T H E S TAT E | I N S I D E R
The Leavening Power of Humor
Knock-out vocalist Ann Bell says the originators of the Tulsa Sound knew how to find the funny in any situation.
Vocalist Ann Bell has been involved in Tulsa’s music scene since her high school days. Photo courtesy Ann Bell
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OKLAHOMA MAGAZINE | AUGUST 2022
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ida and Daniel Schuman, Oklahoma Magazine’s publisher and president/editorial director, respectively, have graciously allowed my writing to occupy this space for well over 15 years now. And while that’s maybe been more of a blessing to me than it’s been to readers, I remain deeply grateful to have this platform to, among other things, celebrate some of the people and things in our shared popular culture that I believe should be celebrated, or at least explored and acknowledged. If you’re a regular reader of this column, you know one of the things I’m kind of crazy about both exploring and celebrating is the musical style that’s become known as the classic Tulsa Sound – even though, after decades of poking around it, talking to those who were there at its genesis, and giving hard listens to music from the era, I still can’t quite pin the term down to my satisfaction. It’s not enough to say that you know it when you hear it; that’s the lazy way out. And I don’t think it’s right to say that it’s a fatuous wrongheaded myth either, a spun-sugar concoction that falls apart every time you try to pick it up. What I do know is that all the words spilled by those of us trying to get to the core of the Tulsa Sound generally have a kind of elegiac quality, or at least a good whiff of nostalgic homesickness for those good old days of the early ’70s, when, it seemed, Tulsa wasn’t all that different from swinging London, with groovy live music blasting from little clubs and dives spread all over town as the impossibly hip Leon Russell, triumphantly returned from the West Coast, presided over it all and saw
that it was good. What’s missing all too often from reflections on those days – mine as well as others’ – is simply a sense of humor, an appreciation of the absurdity that accompanied the artistry. Enter Ann Bell. “A lot of our lives were quite hilarious then,” she says. “Just being around the original Tulsa Sound crew, the founding members – every one of those guys had a really amazing, funny, sense of humor. When bad things would happen – we’d lose a gig, we’d get stiffed for the money, whatever it was – we’d try to find something about it that would just make us start laughing.” A powerhouse vocalist who joined her first rock ‘n’ roll group, Rubbery Cargoe, while still attending Edison High, Bell went on to be an integral part of Russell’s touring shows in the early ’70s. After four years on the road with him, she spent another five as a part of Joe Cocker’s traveling band. Over the past few years, her hometown profile has risen, or re-risen, dramatically, as she has returned to Tulsa to shine in such events as the Leon Russell tribute concerts at the Will Rogers High School Auditorium and the Women of Song event at the Cain’s Ballroom. She also recently became the latest inductee into the Oklahoma Music Hall of Fame, which triggered another well-received Ann Bell stage performance. As anyone who attended any of those shows knows, Ann Bell not only still has some very impressive vocal chops; she’s also a master at applying the leavening power of humor to what she does, especially with reference to those hazy, halcyon ’70s days. At the Women of Song event, for instance, she asked some of her contemporaries on stage (Don White, Frank Padilla, and Dave Teegarden, if memory serves) if they’d gone out together back then.
