Version 2 2024-06
Bernie
I woke up this morning. I became distraught somehow, maybe it was wifi withdrawl but I don’t think so, and it occurred to me that I should write about Uncle Bernie, while I could, while there are those younger than me that also remember him.
Bernard Katz, Uncle Bernie, could not be contained by these few names. He had pseudonyms. Likely there were many more than I can remember, but among them are Fatz Katz, used for his jazz, boogie woogie persona and music and El Gatos (a name I have also taken up, although mine is spelled L. Gatos), and Thumbs, for his imaginary second left thumb.
Uncle Bernie always valued my presence. It did not matter where or when, how busy he was, how many adults were near. At the very least I got a smile. Often when my parents failed to introduce me at his house to other guests, he took the time. While I miss others in my family who I have lost, I think that the space he left is the biggest and most profound.
I know too little of him, but it all comes rushing forth. Not a great editior I know that I must put these thoughts down in some sort of order or the editing will not take place. There is so much to say, likely I could write for days and work on it for month. I am going to leave out all the other great relatives I was lucky enough to grow up around. This includes my Aunt Grace who said I chased tennis balls like a gazelle, and my Aunt Charolette who seemed to understand who I was and always had a smile for me.
Bernard was the youngest of three children. The oldest was Bill, William. William was also the tallest. Bill was a biology teacher in the city of Detroit. But before that he was the eldest child of two immigrants. By the time he was in his teens his mother had become bedridden, I do not know the extent of this. As a child I was told that Bill raised my father (Joe) and Bernie. Most of what I have been told about Bernie’s life came from my parents.
There are always more resources for the eldest. You can be bitter about if you want, but it is the way of the world. The youngest tends to get the benefits of parental experience with children. That too, is the way of the world. Bill got piano lessons. He also became a cello player, something he carried into adulthood. I only remember hearing him play once. I remember it sounding good. I also remember him playing piano. But I have no memories of its sound. He could not possibly have been as fun to listen to as Bernie.
Bill had dry humor. Often when he was funny it was a play on words. He had fun with them. I remember in my early teens hours after he sad something finally getting the joke. I think he worked a lot of puns and other word humor into what he said and that for me this was always baffling. Unlike my brothers, and most the rest of the family I am not particularly gifted in English. I have to work at it in order to be able to write. People that pun all the time, sarcasm, other play with language easily gets by me. This is true at least to the standards of my family. His brother Bernie had what I call “wet humor”. Nothing was hidden. It could be crude but it was always right there. Between them in age, height and humor was my father.
Bill walked into the kitchen as a teen. Bernie, five years old or so was playing on the piano. Bill’s father ( my grandfather) said, “Bill, I thought that was you. Who is playing the piano?” Bill answered, “Bernie.” Bill’s father said, “Well we can’t afford lessons for him too. ” Already a prodigy, Bernie’s playing had been mistaken for Bill’s.
The next lesson, or at least at some subsequent lesson Bill took Bernie down the street to the piano teacher to show him off before his lesson. The teacher said, “He needs piano lessons.” Bill said, “We can’t afford them. ” The piano teacher said, “He’s free”. She stayed his teacher at least until he was 18.
Sometime around the time Bernie was 13 a friend of his father’s took him to a bar where there was a piano. Bernie played and earned tips. He went back frequently. His father was at first jealous that Bernie was earning as much money as he was. After a while he figured out that the family income had doubled. This was more important than his jealousy.
By his late teens Bernie had developed a problem with alcohol. He told me that it was affecting his playing. He gave it up. He kept playing in bars. I remember seeing him at “Scotch and Sirloin” a place near our house. Over his career he had several gigs where operatic singers would come and sing while he played. I did not like opera as child, but still liked to go and watch him play. Given a chance I always requested Kitten on the Keys by Zez Confrey. He seemed to enjoy playing it for me. He liked Zez Confrey. Zez’s music calling it “mad”.
When Bernie came over to our house he frequently brought food. He introduced us to “chocolate flavor licorice” also green licorice. He came over once with strings of dried Okra, dried on threads.He bought a can of French Truffles (the mushroom). My memory is that they tasted like dirt. He was not impressed either. My memories of this visit are very distinct. I am not sure that they are real. Some parts of the memory cannot be. He frequently came with Ice Cream. Often it was Neopolitan Flavor which had three stripes in the box, chocolate, strawberry and vanilla. On rare occasions it was Spumoni another layered ice cream but with candied fruit and pistacios. I expect it was expensive. He knew we kids liked it. He bought my brothers a subscription to “Mad Magazine”. I expect that I was not named because it had bits of adult humor disguised in it and I was the youngest. That did not keep me from reading it. That it was not also a present to me was not comfortable. But it was Bernie. With Bernie I knew. I was not deeply hurt by this.
Bernie would hold large parties for his friends. There is a video on youtube that has a sequence at its end from one of his parties. It features the legendary singing Allesandra Marc, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BmH_-fLX49E&list=PLetZ5oCPmuekqO3hhElbguorQmS9Qeh-n&index=3 . He would cook for days for some of these parties. Once I was taught to make espresso on his machine and given the job of doing it. Usually children were not invited to these parties. I don’t remember much. He cooked gourmet food for the parties. Once it was steak tartar. We were amazed. He made us souffle for lunch one. He also taught me to make Turkish Coffee. We only ate dinner at his house a few times. I remember his mad dining room chairs being uncomfortable. But you know, “Who cares?’. It was at Bernies house. His friends were boisterous, smart, fun, interesting people.
At Bernie’s funeral, Dorothy Paul, who was a few years older than me said, “Bernie was everyone’s uncle”. I have no doubt this was true. He was a fabulous uncle. There was enough uncle in him to share widely.
I have no idea how or when which of his abilities developed but Bernie devoured music and internalized its sounds, patterns and emotions. There is a music show I sometimes listen to where you are supposed to determine the what composer’s style a piece is written in, and what the original piece of music it is based on. With Bernie, this sort of thing would happen on the fly. You could ask him to play a cartoon’s theme music in various styles, the one I remember doing this with was The Jetson’s theme song. “Bernie, how would The Jetson’s theme sound through the ages?”. He might start in some sort of chant style, working through composers like William Byrd, Pergolesi, Batch Beethoven, Brahms, boogie woogie and ending in Rock and Roll. He had no respect for Rock and Roll.
There were few things in life as exciting as visit from Bernie. Its so few that I can think of nothing like him visiting. One of our parents would say, “Bernie is coming over”. If it was soon we would get into the front hall closet, grab my dad’s felt hats and put them on. We? Ralph, David z’l Louis, the proceeding generation of three boys. We would run around like maniacs when he came with the oversized hats pulled down as far as they could be and still have our eyes poking out. He had a peculiar knock. Three loud flat hand thunks, about a second and a half apart. We would open the door. His eyes would be closed and his hands out. He would enter the house as Frankenstein. I loved it. Mad!
In about 1962 Bernie bought a Zuckerman Harpsichord Kit. Bernie, unlike most other members of my family, he was not “handy”. He got frustrated with it and gave it to my father to build. By the time “The Adams Family”, a single page New Yorker Comic, became a TV show in 1974, we had a Zuckerman harpsichord in the living room. I liked hearing him invent and play variations on The Adam’s Family theme music, normally played on the harsichord, but I prefered his boogie woogie to anything else.
One of Bernies skills was sight reading. You could, as far as I know, put any piece of music in front of him and he could read it. When I was playing often in my teens I asked him how he did it. He essentially said “eye hand coordination” but then started telling me tricks using music theory terms I was unfamiliar with on how to predict what was going to happen. But his eyes were always several measures ahead, as was his ear. I was his page turner once. I was young, I could not follow the fast music. He could talk to me while he read music. “Louis, the page turn was 10 seconds ago, turn two pages. ” This was while he was improvising or playing from memory from his read through earlier in the day. Best I could tell he would read, hear in his head and his hands would play what he heard. His memory for music was fantastic.
My theory is that he had a severe case of ADHD. People that are firm in thought of personal responsibility and consequence tend not to like a diagnosis of ADHD. I am not a psychologist, or psychiatrist. I have been told that I am a psychoceramist, a crackpot, but that is a different story. But what happens with ADHD is that many things with low short term motivation fail to stay in your thoughts. Say you have to clean up after dinner. But what comes into your head is Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 3 , or some other piano work. The signal saying “wash the dishes” then fails to stay active. The nuerotransmitters fail to carry it to the next neuron. It is gone. If the original motivation was stronger, more short term, maybe more fun, or the costs of not doing it bigger, maybe the strength of this signal in your brain would have had more power and it would have stayed up there, active. Instead it was lost in the sauce, gone.
On the other side of this, tasks with high motivation, intrinsic or extrinsic motivation, but strong, stay active. If you have ADHD and you are involved in a task, thinking about art, or say, Einstein thinking about relativity, you can do so with less distraction. Someone might start talking to you, and until they rattle your shoulder or shout, you don’t hear them. ADHD can in some cases and at sometimes, be thought of as hyper concentration disorder. It is a tool of many highly creative and productive individuals. It helps allow you to be completely focused on the task at hand. It keeps distractions from even being perceived.
Performers have to be able to be “in the moment” This is a space that keeps the distractions that are handled by executive function. You cannot perform worried about taxes or any other long term concern. You have to be in the moment and stay there. It is something not often talked about in music, at least not in my experience, but is in theater. In the visual arts, we don’t even grunt about it much. But we should. Theater instruction often brings up how you get ready to get on stage, to let the world go and bring the stage, the place in. Sometimes relaxation exercises are used. It seems actors often talk about their process. What they are doing is letting most of the concious controllable, logical, plodding part of their facilites go and get intuitive. Intuition is a very fast process. Logic is slow., too slow for on stage. It can be used in analysis, in preparation, but onstage things need to flow.
Its not like other fields do not need this state, that actually is called flow. They do. Some fields name it as do computer programmers. While you may need logic to lay out a great scheme for a complex programming task, it is intution that brings the method to it. It may also finish with logic, but middle is the creatiuve part where the code gets written. Intuition, like reading music, playing, runs in the intuitive part of the brain.Things happen too fast for anything else.The reason the task of playing complicated works, say even my bad Ragtime seems so amazing is that things happen faster than we can even dream of our concious brain working. It just does not have that kind of speed.
Visual artists often could use instruction on entering this state. Some stay up late at night. Executive control is dampened by fatigue. Some drink. Alcohol also dampens executive function. Some use other drugs. Better would be to find a routine that gets you into that state. For me, loud music often does, but so do noise cancelling head phones. Fatigue also use to work. In some ways it still does, but many of tasks need all my wits. Staying up late is no longer a good strategy for me.
The ability to keep long term needs, concerns, tasks, without short term motivations in our thoughts is at least part of what psychologists call “executive function”. If you divide what we think into two sorts of things, those that get our concious attention and those that happen “behind the curtain” as Malcolm Gladwell puts it, those we cannot directly delve into, much of what sight reading does, how it uses the brain happens without concious control. Our eye sees the music and our hands on the keys respond. This does not happen without practice. Done over and over again our brain decides when it sees an eighth note at middle C we should depress the key, deciding when and for how long to press and hold it. If we have to say to our self, “Aha! its a middle C, press it now, medium hardness and now hold it, hold it, we cannot even do that much thinking during the eighth note. We are lost. Sight reading has some conscious control, but that control is more like an orchestral conductor, “a little louder , faster, hold”, but even what this internal conductor says happens behind the curtain to. Our conscious control of it is less frequent and more generalized. You want to be a good musician? Practice Practice Practice you must pursue.
According to my father, Bernie would go to the Detroit Public Library and check out piano music, take it home, play through it, and then go get more. He had book cases of music when was a child. He had a “music room”. This was not the room he played in until later in his life. It was where his music was stored. He consumed new music like people breath. I believe that it was twice when I was growing up my parents got phone calls from him. “I am playing with the symphony tonight, there will be tickets waiting for you at 7:15 pm. We would get dressed up and go. Seats would usually be somewhere near the front and center.
What would have happened is that the scheduled pianist with the symphony could not make it. Bernie would get a call in the morning, “So and so’s plane could not take off due to snow. Can you play ‘yadaydadyada’ difficult piano music”. Bernie would respond, ” can you get me the sheet music? I will need my tux laundered, someone to go my Chinese restauarant and pick up my standard order and I will need a ride to the rehearsal at 6pm. “What ever the piece or peices were, he could play it. Where the scheduled pianist may have worked on it for a month or longer, he would have an afternoon. I doubt it was as good, maybe not even ever, but the show had to go on. Being a concert pianist was not where his talent or interest or ADHD layed. However, this talent did allow him to fill in at the last minute in a way very few people on the planet possibly could have.
I had music lessons kitty corner from that library, piano. The teacher was not right for me. To say I was not right for him, or maybe piano would also be accurate. Had he engaged my interest in learning ragtime it might have worked out better. But each week the library was there. When I ended up in Ceramics class in 11th grade, I started checking out books on ceramics from the library. Over the year I read one every few days, and scanned hundreds more. I should have seen what was happening, but I was still thinking “Architect”. When I got to the U of Michigan and transferred to the Art School I had read more books on Ceramics than anyone in my classes. I had a powerhouse of technical information, not really organized or that functional. That organization took longer. I transferred from Engineering school to The School of Art and Design, my second month in college. It was a good decision.
AS a child I loved visiting Bernies house. First, he always had some time for me. He would ask how I was doing, what I was doing. As I got older he would ask about music. He was not critical of my playing. He would ask me to play for him. Even at the time, I felt honored. He had a magnificent piano. It had belonged to the first conductor of The Detroit Symphony. I can still feel the keys, their weight, the action, and still have some sense of its sound.
But that was only part of what a visit was like. His house was, in his words, “Mad” as in wild and crazy. He lived in an old Duplex. It was in downtown Detroit near Bell Isle on East Grand Boulevard. All of the trim was hardwood as were the floors in his house. It had a split staircase with the stairs to the second floor splitting towards the front entrance to the house and into his kitchten. One wall had a large single piece sink with drainboards, maybe 7 or 8 feet long. He had an old gas stove. It was old enough at the time to look exotic to me. He had an espresso machine with a long hardwood handle and lots of chrome, with red enamel. I think that the handle was ebony. His kitchen always smell of exotic spices. There was no sign that said, “don’t leave your children here. We will feed them espresso and cookies.” Leave your children or not, they would get coffee and cookies. It might be Turkish coffee.
He had a wondrous beaded lamp that hung over his reading chair opposite the piano. It was cool. Like much of the rest of his house it could have been featured in “The Adams Family”. The scenes in the living room of The Adams Family could have been shot in Bernies living room. We used to be able to go into the attic. “Be careful up there, the floor is not in good shape. Don’t fall through”. This was not hyperbole. The roof was leaking or for a long time a window was broken. Up there he stored some treasures. I was heartbroken when he sold his old Edison Cylinder record player. I have his all mechanical Victrola. He also had a windup music box with a flat disk metal “record” and the funkiest wind up piano anyone has ever heard. Occasionally he had pump organs. These often ended up at our house where my father would restore them Ralph, my brother, still has the pump organ I first learned to play keyboard on. It was not my first piece, but nearly, I played William Byrde’s The Earl of Salsbury Pavana on it. It took me a month to learn.
In the 1990’s Bernie had a stroke and lost much of the use of his left hand. He could not walk. In rehab they told him that they were going to teach him to walk. He said, I need to learn to play again. They said,”no, we need to teach you to walk”. He told them to “F-off”. They cam back the next day with the same schtick. Bernie was desperate to learn to play again. I am sure he wanted to flip them the bird and say something clever, but instead he said,” I will do anything you want in the morning. In the afternoon we have to work on my piano playing”. They had reached agreement. Stories if you tell them often enough become replete with imagery. Memories you could not have witnessed develop images, sometimes with viewpoints that are too high, above the ceiling, in walls, and often in places you have never been. So take this with a grain of salt, except that the piano did happen, and a friend who is a tuner, is a true friend and great guy. He also brews a mean cup of coffee.
So, Bernie is doing everything they want in the morning. In the afternoon he has hand therapy. Slowly he is learning to walk, but he needs a real keyboard. To the therapist he says, “the recorded music to walk to is fine, but wouldn’t it be nice to do this to live music. We could use a piano player. The therapist humors him, thinking maybe, “the old man is delusional” and says, “Where would we put it?” . Bernie, “over there in the corner”. Therapist, “fine”. Bernie calls his therapist, ” Hey, I need a piano delivered to my rehab place so I can learn to play again.” Tuner, “Where do I bring it?” Bernie, “I’ll meet your at the loading dock and open the door. Hence, live music for therapy.
ADHD untreated and even if only partly dealt with with drugs and therapy is debilitating. Bernie could not take care of cars. Once after a wreck he could not get the hood open so he stopped checking the oil. I am sure he intended to get the hood fixed but it kept slipping his mind. The engine got destroyed. It was his last car. When Bernie was in the last few weeks of his life I was told to visit. I remember crying on the plane to Detroit. He was in a nursing home near my parents place. It was a place with loads of patients with dementia. He had a variety of problems. He had become diabetic, likely because he ignored advice. He had a hernia that could not be operated on because of diabetes. But what got him was late stage breast cancer. Likely he ignored the signs. But I do not know this, it just fits what I do know.
The last time I saw Bernie I visited him in the nursing home. I walked over from my parent’s house. He was perfectly there with his full self. He told a few funny stories. He said to me, “Louis, I am totally f—ed. I had passed a crappy piano in the dining hall on my way in. I asked if he wanted to go play it. I think he said “yes” only for me. I hope not. But afterwards I thought of him playing that crappy piano very said. What was not sad was that as he played the people in the wheel chairs who had been staring into space, seeming dead to the world, livened up, looked over and watched him and moved around some. One of the nurses, probably a gem of a human looked over at me and smiled. Bernie could not see any of this. After ten minutes he was tired, or sick of the piano. I really enjoyed hearing him play, but it was nothing like hearing him on a real instrument.
Version 1 (march 2021)
Uncle Bernie was everyone’s uncle. This was told to me by the child of one of his friends at his funeral service. It rang true. My friends called him “Uncle Bernie” my parents, aunts and other uncles called him that, at least in our presence. It would not surprise me if they called him Uncle Bernie in his favorite restaurants.
Bernie was a pianist, but to call him that seems thin, it does not contain him. His house was “mad” a favorite word of his to describe things that are “over the top”. He had beaded lamp that could have been used to upscale the set for “The Adams Family”. He lived in a duplex across Jefferson from Bell Isle in Downtown Detroit for most of his adult life. The duplex was all hardwood trim and floors, the lighting insufficient. It was full of antiques. It had the smell of old hardwood, antiques, must, and cooking. There was an aroma of coffee that hung around and I believe I can still imagine the smell of his sink and dishwasher.
When I was young my brothers and I would go into the attic and play a cylidrical record player. It was scratchy and a lot of fun. He also had a Victrola. It was cool, but not like the Edison record player. For a while we were told to be careful in the attic.The floor was insecure. This was from roof leaks. Rent was inexpensive. There was not money for repairs unless he paid for them. At some point when my parents were helping to care for him my mother insisted on increasing the rent so that the owner would participate in upkeep.
He had a a canopy bed with curtains. It was short. It was a copy of a much older bed. It looked like it was from the 1500’s. His house was full of paintings and prints, tableware, pottery, and Mason Hamlin grand that was built special of Ossip Gabrolovich. It was a glorious piano. It had a bass that to my ear sounded both rich and brilliant. It was a dream to play. The action was smooth, and not has hard as Yamahas or even Steinways. My fingers could sail a bit more. It was the first piano that seemed to draw expression from my fingers without effort.
Bernie was generous. It was not just things or money. He wanted to hear me play each time I came over. He played for me and let me sing. But he also showed me how to do things when I was young. He had me make espresso at one of his parties and introduced me to Turkish Coffee.
There was nothing like Uncle Bernie coming to visit, nothing. He would pound on the door, Boom Boom Boom. The three of us Katz Boys would put on our father’s felt hats and run around like crazy as we fought over who would open the door! Bernie would be standing with his arms stretched out and wiggling slowly like Frankenstein and then shuffle in. He almost always had something special. These are the gifts that I remember. But you have to think back, this was in the 1960’s exotic food, was.
He came with Okra dried on thread. A few times he came with green or brown licorice. It was decades before I saw licorice in these colors again. He came for dinner and had a can of truffles (mushrooms), I was maybe 8 years old. I hated mushrooms but I tried these. I remember thinking, “These taste like dirt.” We probably ate the truffles with plastic silverware and on paper plates as they are hunted by pigs. In 2024 I had some truffle oil unknowingly. The food had an unusual taste, I thought it tasted of dirt. Then I found out,,, truffle oil.
He gave my mother a pound of paprika. My brothers once got a five year subscription to Mad Magazine. Spumoni Ice Cream was a frequent treat. Occasionally we ate at his house. Once he made us pizza. I do not remember what was on it, but it was unusual. For all I know it could have been a frog leg pizza. He often made souffles. Our house was full of paintings and antiques, mostly because of Bernie.
Bernie served us Steak Tartar. I wish I remembered more. He had great spices. He ate at fun restuarants. The owners knew him. He shopped at the large Eastern Market. His coffee was luscious. It was the first coffee I enjoyed drinking.
Bernie’s big brother Bill had piano lessons Bernie was about 5 or 6 years old. Bill was in the kitchen talking with his father. “Bill, I thought that was you playing the piano. Who is it?” “Oh, that’s Bernie, he copies me.”. “You know Bill we cannot afford more piano lessons.”
Bill took Bernie down to his piano teacher to show him off. The piano teacher asked if he had had any lessons. Bill said “no”, we can’t afford them. The teacher said, “he is for free”.
When Bernie was 12 a friend of his father’s took Bernie to a bar to play. Bernie came home with more in tips than his father made in a day. The first day, dad, whose name I have, Louis, was mad. After a week he got his head screwed on straight and realized that there was now more money.
About the time Bernie was 22 he recognized that he had a problem with alcohol and stopped drinking. It was affecting his ability to play.
Some people read music. Bernie devored it. He developed an incredible memory, and could fake anything, in any key. He could count seven against nine or any other odd combination of rythms with two hands. A couple of times when I was growing up we got to go the Detroit Symphony and hear him play. The phone calls informing us went like this. I am playing with the symphony tonight at 7:30. Be there by seven and ask for my tickets at the box office.
At his end it would go like this. The phone would ring. “Bernie, the pianist got stuck in a snow storm, can you play XXXXXXXXXXX?. Bernie would say “yes”. Then he would say, “someone has to get my tux to the cleaners”, I need the music delivered, and dinner picked up at the Chinese Restauarant. It was near his house and had booths with walls and I think doors. I at there a few times when I was young.
My parents were going on an international trip. They were working on a will in case something happened to them. The got the Katz brothers together and asked us, “If something happened to us which aunt or uncle would you like to live with. We had three choices. In unison we said, “UNCLE BERNIE”.
I tried out for Fiddler on the Roof. Bernie was the music director. I did not get selected. But during the tryouts he would accompany people. One person kept switching keys. After the second time Bernie would play ahead of the key switch modulating so that it sounded intentional.
Sometime, and I am not certain of the year, Bernie had a stroke and lost most of the function in his left hand. They told him that they would give him physical therapy. He was elated.
They came to take him and told him that they were going to teach him to walk. He said, I need to learn to use my hand. They said you have to learn to walk first. He told them to “xxxx off”.
They came back the next day and said that they would take him to learn to walk. He was prepared. He said, “I will do anything you want all morning long, anything”. In the afternoon you teach me to use my hand. ” They agreed.
After a few days of this he said, “You know, this is really boring around here, you need some music, What about a piano? They thought he was joking and said, where would we put a piano. He said “over there” and pointed. To get him off their case they said, “ok”.
Bernie could be a pain. But Bernie has friends. They are still his friends even though he is no longer with us. He called one of them up, met them at the back door in his wheel chair and suddenly, Physical Therapy had live music.
I was told to come into town. Bernie was dying. I talked with him for a while in a nursing home. It was a dismal place. I said, “Hey Bernie, do you want to play the piano in the cafeteria? ” He said , “yes”. It was a piece of junk. I move the bench and rolled up his wheel chair. There were about five people in the cafeteria just sitting in chairs staring off into space. He started to play. They started to act alive. Bernie played for about 15 minutes. I flew home. A few days later I flew back in for the funeral. Its been over 20 years. It is still a beautiful memory. I tear up.
There was no one in the world like Uncle Bernie. The lives of all that knew him are richer because of it. He was a devoted musician, cook, friend, and an incredible uncle.
This video of am extravaganza at his house when Alessandra Mark was posted by one of his devoted friends. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BmH_-fLX49E