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 Saturday,
May 26, 2001 at the Sacramento Jazz Jubilee, hundreds of Pete Clute fans and friends
were stunned by the announcement of his sudden and unexpected death. He was only
67. He was found that morning in his car in San Jose, parked near a gas station.
He was en route to pick up his wife at her San Jose consignment shop and had
planned to head to Sacramento for the weekend's jazz festivities. He apparently
suffered a heart attack. Nick Dragos of Sacramento Radio KXJZ FM 88.9 graciously
announced the unfortunate news over the airways, dedicating his live Jazz
Jubilee broadcast to the memory of Pete Clute. The rest of us just kept playing.
That's what Pete would have wanted us to do, but it was hard coming to grips
with the notion that from now on, Pete Clute would only be joining our
traditional jazz and ragtime festivals in spirit. It added new meaning to the
commemoration of Memorial Day.
Five years ago Pete and his wife Carol moved to Jackson, CA in the heart of
California's Mother Lode. From Jackson, Pete continued to serve as a key
organizer for the Combined Hot & Cool Jazz
Festivals. When Pete learned that
we were planning a new ragtime festival in the neighboring town of Sutter Creek,
he appeared at the Sutter Creek Ice Cream Emporium and volunteered to help.
Anyone of his fame and experience might have asked, justifiably, what we could
pay him for his advice and participation, but Pete didn't ask for a dime.
Imagine starting a new and relatively amateur ragtime festival with a name like
Pete Clute on the line-up. We will remain forever grateful to Pete for his
support.
At the time, Pete was playing regularly at the Palace Hotel in Sutter Creek. He
made sure the Palace became a venue for the "First Ever Sutter Creek
Ragtime Festival - 1999" and he headlined as the opener of our Saturday
evening concert, playing his own lovely compositions. For the Second Annual
Sutter Creek Festival, Pete was there again, performing outside in the hot sun,
opening the evening concert, and doing whatever was needed to make the Festival
a success. We're going to miss him and will be dedicating the 3rd Annual Sutter
Creek Ragtime Festival to his memory.
Pete Clute was my very first ragtime hero. In the early 60's, as an underage
college co-ed, I used to sneak into San Francisco's Earthquake McGoon's (hoping
not to be asked for my ID) just to watch Pete Clute hold forth on the piano with
the Turk Murphy band. Richard Zimmerman was also influenced by Pete during the
early, wondrous era of Earthquake McGoon's. He was an engineering student at
Stanford and Pete encouraged him to start collecting old sheet music and piano
rolls. Today Richard Zimmerman has one of the grandest collections in the world.
He fondly recalls that Pete would lend him the originals of very rare rags (we
didn't have photocopy machines in those days), and that's one of the reasons
Zimmerman developed such an incredible ragtime performance repertoire.
Pete Clute was a California native, born in 1933 in Ross, orphaned shortly after
his birth, and raised by his grandmother, who had him taking piano lessons by
age 5. Pete and his older brother, Cedric, began junking for sheet music and old
records as kids. Pete learned how to read professional charts and arrange music
while playing with the dance band at Tamalpais High in Marin County. In 1951
Pete entered Stanford University as a history and economics major. By that time,
Pete was enamored with ragtime and the traditional jazz style played in and
around the San Francisco Bay Area by trumpeter Lu Watters, trombonist Turk
Murphy, and especially pianist Wally Rose. Wally mentored Pete and took him in
as a piano student. I recall asking Pete what Wally Rose taught him. Pete
replied that Wally made him play classical music, insisting that classical
training was the basis for any good piano playing, no matter what style.
Before long, Pete was moonlighting as a musician, playing with Turk Murphy,
clarinetist Bob Helm, and others, and in 1954 he dropped out of Stanford to take
Wally Rose's place with the Turk Murphy band for a year. Eventually he returned
to Stanford, graduating in 1956, but the following year he was back with the
Turk Murphy band and remained Turk's pianist and business partner till 1978.
Together Pete and Turk opened the first Earthquake McGoon's on Broadway in 1960.
Two years later they moved it to the old William Tell Hotel site on Clay street,
where it remained one of the finest and most famous traditional jazz clubs in
the world for 16 years.
In 1978 when the club moved to a lamentably inappropriate location on the
Embarcadero, Pete left to join the Natural Gas Jazz Band, which also featured
banjoist Carl Lunsford, another former member of Turk Murphy's band. Carl and
Pete have been playing together ever since, either with Natural Gas, or as a
duet. Pete and Carl were slated for a return appearance at the West Coast
Ragtime Festival this November in Sacramento. They frequently performed at West
Coast and for the Scott Joplin Ragtime Festival in Sedalia.
Among his many accomplishments, Pete was the co-author of "San Francisco
Invited the World, The Panama Pacific International Exposition of 1915", a
beautifully illustrated book with photos and ephemera from his private
collection. He also co-authored "The Great Revival - The Story of the San
Francisco Jazz Revival" and he was working on a third book, a history of
Earthquake Magoon's. He went out of his way to encourage me in my research and
writing, always advising me to use "lots of pictures." His books are
stupendous examples of what he meant.
Pete was a founding member of the Mother Lode Ragtime Society and played at our
gatherings whenever he could. He had a quiet, but marvelous sense of humor, an
unforgettable smile, and a firm conviction that life was to be enjoyed. He
certainly brought a lot of joy and goodwill to those who had the honor and
fortune to know and share music with him.
He is survived by his brother, Cedric, of Volcano, CA, his wife, Carol, and his
daughter Amy.
We are grateful to Philip Elwood of the San Francisco Chronicle for his
Monday, May 30, 2001 obituary which filled us in on the details of Pete Clute's life.
Below are pictures of Pete.
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A young Pete Clute
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Pete Clute, June 2000
Photo by Eric Holroyd©
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| The author, Nan Bostick, had the thrill of her life subbing at
the Palace Hotel for her first ragtime hero, Pete Clute, so he could run
down the street and open the "Celebration of Ragtime" evening
concert at the "First Ever Sutter Creek Ragtime Festival"
August 14, 1999. |
Pete Clute opening the Saturday evening concert at
the "First Ever
Sutter Creek Ragtime Festival," August 14, 1999.
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