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May 28, 2009

MARK BENNETT: When it came to making live music, Roy Robinson knew everybody

By Mark Bennett

TERRE HAUTE — Roy dug our band’s name.

It contained lots of words and not an ounce of logic — Phil Harmonic and the Smooth Raisins. Roy got it, the pun and the irony. None of us was named Phil, and raisins aren’t smooth, but grapes are. (I was in college then. New Wave was hot. You understand.) Thus, to Roy, we became “The Grapes” every time we walked into the Conservatory of Music to buy P.A. equipment or amp cords or guitars.

A quarter-century later, when I’d stroll into the Conservatory to ogle the guitars with my sons, Roy — still there — would ask how “The Grapes” were doing.

When it came to making live music, Roy Robinson knew everybody. And vice versa.

“He was probably the most recognizable musician in Terre Haute,” said Dave Kyle, a friend, former bandmate and fellow Wabash Valley Musicians Hall of Famer.

Perhaps the most affable, too. As local bass players, guitarists, drummers and co-workers remembered Roy, who died Saturday at age 59, a comment by bassist Kyle Laney echoed others: “I don’t know anybody who didn’t like him.”

That easy smile beneath Roy’s trademark mustache was a fixture at the Conservatory for so long that his employment pre-dates the records on file at the store, said co-owner Jim Quinlan. It’s safe to say, though, that Roy worked at the Conservatory for more than 30 years, rising from a gopher, as Quinlan recalled, to longtime manager of the shop’s popular guitar department and its top salesman.

His musical connection continued after quitting time. Roy played keyboards in numerous popular bands, from the Spyders in his high school days to Fanfare, Variety, Small Change and Stiffy Green, among others. A natural who could learn any song by ear in minutes, he mastered every style of pop music. But at heart, “Rockin’” Roy loved rock ’n’ roll.

One of his ’80s bands, Fanfare, leaned toward a “lounge act” sound, recalled lead singer Brad Anderson. Roy played right along. “But he loved it when we’d cut loose and play rock ’n’ roll,” Anderson said.

That rock passion dated back to his fondness for the thick ’70s Hammond organ sounds of Procol Harum and Deep Purple, and to the ’60s when Roy’s band the Spyders emulated The Beatles and the Stones. Dave Kyle first heard Roy play when the Spyders performed at Clinton High School, when Kyle was a student.

“Back then, you just didn’t see anybody playing keyboards in rock bands — they were all guitars,” said Kyle, now living in Riverside, Calif.

Two decades later, Kyle wound up playing guitar alongside Roy in the group Variety. Roy talked Kyle into delaying his move to Nashville, Tenn., to pursue a career as a recording-session musician to play in that Terre Haute band. They recruited Laney to handle bass and Gene Daugherty as the drummer. Roy found a used funeral home van for $700 to transport the foursome and their equipment to gigs from Illinois to Crawfordsville and all points in between.

“We played all the animal clubs,” Kyle said, chuckling. “I never laughed so hard in all my life.”

Roy kept things fun.

During a break at an Illinois bar and grill, the band stepped out the back door to get some air. Roy did a comical rearrangement of the menu wording on the nightspot’s flashing sign, Laney remembered. Their laughter intensified when Roy found some leftover helium balloons, breathed in a little and read the revised menu in a munchkin voice.

“It was the best band I was ever in,” Laney said fondly.

Variety played a Valentine’s Day dance at the local Kerman Grotto. The organizers set up a backdrop, complete with feathers, where couples could be photographed. Variety hadn’t yet invested in any pictures of the group, so, “Roy said, ‘Hey, let’s do this, and we’ll get cheap band photos,’” Dave Kyle said.

Thus, Variety’s official publicity shot features its members posed in front of the Valentine’s backdrop, feathers and all.

“We got more mileage out of that 15-dollar photo,” Dave Kyle said.

Along with Roy’s lively spirit, his friends and fellow musicians in all of his bands also got “an excellent” keyboardist, said bassist Bobby Lane, who played with Robinson, Anderson and drummer Rick Waggoner in Fanfare. Roy wasn’t classically trained, but his musicianship, Quinlan said, “was unmatched.”

When there was a lull in business at the Conservatory, Roy would click on a keyboard, turn up the radio, “and by the time the song got to the end, he knew it,” Quinlan said. “Roy had the best ear for music that I’ve ever seen in anybody … ever … on any instrument.”

That magical gift was lost at 10 o’clock in the morning on Oct. 26, 2007. Quinlan will never forget the time or date that Roy suffered a debilitating heart attack inside the Conservatory. It forced an end to his performances and then, last Saturday, to his well-remembered life, leaving behind loved ones and a long list of friends, fellow musicians and fans of local live music.

Fortunately, in January 2006, Roy lived to see his talents recognized with his induction into the Wabash Valley Musicians Hall of Fame. “He was very deeply touched by that,” Waggoner said.

Lots of people would say the same thing about knowing Roy.



Mark Bennett can be reached at (812) 231-4377 or mark.bennett@tribstar.com.

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