Arizona Daily Star from Tucson, Arizona • Page 105

ytraday sum Arisnna Star TUCSON, SUNDAY, DECEMBER 18, 1977 SECTION PAGE ONE BEST AVAILABLE COPY Ahalf-century at the Wheeler ranch vyri' I if. Parties, children, rodeo; now artists find shelter there ft By JOHN PECK The Arizona Daily Star In the half-century since it was built in 1924, the house at 2301 E. Elm St. has served a multitude of purposes for multitudes of people. First, it was the James W.

Wheeler ranch. Wheeler, an early real estate developer, came to Tucson at the turn of the century to await his "imminent" death from tuberculosis. As it turned out, he lived to be 100 and didn't die until 1974. In the interim, Wheeler did a lot of land dabbling and among the ventures was the purchase of a 120-acre parcel of land, then east of the city, today fronting the Arizona Inn. Wheeler made his home there and eventually built an enormous circular pool that soon became the focal point for the summer activities of many Tucsonans.

It was not the city's first pool, but it was definitely the largest and, though it has long since ceased being a swimming pool, the huge plate-like construction still exists. In 1918, Wheeler sold the property to eastern industrialist Leighton Kramer, who renamed it Rancho Santa Catalina and built an imposing residence on it. Today, that residence contains 8,696 square feet If Wheeler gave the city its biggest pool, Kramer gave it one of its biggest activities, the rodeo. An avid horseman and a devotee of polo, Kramer started polo at the University of Arizona and La Fiesta de los Vaqueros, today one of the biggest rodeos in the country, in his backyard. Kramer came as a winter visitor and became an early supporter of tourism, using polo and the rodeo as the drawing cards.

By February 1925, when the rodeo first opened, the city fathers were advertising for available beds to accommodate the crowds. Its popularity kept growing, with tourists and residents alike. Yndia Smalley Moore is one of the many Tucsonans who remembers "sitting on the tailgates" to watch the fiestas. The fiestas continue but the Kramer heyday came to an end. In 1940, the Dickson Potters, also from the East Coast, purchased the house and some of the property around it.

They stablished a girls' school, offering college preparatory work for seventh to 12th grade students. In 1953, the Potters sold the school to the Mother Elizabeth Seton branch of the Sisters of Charity Catholic order. The sisters used the facility to house postulants, young women interested in joining the order. To pay for the property, the sisters also conducted a kindergarten and music classes at what was renamed Casa Seton. It has remained Casa Seton to this day.

In 1971, the order sold the property to John S. Greenway, owner of the Arizona Inn. Greenway had announced that condominiums would be built on the site, though those plans were never realized. Instead, Casa Seton is today the home for 14 graduate students of the University of Arizona art department. Greenway has leased the house to the department for master's candidates to have separate studios in which to work.

A faculty member also has a studio in the house, and a caretaker is the only sleep-in resident. From ranch to rodeo to girls' school to art studio: It's been an impressive use of an impressive house. 9i The Leighton Kramers built their desert home, above, in 1924 and it was later enlarged to the present structure. In its more than half a century, the house has been host to rodeos, elegant parties, a girls' school, a Catholic order and now, at left, graduate students from the UA art department who have their studios there. (Star photos by Art ffU 1 Mr.

Anonymous Record sales spinning even higher as rock music and its fans grow up Williard R. Espy offers a collection of works by the most famous of unknown writers "I think younger people changed," Yetnikoff said. "I think older people changed, too. Older people, they I guess I'll have to say we have adjusted to the change. "I mean, kids 16 years old were saying, 'Gee, my father's a dentist.

He lives a pretty good life; maybe I should be a By MARTIN MERZER The Associated Press NEW YORK The Beatles are no more, Elvis is gone and there is no comparable single force in the music world or on the horizon that can match the kind of record-selling excitement seen in their heydays. But record sales go ever higher. Not only will more than $2 billion worth of platters be sold in the United States this year, but industry officials say most will be bought by people over 18 years old. In fact, the demand is so great especially during the Christmas shopping season that one of the industry's most pressing problems is getting enough manufacturing materials. "Some companies can't get pres ings (made) or jacket fabrication," said Walter Yetnikoff, president of CBS Records, the world's largest record firm.

"This is becoming a big, big business." Industrial officials estimate that in 1966, 959 million worth of records were sold in the United States. Last year, that figure nearly doubled to $1.9 billion. Those numbers are based on list prices. Although records usually are sold at "discount" prices, the figures provide some indication of the explosion in the industry. It also should be noted that retail record prices have increased very little in those 10 vears.

Yetnikoff predicts that his firm alone will gross $1 billion by 1980." Sales are good for recordings of classical music, jaz, middle-of-the road sounds such as Frank Sinatra, rhythm and blues, country and western songs, and even comedy routines. But industry officials say the big boom continues to be in rock music. "In the early 1970s, everyone was saying, 'Well, the '60s are over; the music explosion is said Yetnikoff. "But it wasn't. There was a lull in the early 70s, but since then the business just hasn't stopped growing." Yetnikoff, trying to explain the industry's surge, said popular music "no longer is the counter-culture sort of thing." Most industry observers agree.

In the 1950s, teen-agers were attracted to the new "rock 'n' roll' for its vitality, its message (which often didn't exist but always seemed to), and the fact that their parents comfortable with the more gentle Big Band sound of the '40s didn't like the new music. In the 1960s, rock music became more revolutionary, reflecting for American teen-agers (and sometimes leading them into) the swift currents of social change flowing through the country. But during the 1970s, the nation's race relations seemed smoother; the Vietnam War wound down and then endtd. As American life calmed down a bit, so did its music. No great upheav- als occurred in the 70s that could be compared to the apearance in the '50s of Presley and his followers or in the I '60s of the Beatles and the rest of the British influence.

So the rock 'n' rolling teen-agers of the '50s and '60s became the rock 'n rolling parents of the '70s. And with only variations on the same theme available for their own children, many American families now are made up of people listening primarily to vary- ing forms of rock. "It's been a process of evolution rather than revolution," said Henry Brief. For 17 years, Brief has viewed the American pop-music scenes from His big vice is conversation. After rising "as late as possible" and opening and answering fan mail of my Espy is off to his club in Gotham for lunch and conversation with fellow writers.

His writing doesn't actually begin until after lunch and a nap. Then, breaking only for supper, he writes into the early morning. "I have been rather stupid about signing contracts on books. I think my next five years (writing) already are under contract. I'll finish my next book in six weeks; then I've another due in July and then others." Espy and his wife, Louise, try to travel at least one month out of a year and spend another month at the old family home and cottage on the Pacific in Oysterville don't think it has changed all that much since it was founded by my grandfather in where he has cultivated no fewer than 75 separate species of rhododendron, but where for the last 10 years he has tried unsuccessfully to cultivate genuine English croquet garden.

He openly solicits examples of anonymous verse, or documentation on the authorship of anonymica such as: "Do you love me Or do you not? You told me once, But I forgot" (If you know it to be by other than write Espy at 30 Beekman Place, New YorkN.Y. 10022.) (The following was found in the newsroom of The Chicago Daily News. An investigation revealed that it was written by a reporter named Jon Hahn.) By "NAME WITHHELD" 1177 The CWcaf DaOy New CHICAGO Literary scallywags and ne'er-do-wells long have plundered the work of that most prodigious writer, "Anonymous." These same charlatans would have us believe that the least talented and most tasteless of their own scribblings were done by the real "Anon." Now, the great gray mantle that has cloaked Anonymous is parted by an affable Willard R. Espy in his book, "The Life and Works of Mr. Anonymous." (Hawthorne Books, $9.95) The truth, a little of it, can be told thusly: "Espy's Confessed he's Synonymous With Anonymous" Mr.

Anonymous, you see, is a real person or persons. The title is passed along, as it was from Espy's great-uncle Alfred when he was well into his second century, to Espy, now barely 66. Along with the cloak of anonymity goes Author Unknown, an ageless beast of a dog. All this, of course, is revealed in "Anonymous," wherein Espy weaves a wools of delightful reniembrances of growing up in Oysterville, and beyond. The works of Anonymous can scarcely be contained in 210 pages of whatever warp, but Espy does share the likes of: The Budding Bronx "Der spring is sprung Der grass is riz I wonder where dem boidies is? Der little boids is on der wing, Ain't dat absoid? Der little wings is on der boid Or, from Uncle Alie (Alfred), who had just finished a dalliance outside the square dance hall with Mrs.

Elly Calder, singing: "Would you like to sin With Elinor Glyn On a tiger skin? Or would you prefer To err with her On some other fur?" There is a bit of Uncle Alie in Espy as he twirls his retired British colonel mustache and scans across his coffee cup at a covey of nurses in a Drake Hotel dining room booth. As a reporter, editor, correspondent, poet and lover of life. Espy confesses to a great impatience with editors like someone at the New York Times who took a purposely constructed 5 16-word single sentence on the discursiveness of his father and reduced it to 12 distinct paragraphs. his post as executive director of the Recording Industry Association of America. He points out that many of the best- selling, artists now appeal to pre-teens, i teen-agers and their parents.

This I branch of rock is known as the con- temporary sound..