The Elder Citizens Recreation Association is remembering the romance.
Elders have the range to remember more than most, and they also have the experience to create artistic renditions of those memories. The younger generation has their music videos, but the grandmas and grandpas at ECRA are going to act it all out for real at a special show next week.
"We're calling it Remember The Romance. It's the music of the '40s, '50s, '60s, even some newer than that, and we will have actors, costumes, and special effects to make the songs into quite the big production," said Odelia Kranz, one of the association's main organizers of the performance. "We have Doug Jack making the music. He's great on the piano. He's been playing around Prince George for years, he is a popular musician, and he really knows his music."
Jack was looking ahead when he decided to take a look back, down musical memory lane.
"When the whole club scene nose-dived in Prince George, I'd been playing since 1963 and at times made a good living at it," Jack said. "A lot of my friends just packed it in when the work dried up. I wanted to keep going. Live music was what I loved to do. But I knew I had to do it differently."
Jack was a student of the pop song, as well as his instrument. He loved history, he loved research. That's what came to mind as he contemplated a shift in direction to keep his act alive. He knew, for instance, that the famed songwriter Kris Kristofferson was a military chopper pilot in the Vietnam War, got a job flying for the offshore oil rigs in the Gulf of Mexico after the war, and coincidentally had a flight path right over Johnny Cash's house. One day, in a burst of courage, he set his helicopter down in Cash's yard and knocked on the door. The two became legendary friends. Cash recorded Kristofferson's tune Sunday Morning Coming Down to mass appeal, and they made up half of country-folk supergroup The Highwaymen alongside buddies Willy Nelson and Waylon Jennings.
Kristofferson's roommate was also a musician back in his early days in show-business. He wrote a song for her to record but she didn't think it fit her repertoire so she passed it up. He got it into the hands of up-and-coming country singer Sammi Smith instead and she took it to No. 1. It was a career-maker for her. The song was Help Me Make It Through The Night and the artist who passed was his good friend Loretta Lynn.
"I just love those facts and stories," said Jack. "These songs all have life in them. They came out of the hearts of real people who struggled to compose them with skill and purpose and intent. I talk about the songs, I explain who wrote them, why, what was going on in their lives and in the world at the time, so there is music and there is monologue."
Jack also has side-stage screens to play video clips he has obtained to punctuate what he and the songs are conveying.
We have never had a show that goes to this extent, with all the production," said Kranz.
"This is by far my biggest event," Jack said in agreement. "I did a concert at ECRA awhile back and the response was so good I just had to come back for another, but then Odelia and the drama group got involved and it just became something different altogether. I can't wait to see how it all goes."
The show will be done on May 8, then reprised on May 9. Both events begin at 8 p.m. Tickets are $20 available at ECRA (1692 10th Avenue).
