RIP Cliff, 1942-2012

ABOVE: Dez (left) plays with Larry (middle) and Cliff (right) back in the day

Lots of deaths lately that I could comment on. I don’t want this blog to become an obituary page, though. I meant to write a nice obituary for soul legend Etta James awhile back, but then I wrote a more personal one for my cat, Maurice. This past weekend, the much publicized passing of Whitney Houston deserves comment. But again, a more personal passing demands my attention.

Love of music brings people together. Cliff was a beloved tennis pro at the tennis club in Houston that my family belonged to while I was growing up. I would occasionally take tennis lessons from Cliff, who did not look like a tennis pro at all. He looked more like a basketball player. A tall man who was thin as a rail with weather beaten features that always flashed a quick smile. Cliff would always want to know what was going on in your life, and he usually had a witty comment about most things. Cliff was a fixture at this tennis club, he worked there for almost 40 years. He was also a loveable eccentric in many ways. Like his refusal to drive on any freeways. Living most of your life in Houston, yet avoiding all freeways...that is really something. But it is not tennis or eccentric behavior that was the basis of my bond with this extraordinary man.

At some point in our many tennis lessons, Cliff learned that I played guitar. Another good friend of mine also took lessons from Cliff, and he was a bass player. Cliff invited us to play with him and his brother Larry one Sunday. They had a standing gig each Sunday during the summers at the club, playing out by the pool where food was served and many families enjoyed the day.

Cliff and Larry were called The Really Brothers, a rather humorous group name due to the fact that although they were brothers, they did not look at all alike (Larry was shorter and a bit heavier). As Cliff always loved to tell it, they got tired of answering the question “are you guys really brothers?”, so that became their band name.

For five or six summers of my youth, every Sunday me and two other friends of mine would back up The Really Brothers and their drum machine. We played simple country covers (with a few rock and roll, not rock, songs thrown in), rarely venturing beyond three chords in any given song. Cliff sang in his relaxed, sweet, breezy voice, while the backbone of the music was Larry’s simple yet full and spot on guitar playing. Larry remains one of my all time favorite guitar players, for his economy and brilliant ability to serve the song. (As for Cliff’s guitar prowess, his guitar was jokingly referred to by us as his “washboard,” as he turned it down so low that the rhythmic scraping of his pick on the strings was louder than anything he was actually playing). And since there were three guitars onstage anyway at this point, Cliff mostly set the guitar aside and simply sang, which is what he most enjoyed doing.

I was thinking back recently, and I would estimate that I easily played over 100 gigs with The Really Brothers. It may have been close to 150. The fact that these older guys allowed a group of teenagers to invade their musical space, and took us under their wing (and even took us on some paying gigs away from the Sunday afternoon standing gig)…that was a really special thing. Hell, they even gave our own band a slot in between their sets at the club on occasion. That was something they did not have to do (and if you had heard us in those days, probably shouldn’t have!) I learned a lot from playing with Cliff and Larry. The fact that simplicity can be beautiful in music, and that space and feeling can be just as meaningful as complexity and virtuosity. Now, Larry could really play, though. But he preferred to be the foundation, laying back and constructing the song on which Cliff could fly.

I am driving into Houston tomorrow for Cliff’s memorial service. My friend Johannes is flying in from Alabama. Kyle, Gillums and even the elusive Gaetano will be there. We will all honor the memory of this extraordinarily funny and kind man. I am also throwing my guitar in the trunk. I’ve got a feeling Larry may want to step out and pick a little for Cliff. At least I hope so.


ABOVE: The full Really Brothers Band