Living in harmony
03/09/2011
Roanoke Times, The
Bob "Granpa" Miller recalled the thrill felt when his hands first cupped a harmonica.
"I reckon I was about 6 or 7 years old," he said. "My aunt sent me one of them little harps through the mail. And I thought that was the most wonderful thing in the world."
Last month, on the eve of turning 100 years old Feb. 12, Miller celebrated his birthday by playing one of his 14 harps at the Floyd Country Store. The world-famous venue hops during Friday Night Jamborees when bands assemble from near and far to perform bluegrass, gospel and old-time mountain music.
Miller sat in with a group and played "Turkey in the Straw" and "Old Joe Clark" and "Wreck of the Old 97."
Eleven days later, Miller grinned remembering the crowd's reception.
"They give me a mighty big hand," he said. "They tore the roof down. And then, boy, after I got off the floor, you talk about a stomp-down, flatfootin', stompin' the floor. I just wish I could have got in there with them on that flatfootin'."
Woody Crenshaw owns Floyd Country Store. After Miller played, Crenshaw announced from the stage that from that day forth anyone turning 100 will be eligible to sit in with a band.
"To me, Granpa Miller showed that he still has passion for his life and wants to live it fully," Crenshaw said.
More than 90 years ago, after receiving that first harp at his musical family's Bland County farmhouse, Miller's determination reared like a frisky horse.
"I was going to learn to play it. I'd get out on the front porch, even in the wintertime, you know, sit down in a rocking chair and play," he said.
Miller demonstrated the blow-and-draw breathing required to wring music from the small wind instrument.
"I'd do that until I learned the notes, you know, and then I learned to put a tune to it," Miller said. "I learnt from sound, of the music, the notes. I could sing then, you know, and carry a tune."
Miller still sings at least a little. He did so during a recent interview at the Goodview home he shared for nine years with son-in-law Mike St. Clair.
Miller crooned, "Mama sent me to the spring and told me not to stay/I fell in love with a pretty little girl and I stayed all day."
'An institution'
More recently, Miller moved to the Richfield Retirement Community in Salem.
He still regularly performs at the North Roanoke Assisted Living facility on Williamson Road. Miller favors a Hohner Model 64 Chromonica Professional Model. Famous blues musicians like Little Walter played this model too. But Miller plays mostly old fiddle tunes and songs he describes as country.
He uses "tongue blocking" to cover air chambers to stifle unwelcome notes.
"Your tongue does a lot of the work," Miller said.
He joins other volunteer musicians on many Sunday nights to entertain North Roanoke's residents. Steve Craighead, recovering from severe burns suffered in a house fire, is one of Miller's many fans at North Roanoke. On Feb. 27, Craighead and about two dozen other residents listened as the centenarian accompanied bluegrass players on several traditional sacred songs.
"Basically, Granpa is an institution all by himself," Craighead said. "We wouldn't be the same without his harmonica."
Miller sat in a chair and played. He was nattily attired in a gray suit coat, white V-neck sweater and a bolo tie.
Bessie Hodge, 97, sat nearby in her wheelchair. Her left foot tapped a steady beat. She embraced a well-worn teddy bear and seemed happily transported back to days still cherished.
"I loved to dance," Hodge said. "I don't dance much anymore."
On occasion, resident James Brown plays one of the harmonicas stored in a wooden box attached to his walker. Brown said Granpa's playing beats his. He said he mainly blows the harps in his room to help time pass.
Hampton Anderson said he grew up in a church-loving family. He sat within arm's reach of the band and sang along softly with every sacred song.
"I used to know all the words but I haven't been to church in a long time," he said.
Anderson said he savors Sundays nights and the musicians' deft playing of banjo, Dobro, guitars, bass and harmonica.
"When they are here, I'm coming," Anderson said.
Nathan Tester, a church friend of Miller who drives the 100-year-old to his gigs, provides a brief religious service and comfort. He asked residents how many felt in need of prayer that night. Nearly every hand rose, some tremulously.
Fiddlin' and barberin'
The harmonica was Miller's first instrument. But over time he became a skilled fiddler. He and the "No Grass Band" performed for years around Smith Mountain Lake.
But after age bound up his shoulders. Miller returned to the harp.
He learned the fiddle too at an early age -- snatching the instrument from an older brother.
"Albert ordered a fiddle from Sears and Roebuck and I learned to play it before he learned to play it and it was his fiddle," Miller said, eyes twinkling.
While still young, he began listening to Grand Ole Opry broadcasts.
"I was living up in the country in Bland County with my uncle and aunt and they bought a kit radio. I'd sit there and listen to Nashville."
That's how Miller discovered an African-American musician whose gift he admires still.
"DeFord Bailey. You remember him? Nashville, Tennessee. He played the 'Fox Chase' on the harmonica and it sounded just like a fox chase. When you heard him playing, you just shook your head."
Miller, who left school in the fifth grade to work the family's farm, once dreamed of being a professional musician.
"I always liked the top bands there in Nashville. I was wondering how it might have been if I had been lucky enough to have gotten up there and played with some of them. I would have loved to have done it."
But Miller became a family man. In 1930, he began barbering with a brother in Roanoke and then ran his own barbershop on Ninth Street Southeast.
"I always loved it. That's the reason I stayed in it so long," he said.
Miller's shop was not a hangout for gossiping men.
"They'd get their hair cut and get out and get going," he said.
St. Clair agreed.
"He was not a communicator," he said. "He was actually known for giving one of the best and the quickest haircuts in the valley."
Miller hung up the clippers in 1987.
Music with meaning
He's outlived his five brothers, three sisters and two wives. Daughter Judy Miller St. Clair died last year. Daughter Shirley Robinson survives.
Mike St. Clair estimates that the man he and so many others call "Granpa" knows at least 250 songs by heart. St. Clair said he has never seen his father-in-law have a bad day.
Miller shrugged.
"I just live day to day. I do believe there is a man higher than I am upstairs. And I've tried not to be too bad a guy."
Any regrets about not turning pro with fiddle, guitar, mandolin or harp?
"Well, I wanted to make a living for my folks, my family. And I didn't care about making no big money. Just needed what I wanted to live on, you know, through life. I've been pretty lucky along that line."
And he believes the music he plays publicly still holds meaning and purpose.
"I've managed to help some of the folks, you know. Just give them a lift, I reckon you'd call it."
Scientific relief
Relatives believe that Bob "Granpa" Miller's nearly lifelong harmonica playing has supported his longevity.
It turns out they might be right.
The Sinai Hospital of Baltimore, the University of Michigan Medical Center and many other hospitals nationwide offer harmonica playing as a method of respiratory therapy to improve lung capacity and to keep airways open.
Sinai Hospital's program focuses on pediatric patients with asthma and pneumonia or young surgery patients confined to bed for long periods.
Williamsburg resident Buddy Wakefield, 87, helped inspire Sinai Hospital's program. Wakefield, who said he's played harmonica since age 7, determined that playing the instrument can aid breathing after his brother, who had Parkinson's disease, asked for his help.
Wakefield is nationally known as an advocate for respiratory therapy programs that incorporate the harp.
"I'm an old industrial fire chief," he said. "After I retired this took off and it's given me a sense of purpose."
-- Duncan Adams
Copyright © 2011 The Roanoke Times
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