October 6, 2023- As the band bantered, this evening at Rafter Eleven, a hand drummer joined and was promptly christened “Jerry, from a band of one two many Bruces”. The context was never explained, but it gave rise to this little story, in my head.

There were once two musically-inclined cousins, Bruce and Jerry. They grew up, close to one another, in Swarthmore, PA, home of a “Little Ivy League” college-which gave the town its name. Bruce wasn’t much of a student, in the usual sense, but he could read music from the age of 3. Jerry, on the other hand, couldn’t tell a G clef from an B sharp, but he could make his guitar sing-from the time he got it, at the age of 5. He was also a book worm, and would make up song lyrics from the things he read-having been first inspired by “Zippity doo dah”, from Walt Disney’s “Song of The South”. He kind of hit a brick wall, when trying to make songs about the Periodic Table of The Elements. That’s where a second Bruce came in. Bruce A. was a classmate of Jerry’s, having moved to Swarthmore with his family, from a small town in Alabama, called Eutaw. Coming from a family of Blues musicians, Bruce A. would sit in on the cousins’ jamming and lend his vocal talents to Jerry’s lyrics. B. A. made up his own songs about hydrogen, oxygen, and neon-and krypton, where his Blues aria about Superman had the Man of Steel tossin’ whole planets around. That brought in Bruce # 3, who was actually a girl.

Brucella Mantooth was a Choctaw girl,from “somewhere in Oklahoma; I think it starts with a T.” That turned out to be Tahlequah, where most everyone else was Cherokee. The reason the Mantooths came to Swarthmore was that B’s mom was a Professor of Native American Studies, at a time when everyone referred to the First Americans simply as “Indians”. Work opportunities for First Nations scholars were few and far between, even in Oklahoma, which used to be called Indian Territory. Swarthmore wanted to make a mark for itself, so the N.A.S. Baccalaureate and Master of Arts programs were started.

Bruce M. could play seven types of drums, from a big “powwow-type” drum to little bongos. She added a dramatic flair to the Superman songs that came from Bruce A.’s head. There were regular jams, in the back yard or garage, of one cousin or another, from the time they were all seven, until they were ten.

One day, Jerry came to a realization: There were one too many Bruces- and only one Jerry. He quietly fussed and fumed about the situation, not letting it get in the way of the band’s activities. Brucella, though, was intuitive-and determined she would find a solution to the problem, without making a big fuss. So, one day, she walked in with a new friend.

Geraldine Spector came from the city-Philly, and not just from anywhere, but from Old City. She was from an old time rock and roll/rhythm and blues family-her uncle invented the “Wall of Sound”, but Jerry was into country music, of all things. It started when she was learning to ride horses, first English style, then Western. With the latter style came a fascination with cowboys, and their music. When Jerry met Bruce M., at a mini-rodeo, the tapes played by Brucella’s Dad in his truck, left the slightly older girl hooked on the genre. The two girls, a year apart in age, became inseparable, and so, the band got its second singer, who could also play a mean keyboard.

As ten and eleven became thirteen and fourteen, the kids’ voices changed, there was a hiatus for that sort of discomfort to pass, and then the group took off again-being a staple at local high school dances-and small music festivals around Philadelphia. They came up with a dance, “Philly Dog”, which got cachet when mentioned in the hit song, “Land of A Thousand Dances”. They did soaring, rock-opera type songs, twangy country tunes about love and loss-and to placate Jerry S’s family, some covers of her aunt’s girl band classics.

There was still one little burr in the saddle: One two many Bruces.

(DISCLAIMER: Any relationship between the characters in this story and real people is purely coincidental.)