Dave Arndt Dave Arndt, the youngest of four siblings, grew up in the anthracite coal region of Frackville, Pennsylvania. He was recruited for the North Schuylkill High School band. Dave wanted to play drums but the music teacher said “we need trumpets” so he became a trumpet player. His grandfather was disappointed when he found […]
Earth Day & The Hippie Doctrine For the last three decades there has been a concerted effort to paint the 60s Hippie movement as a bunch of misguided, acid-dropping, and dirty hippies. Most of these comments come from people not old enough for the 60s or from well publicized minority view of out of touch […]
Zero Turbulence – inspired by the island that raised them Key West is a special place for live music. We have 55 live music venues on this tiny island. We average over 360 live music performances weekly in Key West. Music permeates this island right down to the coral rock. The Key West musical soul […]
Dave Burns By Ralph De Palma My good friend and pianist extraordinaire Dave Burns passed away January. I will miss him tremendously. We had some great conversations about Key West music and the many players he worked with. We both lived in Miami during the 60s and 70s and often compared notes. We even conjured […]
A Music Masterpiece family This past Friday, I attend the first “Soul City – Motown With A Jazz Attitude” which brought back some great memories …. Since this is a republished story from 2023, I thought it might be nice to start with a sentence or two leading into story The Key West Lopez family […]
What If …. By Ralph De Palma A while back, former Key West pianist Dave Burns and I were discussing Key West legendary performer Coffee Butler. Both Dave and I lived in Miami during the 60s and 70s when Miami Beach would see major artists, like Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Tony Bennett, Guy Lombardo, and […]
Jerrod Isaman … Five bands later Jerrod Isaman is from Olean, New York. His father was a rock guitar musician but his first music mentor was his grandmother who was a huge Hank Williams fan. Jerrod never had a formal lesson but plays guitar, accordion, and piano. He was traveling around the Northeast, playing acoustic […]
Din Allen “suffering of change.” James “Din” Allen came to Key West from New York City in 1978, to join his brother Woody and to play bass at the Rose Tattoo, (currently, Bagatelle). They performed at other locations but after the winter season ended, it became more difficult to find work. Most bands would leave […]
Joey Philpott — Friday Church Joseph David Philpott (Joey) was born and raised in Roanoke, Virginia. He idolized his grandfather (Andy Anderson) who played bluegrass music and had a band. Around age 8, he started playing music and would follow “Papa” to most of his gigs and quickly learned a few songs. At age 10, […]
Tony Elitcher Tony Elitcher was born in Brooklyn, New York and raised in Montrose, a small town just north of the city. When Tony was six, his parents found a soprano saxophone for $25 and Tony began to play music. He attended Hendrick Hudson High School which had a fantastic music education program. The high […]
