Remembering a gypsy songman

John Vandiver

I have only five framed photographs hanging on the wall in the office of my home, the place where I compose the entries for this journal. One is of a reflection pool in Seville, Spain, one of the few photographs I took of which I am incredibly proud. There are also photographs of my son Chance when he was 3, my marvelous granddaughter Grace, and my younger brother Jim who died almost 25 years ago and whom I still miss every single day. The other photograph is of John Vandiver taken during a performance at Rockefeller’s in Houston. John is at the center and he is flanked in the photograph by such other great musicians as Shake Russell, Michael Mashkes, Michael Mercoulier and Dana Cooper.

For the first 25 years of its existence I attended every single Kerrville Folk Festival. I especially remember the 1979 edition. Chance was less than a year old and this festival was his first experience outside the four walls of our Dallas home. I figured he would, at most, take three days and nights of tent living before insisting we had back north. To my wonderful surprise and amazement, the only time he threw a fit was when we folded the tent to leave after spending three weeks at Quiet Valley Ranch.

Anyway, John was on stage at one particular afternoon performance that year singing his incredible version of Cake Walk Into Town, when Chance got up from his seat next to me and began “cake walking” toward the stage. It marked his first steps on his own.

As the years and the festivals wore on, Chance and John developed their own special friendship. John would bring this old nag of a horse with him to the ranch and Chance fell in love with that animal. He would spend all day at the fence line reaching through the wire to pet and talk to the horse. As a result, John decided to call the horse “Chance.”

I remember once, a couple of weeks before John was murdered, taking Billy Gibbons of ZZ Top to a Houston club to see John perform. Billy could only stay through about a half-dozen numbers, but when we left he promised me he was going to get John into a recording studio and produce a album by him.

The weekend John was killed he called me and asked if Chance and I could come to Magnolia to spend that weekend at his ranch. As fate would have it, I already made other plans. I later came to learn I was down the list of people John called that day asking them to spend the weekend with him. He must have had a premonition.

I also remember very well being awakened at 3:20 a.m. that Saturday morning by a ringing telephone. At the other end of the line was Michael Mashkes telling me that John had been murdered.

All these thoughts came back to me this evening as I read singer/songwriter Robert Earl Keen’s fitting tribute to the Gypsy Songman. It is well worth the time it takes to read it.