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Pat Terry

April 13, 2019 By Pat Terry

Legend Erwin Helfer: and The Blues Go On

What the legendary Chicago piano player IS wired for, obviously, is boogie-woogie, blues and jazz, which he also loves, and often performs at the Hungry Brain and other spots around Chicago (erwinhelfer.com). 

 by Paul Natkin, The Sirens Records

Erwin Helfer says he “loves” classical music, but insists, “I’m not wired for it.” 

A member of Lincoln Park Village, an active senior organization recently renamed The Village Chicago, Helfer lives on Chicago’s north side (or “Erwin Helfer Way”).  He played a much-publicized benefit concert, “Boogie Blues Birthday Bash,” for The Village on his 76th birthday. 

Known for his playful interpretations, Helfer has received raves in places like “Downbeat” magazine and NPR programs “All Things Considered” and “Fresh Air.” 

He taught himself to play, growing up in Chicago. When he was in 7th grade, his family moved to Glencoe. “In high school (New Trier),” he remembers, “I’d go back to the city and seek out the old New Orleans jazz musicians who were left, and the piano players. 

“No,” he says with a smile, “I don’t think there were too many of those in Glencoe!”

He attended Tulane University, majoring in psychology. 

“But I really didn’t do well in school, because I was out all the time in New Orleans hanging out with musicians. I found out I loved music much more than the academic. So I returned to Chicago and enrolled in the American Conservatory. I took two years as a piano major. I was a horrible sight-reader and had to memorize everything, so I switched my major to theory. Then I went to Northeastern Illinois. I played ‘Honeysuckle Rose’ for them and they gave me a tuition waver and I got a masters. 

“I play blues, standards and boogie. The first thing I learned was the blues, which started the whole thing.” Asked to define “boogie-woogie,” he obliges: “For the most part it’s a regular 12-bar blues pattern.  And it has this incessant, repetitive rhythm in a bass line.” 

Helfer has made several CDs for The Sirens Records, with such titles as “St. James Infirmary,” “Careless Love” and “I’m Not Hungry But I Like to Eat Blues.” Songs range from well-known standards like “Ain’t Misbehavin,” “It’s Only a Paper Moon” and “Just A Closer Walk with Thee” to others with titles like “She’s Got a Thing Goin’ On,” “Back at the Chicken Shack” and “Pooch Piddle” (a Helfer original inspired by his onetime pet dog). His personal favorites include “Careless Love,” ”Do You Know What it Means to Miss New Orleans,” “Georgia,” “Four O’clock Blues” and his own “Stop Time Boogie.”

“Jimmy Yancey was one of the biggest influences in my playing. I really liked his slow blues—very sad, deep-from-the-heart kind of blues. His solos were very beautiful and serene, very classic and classy. Another favorite was Otis Spann. Where Jimmy was more of a melodist, Otis had all these funky rhythms and was also a great singer. Jimmy, incidentally, was a groundskeeper at Sox Park. I mean, here was a guy who was a cultural treasure, and he was a groundskeeper!” 

by Hollis Hines, The Village Chicago

Asked what he would be if not a piano player, he answers, “ I was thinking of making a mid-life career change at one time—doing a masters in social work in guidance and counseling. But a student of mine said to me, ‘Erwin, you’re already doing that when you give a lesson.’ And I snapped back into where I was. Teaching and playing are the only things I really know how to do, and I’ve done it all my life. So I’m going to stay right where I am.”

 His pupils range from 7 to 70. “I usually start kids off by playing things by ear, and later I teach them to read. A friend of mine who’s a Suzuki teacher said my approach is very Suzuki-ish, in the sense that you learn to speak a language before you learn to read it.” 

Some of his students have gone on to become professional musicians, even playing with blues legend Buddy Guy. Others have not. As a personal note, our older son, Chris, auditioned for Erwin while a high school student, and was thrilled to be accepted. However, he was not thrilled to sit down and practice, and after a while Erwin gently dropped him—perhaps the best lesson of all. 

— Cliff Terry

Filed Under: Blog, Uncategorized

October 6, 2018 By Pat Terry

Wolf 101

A pack of lessons from the North Woods of Minnesota

ELY, Minn.— On an unusually hot summer morning in northern Minnesota, Shadow, Malik, Maya and Grizzer are lazily roaming around their outdoor quarters. The foursome with the distinctive names are wolves—two grayish/brown Great Plains wolves and two white arctic wolves—and they are the star inhabitants of the International Wolf Center.

This attractive town, hard by the Canadian border, is best known as the jumping off place for trips to the Boundary Waters Canoe area, but in recent years it also has become known as the home of this handsome center, which proclaims itself as the world’s premier wolf interpretive facility. It was founded on the belief that co-existence with the controversial predators is possible when people are presented facts about the wolves. Its mission is to support the survival of the wolf around the world by teaching about wolves, their relationship to where they live and the role of humans in their future.

The center attracts about 50,000 visitors annually, and on this particular day, license plates in the parking lot include those from Texas, Florida and Illinois. International Wolf Center membership totals over 8,500 persons in 50 states and 38 countries. The current pack on exhibit—all born in captivity ….

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Filed Under: reprints

October 6, 2018 By Pat Terry

Vietnam’s Phu Quoc Island, a Hidden Gem

A great R&R; break after building homes in the Mekong Delta

Early in January, just before the start of the Year of the Ox, five Americans and 10 New Zealanders finished the first of two weeks with Habitat for Humanity International, helping build houses for eight families in Vietnam’s Mekong Delta.

After long, hot days of digging muddy foundations, mixing mortar and concrete by hand, tamping dirt floors and schlepping rocks, our Habitat leaders offered a needed break: 2 ½ days on the lovely island of Phu Quoc in the Gulf of Thailand. The island is about 50 minutes from Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon) via Vietnam Airlines or a 2 ½-hour trip from the city of Rach Gia on the Superdong Fast Ferry.

The Vietnamese government is intent on making Phu Quoc (variously, and roughly, pronounced “Foo-kwa” or “Foo-kwok”), an up-and-coming spiffy Asian island resort comparable to, say, Phuket in Thailand. It isn’t there yet, but the people are trying. And it’s still quite inexpensive, witness the predominately German, British and Scandinavian tourists who have discovered it ….

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Filed Under: reprints

October 6, 2018 By Pat Terry

Seeking Minnesota’s “Scandinavian Riviera”

Norwegians, Finns, Danes and Swedes settled the area

“The Scandinavian Riviera,” as some locals affectionately call it, runs some 150 miles along Lake Superior from Duluth to Grand Portage, Minn., hard by the Canadian border. More prosaically, it’s the area along State Route 61.

Tipped off by friends to the region’s Scandinavian heritage, my wife and I headed to Lake Superior’s North Shore, seeking signs of early Danish, Swedish, Finnish and Norwegian settlers.

The evidence wasn’t hard to find. There was the Vild Von pizza at Sven & Ole’s in the lively town of Grand Marais. The ingredients included wild rice and Canadian bacon.

In the same town, at the Cook County Historical Society, photographs of past winners in the Miss North Shore Queen pageant had such names as Anderson, Hedstrom, Lindskog and Sjobers. At The Market, a Grand Marais store, merchandise included a Lonely Plant travel guide to Norway and Sweden. Nearby, the Viking Hus store sold Scandinavian gifts.

 

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Filed Under: reprints

October 6, 2018 By Pat Terry

The Everglades, Naturally

No airboats, alligator-wrestling or schlock

Many people think of Florida’s Everglades —if they’re familiar with this unique global ecosystem at all—as swamps and schlock, airboat rides and alligator-wrestling, but it’s an incredible natural wonder, filled with hiking paths, kayak trails, rare and uncommon wildlife such as wood storks, at least one crocodile, tons of alligators and great blue herons.    Travel articles too often paint the Glades as a tourist magnet for oversize buggy rides, souvenir shops and “gen-u-ine” Indians/native Americans, but it’s the “The Everglades, Naturally,” that attracts outdoors and nature-loving visitors from as far away as New Zealand, Australia and Japan.   Jumping off points are Naples on the west and Miami on the east.   Dubbed the “River of Grass” in the 1940s by conservationist (and onetime society reporter) Marjory Stoneman Douglas, the Everglades is a vast, constantly moving marsh, stretching across a flat limestone shelf nearly 40 miles wide and over 100 miles long. But thanks to civilization’s encroachments, it is now less than one-third of its original size, threatened by such factors as rapid human population growth, agricultural runoff and disruptive water flow.   This marvelous subtropical wetland “has its own feel, its own good odor,” Florida mystery novelist Randy Wayne White writes in his book, “Everglades.”

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Filed Under: new articles

October 6, 2018 By Pat Terry

Iguassu Falls, a South American Treasure

World-class falls, and a quick trip from Rio, Sao Paolo and Buenos Aires

Three waterfalls in this universe are considered world-class: Niagara, Victoria and Iguassu. The first two, of course, are also world-famous, But the third is unknown to many people—even those who saw the 1986 Hollywood film, “The Mission,” which starred Robert De Niro and Jeremy Irons and which was partially filmed at Iguassu. “Quite simply.” state the authors of one guidebook,”these are the world’s most dramatic waterfalls. “Straddling the Iguassu River, which at that point serves as the border between the northeast tip of Argentina and one of the southern extremes of Brazil, the falls—Foz do Iguaçu in Portuguese, Cataratas del Iguazú in Spanish and Iguassu Falls in English—are simply spectacular. Depending on whether it is the rainy season (usually December to March) or the rest of the year, the number of separate waterfalls can range from 150 to 350 and are spread out horizontally over, incredibly, about three miles. Compared with its counterparts, Iguassu is located in a substantially more beautiful area than Niagara, and, unlike Victoria, is not covered over with a mist half the year. Certainly, a visit to Iguassu Falls is a perfect side trip—two days minimum, three days preferable—for those visiting Rio de Janeiro, São Paulo and/or Buenos Aires. The falls—meaning “great water” in the Guarani Indian language—were first discovered by Europeans in 1542 by the expedition of Alvar Nunez Cabeza de Vaca of Spain. The national park, on the Brazil and Argentine sides, was created in the mid-1930s, and in the mid-1980s Iguassu was designated an UNESCO World Heritage Site.

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