.

They're all listening to the story as I tell them this and when I say the car blew up, he said, "You know, you can buy those kits at Walmart."

(laughs) - To make a car bomb?

(Tom laughs) - You can't, but it was him being Leon.

And then I go through the story and I said, "I see the end of the tunnel.

I think I'm not gonna die.

I'm not gonna burn up.

I have a chance."

- There's light.

- There's light.

There's the literal light at the end of the tunnel.

And I step on the brakes, no brakes.

And I go to turn the steering wheel, no steering wheel.

At this point, Leon says, "Oh, she spared no expense.

She got the deluxe kit, well done, name who shall not be mentioned."

(chuckles) - But you immediately thought you knew who had caused this to happen?

- Oh, of course I did.

But this is lawsuits that would happen.

So we're not gonna talk about this.

But what's in the car while, and the reason why I was heading this way was, one of the people that, remember when I was trying to connect Pittsburgh to the things that I loved, but I couldn't find anyone?

The closest I could find was a guy named Lucky Roberts.

And Lucky Roberts was from Philadelphia and I figured this is the closest I can do.

Let's back up a little bit.

We're with Leon, we're traveling through the mountains of Colorado and we're trying to entertain each other.

It's me, Dan Levinson, the clarinetist and Redbone and we're coming up with all these hysterical little things like, "Sting sings Bing," like contemporary people doing old time music.

- I'd listen to that.

- It'd be great, I think.

Winton plays Wilton, Winton Marcellus plays the music of Wilton Crawley.

"Clarinetist and contortionist, come over, we'll listen to him."

It was another guy that Leon was obsessed with.

Leon would end shows by saying, "This is a number by Wilton Crowley, clarinetist and contortionist," Big Time Woman.

You've probably heard him sing that on SNL and all those other things.

He said, "If any of Wilton's descendants happen to be in the audience this evening, come see me immediately preceding the show."

Winton plays Wilton.

And then Redbone chimes in, "Roberts plays Roberts."

And I think, "Marcus Roberts plays Lucky Roberts."

"No."

- "Tom Roberts plays Lucky Roberts."

- "Tom Roberts plays Lucky Roberts," and I said, "That's not funny and that's kind of mean."

"It's not meant to be funny.

It's not meant to be mean.

It's your new project."

I said, "It's impossible."

"Exactly, do it."

So Lucky Roberts was this piano player from Philadelphia.

Very mysterious, made a few recordings, never knew why he didn't make so many recordings.

Eventually, I would find out.

And his stuff was impossible.

He had giant hands and he would play things that were so insanely impossible that no one could do it.

It also turned out he was the guy that taught George Gershwin, because when George Gershwin was 14 years old, he was selling sheet music at Remix, just like demonstrating music and at that moment, the two major lights in black theater, Bert Williams, who was the star of the Ziegfeld Follies, we need to remember Bert Williams was a star of the Ziegfeld Follies and Will Vodery, who was Flo Ziegfeld's music director, both African-Americans in a major position, saw him at Remix and just said, "You have great potential.

You need to go study with Lucky Roberts."

And so they would bring George Gershwin up to Lucky Roberts in Harlem.

And Lucky taught him how to play.

And so when you listen to the piano rolls of George Gershwin, when you listen to the recordings of George Gershwin, as the eminent historian and writer Joan Peyser said, I got to know Joan Peyser, too.

Gershwin live was mesmerizing.

A tall, white, Lucky Roberts.

Amazingly impossible stuff.

So I spent the next three years after that moment with a little Marantz tape deck that could slow things down an octave, I should have brought these to show you, and I wrote out by hand everything that Lucky Roberts played.

- Lucky Roberts, at this point, is passed away.

- He died in 1968.

- You never met him?

- I never met him.

- You're uncle Lucky?

- There's more to it, you'll see.

(Rick chuckles) This gets great, this is gonna be a three-part thing.

I spent three years, I transcribed all of this Lucky Roberts music and I was looking for a studio to record it in.

I don't have the CD anymore.

I just found it on eBay last night and I bought it again.

I heard these CDs that Johnny Costa recorded and he recorded them in the north side on a piano in a studio in the North Side and I loved the sound of that piano and so when I finished this project, I called the producer and I said, "I wanna record it at this studio."

And so I was able to record at, I think, it was called Audio Mason at that time, right on North Avenue.

I recorded these things.

And I started walking around the north side while this recording session was taking place.

During the break, I said, "Oh my God, this is so beautiful."

I had no idea the north side is so beautiful.

Growing up in the east end, you think it's going to be awful.

And I walk around, I said, "Oh my God, this is so beautiful."

Do all the recordings here, go back to Annapolis where some problems are still happening.

And I'm coming back to Pittsburgh to finish the edits on that album when the car bomb goes off.

- And the recordings are in the back?

- And all of the handwritten manuscripts are sitting in the back of the car and the seat is down and they're between the seats and the car is in flames.

(chuckles) And I jump, the bomb kept going off.

- You've gotten out, there's no brakes?

- I knew how to stop the car, because a little voice just said, "Emergency brake."

And I pulled the emergency brake and the car went off to the side.

- In the tunnel?

Outside the tunnel?

- Outside the tunnel.

I'm not stupid enough to stop the car in the tunnel.

I knew there was a car behind, big truck behind me that would've definitely killed me for sure.

Stopped, pulled off to the side.

You can still look on the side of the Allegheny Mountain tunnels.

There is a burned patch from where the car burned to the ground.

Everything melted.

I realize, I'm jumping, I'm getting- - But your transcriptions, they're gone, too?

- No, they're sitting in the back of the car.

This is the great part.

And they're underneath the seat.

The seat is down and they're underneath there and I realize, "Oh my God, all of these transcriptions are in the back of the car."

And I jump into the car and there's flames pouring in through the air conditioning vents.

Black smoke, just awful, toxic, horrible thing and I get in there and I can't get them.

And then I move back and I pull the seat back and I grab the transcriptions as all the flames pour into the cab of the car.

And I grab them and I jump out of the car and, (imitates explosion) the whole thing goes up in flame.

(deep breathes) I saved them.

- Wow.

And you still have them?

- I still have them.

But that stuff is what led to the next level of my career.

- Excellent.

We're gonna take a break there, because how do we top that?

- I know.

How do you top that?

There's a lot you can top it with.

- All right.

A quick break and we'll come back for more with Tom Roberts.

- Yes.

- [Voiceover] This Gumbands podcast is made possible by the Buhl Foundation, serving Southwestern Pennsylvania since 1927 and by listeners like you, thank you.