St. Louis Post-Dispatch from St. Louis, Missouri • Page 110

2C April 7, vm ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH Little in cnS His Way in Show Business Common University City's John Hartford to Be on Smothers Brothers Summer Show Una 4 DEAR ANN LANDERS: Here's the lit- uation. What do you make of it? I am Catholic. John ii a Presbyterian. I'm a Democrat.

John is a Republican, I'm a Yankee. John ii a rebel. I'm a dancer. John if a titter. I like bridge.

John likes to May home and watch television. But we like each other, a lot. It might even be described as love. Look into your crystal ball, Ann, and tell me what you see. FIREWORKS IN ATLANTA SEE two churches.

One for you and your children and one (or John. Or it could ba the church I see for John is also the one I see for the children. I'm not aura. I also see a woman dancing, but not with her husband. I see the same woman coming home from a bridge game.

Her husband has fallen asleep in front of the television. He gets mad when she wakes him up to open the door. I see the same couple sitting at home arguing. I can't hear them, but I think it's about the Civil War. The crystal ball Just went cloudy and I can't see any more, but I've seen enough.

Have you? DEAR ANN: How can I get my husband to be a father to his children? We have four youngsters, from 7 to 17 years of age. they are fine kids, Ann good in it 7 rV tapped him on the ahoufder. Hia musld publisher called and aaid RCA Victor wanted to make two albums of him doing his own material, His first album, "John Hartford Looks at Life," is, he aaid, going pretty good. The second was "Larthworda and Music." They went so well that RCA aigned him to a contract. He made a third, called "The Love Album," and has just completed a fourth, not yet released and untitled.

His big hit has been "Gentle on My Mind," which is included in one of his si-bums. He made a single of it, hia only single, but Glen Campbell, who will also be in The Summer Brothers Smothers Show, made one at the same time. "Ha me, he swamped me," John says. He was much better known. But it Is a good record; I'm not putting him down." A FRIEND gave one of John's albums to Tommy Smothers, and a few weeks ago Tommy called him at Nashville and said he would like to talk to him.

John flew to the West Coast, they spent a week together, and he was signed up for the ahow. Glen Campbell will be master of ceremonies. John will write, compose songs and play and sing. "There are two words I hate," says John, "and they are 'star and 'celebrity'. I'm not trying to be a show business type." He allowed that he wore the cow.

boy boots because they are comfortable. "My interest in working on a show is as part of a team to put together a good show. I'll be performing, but as far as billing is concerned, it just doesn't matter. My big thing ie creating a thing and doing it. I'm different from most recording artists in doing only my own songs.

I'm my own side man, my own behind-the-scenes cat. I perform to see that the stuff I write comes off right, the way I want It. You don't sit here and take all these notes about me and then give it to some other cat to write." "Gentle" brought John two Grammy awards, for die best country song and for the best folk performance of the same song. John still does a lot of sketching and painting because, as he explains it, It ties in with composing, end there is little doubt that he has a strong streak of the poet in him, as anyone will agree who listens carefully to his lyrics. He isn't worried about the future; he doesn't worry about things like that.

As for the Summer Brothers Smothers show, "We are still working on the format," he said, "and one thing is sure, it will be different. It won't be a 'safe' show. It'll either be a hit or a bomb." His life is today's music, and when he talks about music he smolders a little. "There ere a lot of good things going on In pop music today. Barriers are breaking down.

People are playing music for music's sake; they're not digging it because of a i characters or ethnic backgrounds, but because its music. It's cutting across generations too. "A lot of people won't listen to good music because it falls into categories they're not supposed to listen to. What do you call the 'classics'? I think what the Beatles are doing today will be the 'classical music' of 60 years from now." By Did son Terry Or the Slff WHEN "The Summer Brothers Smothers Show" (no, it isn't scrambled; that's the way they're billing it) starts on CBS, June 16, one of the regulars in the show will be a young St. Louis composer, banjo player and singer, John Hartford.

To the younger set, John Hartford Is already a name, thanks to three pretty successful albums. But he is now becoming a folk hero because of a song he wrote and recorded called "Gentle on My Mind." John was in town the other day, on hia way from Nashville, where he has been recording for RCA Victor for the last year, to Los Angeles, where he will start work on The Summer a Smothers Show. With hti wife and 4-year-old-son, Jamie, he stopped off for a visit with his parents, Dr. and Mrs. Carl G.

Harford of 6940 Waterman avenue, University City. One of the first things John did when we talked was to put to rest a rumor that has been going around that his parents disapproved of his music career and that his father told him that he would have to change his name if he was going to be a banjo player and singer. So, the story goes, he changed his name to Hartford. The truth is, John said, people kept putting a in Harford until he got tired of battling it. "So I aaid, 'what the hell, make it "Absolutely nothing to it," aaid Dr.

Harford, who is on the staff of Barnes Hospital. "As I understand it, RCA liked Hartford better than Harford. As a matter of fact his mother and 1 are very gratified at the success he has made. We've always supported him in his musical career, and when he was a youngster I told him that 1 wanted him to do what he wanted to do." SO MUCH for the name. Hartford, 30 years old, was dressed in what might be called the Nashville uniform tan cowboy boots, tight Jeans, a blue and brown striped T-shirt and a tan rawhide jacket.

He is tall, thin, broad-shouldered and narrow hipped, and he talks with a Marlboro-country drawl which certainly didn't come from John Burroughs School or Washington University. His dark brown hair isn't much longer than Bubby Kennedy's, but his sideburns come all the way down to his square jaws. His face is lean, his eyes dark and brooding and when we sat down to talk they said very plainly, "Look dad, you belong to another generation and I don't know whether I'm going to get through to you or not." He ie deadly serious about his art he refuses to record anything he doesn't write himself but being a well brought up young man, he was willing to make Uie effort. So he carefully explained to me that there is something of a revolution going on in music today and nobody but a square would try to categorize it with names like rock and roll, country, country rock, folk, soft rock, underground or contemporary. To me," he says, "it's music.

Categories are irrelevant and I don't like any of them. The minute you get into a category you are expected to do certain things. Then you're restricted and the first thing you know you're not doing anything at all." John went to Community School, John Burroughs, and then to Washington University where he began to study art. But there was this hangup on music. "It was something that was involving me since I was a little kid.

And I guess if it wasn't for my Dad I wouldn't be in country music. He liked to square dance and he dug square dince music. I was exposed to it. I always wanted to get as close as possible to it." He never tried to play an instrument until he was 13 years old when he found an old mandolin in his grandmother's attic. He started teaching himself to play it.

His parents sent him to a teacher and he took a few lessons but he didn't respond to lessons. John has his own way oil doing things. LATER he bought a banjo at a Goodwill store. "I started banging away on it, and on the piano, and when 1 was 15 started on the fiddle. And somewhere in there was the guitar.

It all evolved together, but the banjo was the main thing." He played the banjo and guitar all through high school. "Had some cousins here," he said, lighting a little cigar, "named Stoner and Katie Hoven, and we had a little band we called the Sourwood Mountain Three. We played in the National Folk Festival at Kiel Auditorium in 1952." For a while, in the early dnys of station mm i hi mas i us -1 i I at more visual than audial." Harfforo in regulation country down the flag. "But It was good experience and it was a means to an end. Music was something I had to do.

I started composing when I was 16. No, I've purposefully forgotten the first song I wrote. All 1 remember is, it was very bad." John arrived in Nashville three years ago and worked in recording sessions as a studio musician behind singers. He also worked for a music publishing company Dinner CASHIER -r John Hartford" "My music I think of DONT do is Just as Important as what you DO do So I put on my T-shirt, grabbed my antique and made a hasty exit, leaving the demon standing in the middle of the floor scratching his head. As 1 went down the road 1 hollered back over my shoulder, 'It's a free country, demon! and I reckon I'll just sing for myself for a And the next think I knew I was being led to a microphone and asked to do some of my more personal, ingrown songs.

I reckon at one time or another I probably have played the part of every one of the abstract vil-lians in these songs, or word movies as I sometimes call them." NOT ONLY will he play nothing that he doesn't compose himself, but he guards his musical integrity with the ferocity of a cougar at the water hole. A song called, "Eve of My Multiplication" is how he felt the night before his son was born and he chewed his fingernails. 'Jack In The Sack' was writ ten," he said, "after drinking too many Dr. Peppers and watching too much test pattern on TV. It's written in an Arkansas dialect of middle Canadian and the tune is really the Osage national anthem played backward in a major key.

The hero, Jack, whoe real name is Chuck, is th mast intellectual flagpole sitter I know." And that's about as much as anyone i going to find out from John Hartford about what makes him tick. "These songs." he wrote, "were written about some of the things that passed before my eyes, seeped into my ears and now have been whispered and hollered from behind a five-string banjo for the benefit of the dyna-groove sound in the album And may the demoa have mercy." When John left his demon behind him he worked for radio stations in St. Louis, Clinton, and Maiden, until the path led him inevitably to the pickers' Mecca, Nashville. From every bus that pulls into Nashville, 10 young starry-eyed, hopeful pickers (pickers In the vernacular of country music are guitar players and singers) debark in search of fame and glory. On every bus that leaves, that many, older, sadder and disillusioned, depart.

Anything can happen in Nashville; the magic wand can touch your shoulder. In the various radio stations where he worked John was a disk jockey, announcer, read news, wrote copy and, he says sardonically, swept the floor and took Spaghetti TNf SKWO why pip the waitress CALLTHG OTHER WAITRESS WHEN YOU ORPEREP ITALIAN! WHV ARE VOU TWO SITTING OVER -SA ANSWER HOW Ann Landers ftchool, helpful around the house. Any father would be proud to claim these children as his own. Yet, their own dad never pays any attention to them unless it' to criticize. When one of the kids asks him a question he doesn't even answer unless I happen to be there to kick him in the leg.

Then he acts as if he didn't hear. Every night at dinner my husband picks an argument with one cf the kids, and calls them lazy, stupid and worthless. The youngest boy is beginning to stutter and the oldest boy can't seem to make a decision about the simplest thing. What can I do to improve this situation? DISCOURAGED MOTHER A FATHER who bullyrags and puts down his children is en immature kid himself. His father probably did the same thing to him.

Before your husband can hop In with his meat axe, get the conversation off to a good rail. Compliment the kids on small success. Emphasize the positive. Make sure the stuttering boy gets a rhance to speak and don't allow anyone interrupt him. Urge the older boy to 'roake a decision.

Assure him that there is 'no disgrace in failing. Point out that the prong decision is better than no decision. JlThis ccuntry is loaded with mothers ftho are doing double duty. Their kids often turn out very well. So chin up and ieep swinging.

Ann l.andrrt trill It find In hrlp nu irilh your pruhlemn. Srnd qurf )itni In hrr In rare of ihr I'nth llitpnlrh. inrlntint irlf tddrrurd, tamprd rnrrlnpr. f)r. G.

Mohcr Red Lumps On Tongue DEAR DR. MOLNER: What would cause red lumps, like pimples, some targe, some small, on the back part of the tongue down into the troat? MRS. B. DONT sound like pimples to hie. The likely answer is that they are jrolarged papillae.

The surface of the tongue is made up of these tiny buttcs, or papillae. At the back of the tongue they may not be as close together, and thus J.iok more like a pimple. Irritation (as from smoking, a common fau.se) may cause individual ones to en-arge. iiDEAR DR. MOLNER: What causes a tongue to burn and seem redder than it ahruld be? I also have been having some rouble with my digestion.

Could that contribute? T. Y. S. BETTER HAVE your doctor investigate. He will probably have to consider several possibilities, among them pernicious anemia, vitamin deficiency, perhaps faod sensitivities.

The problem may or pi ay not be related to digestive troubles. 'DEAR DR. MOLNER: My son has rouble with his shoulder and his arm pies to sleep. He thinks it is a pinched rwrve but won't go to a doctor because pp says he is too busy. What do you think Stay be causing his trouble? MRS.

E. WHY BOTHER to guess if he won't go ie the doctor? Obviously he should go, Jxth for his comfort and perhaps to avoid jreater trouble in the future, but trying JO guess the cause does neither him, you, pe nor anvene anv good. I DR. MOLNER: I have been told Jbat wearing amber beads will reduce an Jsjnlarged thyroid, which is mostly sub-laternal. Do you know of any other cure? MRS.

K. G. 'THE AMBER BEADS is non-pnse. There are several effective treatments for enlarged thyroid, sometimes Surgery, sometimes one of the various Medical treatments. Your doctor, after Examination, can determine which type of treatment is best for your particular case.

Sy talk nillllpi, foit-Dlipikh rMse'tpM music uniform. and wrote songs that other artists recorded. Among those who have recorded his songs are Patti Page (her version of "Gentle on My Mind" is now being heird every day and all day on the radio), George Hamilton IV, Glen Campbell, the Glaser Brothers. Jan Howard, Homer and Jethro and half a dozen others. Then one day the a a i 1 1 wand "STOP CONCENTRATING ON THE MUSIC AND AT." HAFTE(? A PINNER LIKE THAT, WHO WOULP WANT TO 60 TO 41 A MOVIE; i Family Lawyer Rebels in School By Will Bernard LONG HAIR on boys snd short skirts on girls are putting worried looks on school officials.

In most cases there is enough "give" on each side to let the younger and the older generations get on with the business of schooling. But occasionally there is a real deadlock, and the issue is taken to court. Who wins there? Legally, how much authority does a school have in regulating the personal appearance of its students? Two principles are basic: (1) The school msy impose any rule that Is reasonably related to the educational process. For example, a school regulation against the wearing of metal heelplates was upheld in court because it reduced clatter in the halls, as well as damage to the hardwood floors. (2) The school may not impose any rule that is arbitrary and unreasonable.

Thus, a rule requiring high school seniors to wear freshly fumigated caps-and-gowns at graduation was held unlawful, when applied to a girl who was sickened by the odor. BUT WHILE these basic principles are clear enough, it may still be difficult in a specific case to fix the dividing line be-tween rightful and wrongful use of school authority. Consider two recent cases involving the wearing of political buttons. In each case, school officials banned the buttons. In each case, the ban was challenged in court as an infringement of freedom of speech.

Results? In the first case, the court upheld the ban. In this school, button wear ers had tried to force bottons upon other students and had caused assorted kinds of disruption in the classrooms. IN THE SECOND case, the court threw out the ban. In this school, sudents had worn the buttons peacefully, not causing any kind of disturbance. Nor was there any evidence of trouble in the offing.

It may seem strange that these cases, reaching opposite results, were not only decided by the same court but even involved similar buttons. Yet the court found, in differing circumstances at these two particular schools, enough basis for drawing a distinction. Such distinctions, giving fair weight to conflicting viewpoints, are what the law is made of. They are also, to a considerable degree, what education is made of. A Mi I K'NOW HOW MANV MARTINIS VOU HAP.

I'VE PEEM SAVING TH6 TOOTHPICKS THAT VUERE STOCK IMTHE OLIVES." KETC, he worked on a program some youngsters will recall, called "The Finder." What did he do? "I picked and sang and grinned all at the same time," said John, almost smiling. At art school at Washington he studied to become an illustrator. "Lot of pen and ink," he explained. "Still do it sometimes. It ties in with the type of thing I'm doing now.

Esthetically, I believe that the visual and literary arts, and the audio arts, go back to some form of esthetics. "My music I think of as more visual than audial. I think of a painting of a song rather than writing a song; a picture in lyrical mood. 'Gentle on my Mind' I consider a word movie, for want of a better description. Am I coming through to you?" I guess my expression gave me away.

"No," he said with the patience of the young talking to the old, "1 don't think I am. So he quit art school. "Whether you get a degree or not in art is unimportant," he said, "and anyway, I was too involved in music." But then, let him tell it his way, as he did in a piece he wrote for a pop music magazine, Music City News: "I reckon I used to spend a lot of time sitting around the house with my elbows on the kitchen table wondering how I could trap this counterfeit demon they call 'commercial' music. My a 1 1 were blinking on and off like neon lights and it was even getting hard to remember my own name. Then one morning before breakfast I realized that what you uuwich cinP npvon 14 DRINKING THE CHIANTI?" MV QUESTION.

IS THE SPAGHETTI SAUCE? f) Atn1ea Bar Awocfetlaa K9 4.