missed the plane/ part 7

missed the plane/ part 7

fiction
Edward w Pritchard


how Elmore James and my Father integrated the US military


 note- my Father would never discuss his military service, so this story has a lot of surmising in it, no proof exists to collaborate things.

Guam in the Pacific Ocean in 1944 smack in the middle of the air war against Japan. My Father then 20 years old was company clerk working in a Quonset hut on the edge of the jungle and he had a big problem. The company's radio was on the blink, there was no one to fix it since all the engineers were working on the bomber planes, the Captain was about to have the privates head [my Father], and drastic measures were necessary to fix the radio to allow the war effort against the Japanese from Guam to move forward. 

That's how my Father Ed Pritchard Sr. US Air force company clerk came to meet Elmore James radio repairman US Navy. The radio was duly fixed by James and the two enlisted men became friends over a joint interest in music. Pritchard wanted to be a classical piano player and James played guitar, an electric guitar amplified by his own secret methods, across the American South before the war. 

After a fight between white and black soldiers at the local off duty bar Pritchard, who studied piano and violin at University before he was drafted,  found himself ordered by his Captain to play boogie woogie piano under the direction of Elmo James who had experience leading several pickup bands in the American South before the war. For several months the Black musician Elmore James would sing and play backed up by my Father on piano as lonely white and black soldiers listened to the new style of blues music from the Mississippi delta. There were no more racially motivated fights among the American soldiers on Guam. Some credited it to the music played at the local enlisted men's club.

Later after the war both men would die early deaths from heart problems perhaps suffered from the stress of world war two, and neither received any veterans benefits. Elmore James strongly influenced world wide music in the 1960's although he never received top billing or star status and fame during his lifetime. Ed Pritchard sr., never became a classical piano player, but  once in a while he fooled around with boogie woogie piano for his oldest son before his death in 1969.