February 13, 2014
90 Years at the Keyboard and Still Counting Rocky keeps on rockin’ By Sara Hendricks
Island Moon
Moon Mystery of the Week
A 11
Our friend Randy took these shots of something streaking through the sky over the Island this week. We’re not sure what it is but it was a fast mover.
He's rubbed elbows with some of the country's finest musicians, played and sang at dance halls and festivals all over the U.S. and, lucky for us, settled near enough to the islands so audiences can enjoy his years of experience. Rocky Arnold still has a head full of wavy hair, craggy good looks and a musical repertoire that spans genres. His fingers fly over the keyboard with the art he's practiced for 90 years. (Rocky is somewhere in his ninth decade, though he demurs when asked his exact age.)
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His music career started at the age of 3 when he learned how to play a kazoo, an instrument not to be taken lightly. By the of age of 11 Rocky asked for a violin and soon fiddled his way to the top prize in a Texas-wide contest.
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When he left Waxahatchie, where his granddad was the manager of a gin, he joined the Navy and its dance band. That time of his life wasn't all fun and games, though. It was soon after the bombing of Pearl Harbor and Rocky served in the South Pacific on Navy destroyers, where his ear for music made him a natural as a sonar operator because he could hear the change in tones. He earned 37 battle stars during some hellacious battles, but doesn't like to dwell on those days, only summing them up with, "All my heroes are dead." Rocky headed for San Francisco after the war and landed a job with Paul Desmond, the renowned alto saxophonist who wrote the jazz mainstay "Take Five." It was the beginning of a beautiful career that Rocky says he wouldn't trade for anything. His wife at that time was a vocalist and she and Rocky started out as a duo. Soon they were
Robinson and Glenn Ford during the filming of the 1943 film "Destroyer" and landed a walkon part, lighting Ford's cigarette as he made his way down the gangplank. He counts five governors as friends and countless well-known musicians. In Texas, he played with Ted Weems who recorded with Perry Como, and Dixieland Jazz band leader Jim Cullum Jr., whose jazz musician dad called Rocky "Hots." He recorded with Slim Whitman on a million-selling record. Rocky says Whitman called him one day and said it was his piano that sold the song. He followed Ella Fitzgerald in Dayton, Ohio, and auditioned Eddie Cochran when the blues guitarist was 16 years old.
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He could have gotten a big head because the big names in music often associated him with the greatest piano players. "But I learned to be humble," Rocky chuckles with the memory. He also learned that he needed to live a clean life if he was going to last. He never cared much for drink, didn't do the drugs he saw other musicians do and only chased women when he was single, he says. Rocky still does a lot of arranging, putting together all the instruments and the vocals. He's got a playlist so long, he says, he could play every night for two weeks and never play the same thing twice.
in a band, traveling the country with two dogs including an Afghan hound, a cat and two daughters. He met and befriended astronauts Pete Conrad and Elliott See, who he had lunch plans with when See died in St. Louis in the crash of a T-38 jet. He took pity on a man he saw sitting alone at a birthday party and sat down with him, only to learn it was Werner von Brahn, the Father of Rocket Science. He hung out with Edward G.
On a recent night at the Tarpon Ice House, playing with Mike Williams, Eddie Olivares Jr., Jack Trowbridge and cheo Reyes, somebody asked Rocky to play an original. The music was romantic and a little sad. Then Rocky began to sing. “When love is gone, all I have left is a song. But the memory lives on. You leave me breathless.”
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You leave us breathless, Rocky.
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Catch him at Shorty's in Port Aransas on Fat Tuesday
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