The Cowboy Piano

Hal Cannon recounts the saga of one piano

Last week’s Boost featured a story about travels to outback Australia on a private jet with my friend George Gund. It was October, 1989 and ostensibly we had gone to document grass roots poetry and music of outback Australia for a cultural exchange between American cowboys and Aussie Stockman. Along the way, we visited the Stockman’s Hall of Fame, attended a “once in a century” party in Alice Springs, then had a bit of R&R in Sydney, ending with scuba diving on the Barrier Reef. It was just a typical folklore fieldwork experience.

George told me to meet him in Palm Springs on a certain date but that was the extent of planning. As time drew closer, I began to realize I had not heard from his office, in fact, they hadn’t heard from him either. They even called to ask if I knew where he was. George was free-wheeling, using his jet to go anywhere he pleased, anytime he pleased. It drove his staff crazy.

I saved a voice message from him once which came in from a crackly connection onboard his jet. It went something like this, “Hal, wondered if you and Teresa can meet me for dinner tonight at the Nevada Dinner House. Call and ask if they will stay open late -- crackle crackle. I’m on my way from London and have a lunch meeting in New York. Then I’ve got to stop in Edmonton for a Hockey practice – crackle -- then a quick stop in Palm Springs, crackle, crackle. The Pomelos should be ripe. I’ll bring you a bag -- crackle. Do you need any blood oranges? Hope to see you for dinner – crackle, crackle. Got to get back to New York by morning.”

By “D-day,” that is day of departure, I was properly nervous. I woke that Saturday wondering if George would even remember our date. Just then the phone rang and it was a friend and antique dealer, Kris Hopfenbeck. She was excited. “You’ve got to drop everything and meet me at an estate sale. You wouldn’t believe what I found, a cowboy piano.” I was blunt and told her that the last thing I needed was a cowboy piano. I was madly packing for Australia. Kris was insistent, “Hal, you need to see this piano. It has a carved steer head and brands.” To humor her I got in the car and met her at a tidy little house up the road. As she steered me to the basement all I could think of was what I pain it would be to move a piano up the narrow stairway.

I turned the corner and there it was: an early fifties Story and Clark upright, knotty pine cabinet, longhorn steer carved into the music stand. It was decorated with brands and latigo leather wove between the legs. Kris was right. I had to have it.

She had told me I could get it cheap, but there was another dealer sniffing around. We got into a bidding war but he was more sensible than I and before I knew it I owned the piano and had paid more for it than I could afford. Once the deal was made, I came to my senses. “I’m headed for Australia this afternoon. Can I pick it up in a couple weeks?” The older lady selling the piano said that would work fine as she did not have to move to her small apartment immediately.

That done, I didn’t give the piano another thought. My mind was all about catching my flight to Palm Springs and wondering if I was embarking on a wild goose chase. As I landed in Palm Springs, I spotted a white private jet emblazoned with the logo of the San Jose Sharks, the hockey team George and his brother Gordon Gund owned. As we taxied to the gate, I spotted two matching white convertibles with the tops down being loaded with hocky sticks. I was in the right place.

That night we all went out to for sushi and afterwards sang some karaoke. You have not lived until you’ve heard George half mumble, half sing, “Polly Wolly Doodle All the Day.” The next morning, we loaded up, two pilots including George’s personal pilot Dick Millington, George’s assistant, Nick, George’s new girlfriend, Iara Lee, and me. Nick and I sat up front while George and Iara sat in the rear seats holding hands, she a young lover, he well into middle age.

I had no concept how big the Pacific Ocean is or just how far it is to fly to the middle of Australia. The Falcon 50 had good range but after 2600 miles we had to stop in Honolulu to refuel. I’ve heard about red carpets but they really did roll one out as we disembarked to wait in the executive lounge. I was bored so I leafed through the guest book and spotted a signature from Imelda Marcos who famously ruled the Philippines while she jammed the presidential closets with hundreds of pairs of shoes.  I expected a shoe print on the page.

When we reboarded, there was a lovely cold seafood buffet awaiting us. At some point George moved to the cockpit where he piloted the plane for a couple of hours. I looked down and it was water in every direction as far as I could see. Late that afternoon Dick, the pilot, called back and asked where George wanted to touch down for the night. George consulted a map and said he’d always wanted to see the Marshall Islands. A relative had served there in World War II.  Dick recalculated the route and we headed for the main Island and capitol, Majuro. It was just getting dark when we landed. An open jeep met us and brought us to one of the town’s few hotels. We had flown more than 2000 miles since we left Hawaii. It was a long day of flying over water.

The next morning Dick told George we needed to make an early start to get to Australia before dark. Dick and George were famous for their arguments pitting the pilot’s practical realities of flying against George’s zest for seeing it all, fitting it all in.

The pilots had already gone to the airfield and as we loaded up, George spotted a museum across the village green. He asked the driver to take us there. Inside were displays of Native crafted weavings and historical artifacts from the Islands.

George loved places like this. He had a fine visual sense and appreciated the pure artistry of things whether it was a million-dollar painting or a hand-crafted basket. His passion for beauty made him a wonderfully diverse collector of art. I remember going to hockey games where he barely noticed the score. To his eye, it was all a glorious dance on ice.

While George explored, I went back to the front desk where a woman was bidding an earlier guest goodbye. In the spirit of small talk, she asked where we’d come from. I told her we’d taken off from Palm Springs, California the day before and she volunteered she was a Westerner by birth. I told her I was from Utah. Surprised, she volunteered that she’d grown up in Salt Lake City. She explained that after a stint in the Peace Corp she had married a Marshallese guy and had lived on the Islands ever since. Absent mindedly, I asked where she grew up and she said, “Bryan Avenue.”

“Bryan Avenue,” I repeated. “Interesting, I just went to an estate sale on Bryan yesterday.”

She looked me straight in in the eye and said, “Did you buy my piano?”

That was followed by a shocked silence as we stared at each other. I simply replied “Yes.” She explained that this piano was very special to her growing up and that her mother had called the week before and asked if she was ready to part with it. It was a difficult decision, but she had no way to get it to the Marshall Islands so she told her mother that she hoped it would go to a good home.

This person, Carol Curtis, and I had never met before. But all of a sudden, the 5000 miles that separated us from her childhood home was nothing. George came to the desk and we recounted the story. Others in the group stood in amazement but George didn’t see what was so unusual. When I thought about it later, I realized that George spent so much time on his jet that the world was a small place and distance meant little.

Since that day, I’ve been asked to recount this story innumerable times. Once I was interviewed by a scholar who was writing a book about small world stories. I asked her what she had learned from hearing so many stories of happenstance. Her conclusion was that these stories are all around us if only we attune to them. The connections are everywhere. We only need to pay attention.

I kept the piano for a few years but then decided it should go to the Western Folklife Center, the organization I founded and where George Gund served as a longtime board member. So I donated the piano and delivered it to the organization’s headquarters, the old Pioneer Hotel in downtown Elko. It made me happy to see the cowboy piano in the lovely early twentieth century saloon that is the heart of the building.

It was even made more special when a wonderful saloon-style piano player, Dave Bourne, started coming to the annual National Cowboy Poetry Gathering to play old-West saloon music in the bar. I watched as the music enlivened the room each year. Dave could make any piano sound good, but he felt a special affinity for that pine upright with the longhorns carved into its music stand. I came to realize that the piano was meant to come to Elko and that my encounter with its original owner in the Marshall Islands was a part of a saga that’s true meaning was getting that piano to the right home. That piano making music in that specific place, at that specific time, played by that specific piano player was what made for a good home. I’ve come to believe that the story of the cowboy piano is not so much about a small world as it is about the fated journey of one piano finding its new home.  

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