Yearbook photo

Yearbook name: Gaylord DeWitt Draper (Gary)

Bio:

In the couple of years after college, before settling into “a real job,” I moved around the country, maybe 20 employers, and wrote—principally poetry and short stories, finally shifting into songwriting. In large measure, this was because one of my closest friends was a naval engineer who aspired to be a singer songwriter, and I was plunking around on a guitar anyway. I met him during the summer in Germany after my first year in college. He was writing music and wanted to be a star, I was writing lyrics to his melodies and didn’t. He was Neil Young and Gordon Lightfoot, I was Phil Ochs and someone you’ve never heard of. It just didn’t work out.

Then, after raising a family (my wife and I have two sons and a new grandson), and reaching retirement from Justice (Civil Rights and the Office of Special Counsel), where I wrote a lot of nonfiction, I returned to the introspection of poetry, and then again to songs. Once I had more than a handful of guitars—and a few hundred songs—I concluded this is what I’ll probably be doing with the rest of my life (along with tennis, biking, racquetball, golf, and anything else that keeps my knees lubricated or my heart rate up).

With only a couple exceptions, all my songs were written between 1968 and 1977, or after 2006;  I recorded them in the latter period, after I had retired, and finally, within the last four years, registered the copyright for the words, music, and recordings. In connection with this 50th reunion thing, it was natural to think about the influences from Marshall faculty in contributing to this hobby of mine.  Without a doubt, it was Mrs. Truesdale, Mr. Fleming, and Mr. Kryston, the one who made it really okay to be out there… oh, and Mrs. Little who taught me the meaning of primary sources, which sustains me in this life and in the last… and, oh yeah, Norm Bradford for, ahh, those kip-ups, clearly the primary source of my agility and my spinal degeneration.

Sometimes the songs are driven by events affecting me or others, or triggered by something I read (for example, “Watch the River Rise” was inspired by Katrina; “God’s Will” was extracted from the 2008 Presidential campaign; a passenger manifest resulted in “The Eastern Queen”; a book by Eric Bentley, Thirty Years of Treason, excerpting hearings of the HUAC Committee, became “Actors and Writers”; a biography and book review of a 19th Century English critic became “Hazlitt (My Father’s Son)”; the story of “Captain Jack,” the chief of the Modoc Nation, was drawn from the account in Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee). And then there’s the license to create pure fiction, of things that did not and could not happen, like “Our Emily,” in which Wallace Stevens, Whitman, and Baudelaire chat with Emily Dickinson.

I write songs, but I’m no vocalist, and certainly no musician. In addition to the following songs, I’ve posted some others at http://www.youtube.com/user/kleistsjug/videos.

“Her Love is a Promise”

“Always Reminiscing”

“Morning Glory”

“Like Daffodils She Dances”

“Slower Than Molassas”

“Just Another Phase”

“I Will Not Be Proud”

“Wait Wait Some More”

“Take Cover”

“Can’t You Feel the Glow”

“I Am the People and Their Soverign”

“In your Eyes”