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After half a century, Peters Township grads get band back together

8 min read
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Harry Funk / The Almanac

From left are Larry Angus, Bob Pearce, Roy Capenos, Tom McMurray and Tom Stuck.

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Harry Funk / The Almanac

Tom McMurray, left, and Tom Stuck rehearses for the reunion gig.

Finding the fountain of youth might be as simple as strapping on an electric guitar, cranking up an amplifier and jamming the opening riff of “Sunshine of Your Love.”

As Bob Pearce emulated Eric Clapton to kick off Cream’s late-’60s hit, his former Peters Township High School classmates joined in – Larry Angus on keyboards, Roy Capenos on drums and Tom McMurray on bass – before Tom Stuck started belting out the vocals:

Members of the Clementine Paddleford Memorial Public Band pose with Craig Slemmons’ 1951 Pontiac hearse, circa 1968.

“It’s getting near dawn, when lights close their tired eyes …”

And for the time being, they were transported back to 1968, when their Clementine Paddleford Memorial Public Band was rocking Peters Township and beyond.

The quintet got back together the second weekend of June for most of the members’ 50-year class reunion, playing a set of what since has become known as classic rock for others who returned for the occasion. Plenty of them probably were asking for reminders about how the band got its name, and the answer is from a famed food writer of the mid-20th century.

“What happened is that we were at practice one day, and Roy was scanning the bookshelf when we were taking a break,” Pearce, who lives in Baltimore, recalled. “He pulled out a Clementine Paddleford book and said, ‘Hey, this would be a great name for a band,’ and we called ourselves Clementine Paddleford.

“Then my mother said, ‘Oh, she’s dead.’ So we made it a memorial.”

Harry Funk / The Almanac

Harry Funk / The Almanac

Roy Capenos rehearses for the reunion gig.

The band got its start when Pearce, Capenos and McMurray all were in 10th grade, playing acoustic guitars and learning folk songs. Stuck and Angus – he’s two years younger than the rest of the members – joined a little while later, and they started branching out into blues and the R&B-based Motown sound.

“Then Roy one day got ahold of ‘Sgt. Pepper’s,'” Pearce said, “about the same time as the first Cream and Hendrix albums came out.”

The Beatles, in fact, released their nothing-like-it-before masterpiece “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts’ Club Band” a few weeks after the Jimi Hendrix Experience’s “Are You Experienced?” hit the shelves, just as school was about to let out for the summer of 1967. The revolutionary sounds contained in the records’ grooves had an immediate effect on the Paddleford boys.

“We actually shut down for about two months and redid our whole song list with the new stuff,” Stuck, a Savannah, Ga., resident, said.

While they learned new songs, they also modified their stage act to reflect the showmanship of rock concerts at the time. Another classmate, George Erdner, used projectors to put together a psychedelic light show for the band, and Pearce and Capenos built a strobe-type light from an old refrigerator motor.

Harry Funk / The Almanac

Harry Funk / The Almanac

Tom McMurray rehearses for the reunion gig.

They took all that to their post-hiatus debut at their high school, along with something that came from near where Stuck lived, on Demmel Drive.

“There was a pasture back there where the guy raised cattle, and we found a dead skull,” he recalled. “So we had a dead skull with neon orange eyes, and we put dry ice underneath it.

“When we got on the stage, all the people at the school just went like” – Stuck made an expression of utter incredulity – “have these guys lost their damn minds?”

Offstage, the guys also had a distinctive way of transporting their equipment, courtesy of yet another classmate, Craig Slemmons.

“Craig bought these strange vehicles,” Pearce said. “He had this Triumph Herald, and he had a couple of other cars. Then all of a sudden, he bought this ’51 Pontiac hearse. It still had the rollers in the back. And then he offered to take us around.”

Harry Funk / The Almanac

Harry Funk / The Almanac

Larry Angus rehearses for the reunion gig.

“We painted our logo on his hearse, but he didn’t want us to do it permanently, so we did it in watercolor,” he recalled. Considering the weather of Western Pennsylvania, the emblem tended to be temporary.

As the popularity of heavier, more cerebral rock music grew around the Pittsburgh area, so did the Clementine Paddleford Memorial Public Band’s opportunities for gigs, although some hosts didn’t realize exactly what they were getting.

“We’d get hired at a fraternity house to play soul music, and we’d say, ‘Here’s a new one by the Temptations,'” McMurray, who these days serves as Peters Township School Board president, said. “And we’d start playing Cream.”

As they took a break from rehearsing for their reunion gig, members of the quintet shared stories about some memorable performances, including Carnegie Mellon University’s Beaux Arts Ball. The headlining act for that occasion was the Morgantown, W.Va., band Mind Garage, which later released two albums on RCA Victor and declined an invitation to play at Woodstock.

Harry Funk / The Almanac

Bob Pearce

Harry Funk / The Almanac

Harry Funk / The Almanac

Bob Pearce rehearses for the reunion gig.

“They were complimentary,” Capenos said about the Mind Garage members’ reaction to the Paddleford set. “They thought, with the equipment we had, that we did quite well.”

The band once played the Holiday House, the Monroeville venue that closed in 1988 after hosting some of the most famous acts in music during its heyday. A large crowd was gathered as the Paddlefords started their set.

“Then Little Richard came in with a red cape on,” Angus said about that night’s headliner, “and the whole room emptied when he left.”

A few other gigs were at WQED-TV for a show called “The Place,” hosted by the Rev. Dennis Benson. The guys recalled having to move some of the scenery for “Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood” in order to fit their equipment.

“For a green screen behind us, they did drawings of all our faces,” Angus, who lives in Martinsburg, W.Va., recalled. “They were sketches in charcoal. And after we left our last show, they threw them in the garbage. I reached down and grabbed them, and I’ve kept them all these years.”

The impetus for reuniting the Clementine Paddleford Memorial Public Band after all these years came from Stuck, who started sending emails about the possibility last year:

Harry Funk / The Almanac

Harry Funk / The Almanac

Tom Stuck rehearses for the reunion gig.

“Much to my surprise, everybody said, ‘Yeah, let’s do it.'”

Capenos, a South Fayette Township resident, admitted to some reservations, as he had suffered a serious injury several years ago. But he decided to get back behind the kit, in part because the rest of the band had supported him in setting what then was an American record for nonstop drumming as a fundraising activity.

The news traveled all the way to Indiana, Pa., where the Gazette of July 22, 1968 reported:

“Backed up at times by the Clementine Paddleford Memorial Public Band, a rock ‘n’ roll group, Capenos set out Friday around 4 p.m. to beat the old record of 49 hours and 50 minutes he set last summer. He stopped at 7:25 p.m. Sunday. When Capenos finished up at the Crossroads Music center in the Pittsburgh suburb of McMurray, he said he was going swimming at a friend’s house. He went to sleep instead.”

A month or so after that, Capenos, McMurray and Pierce headed off for college. Stuck, who was studying locally, kept the band going for a while, until Angus graduated from high school.

And that was that, until the fountain of youth beckoned in 2018.

Peters Township commencement tradition continues

At a young age, Bill Merrell remembers his father getting ready for this 25-year high school reunion.

“I was sitting at the edge of his bed looking at him and thinking, I hope I never get that old,” he recalled. “It’s funny how distance and time can adjust your thinking.”

Merrell and fellow members of the Peters Township High School Class of 1968 have doubled that total, marking half a century since their graduation. About 50 of them returned to this year’s commencement as part of a long-standing tradition of the current class inviting graduates from five decades previously to take part in the ceremony.

“What’s neat about this is I believe it’s the only one around,” Merrell said. “I have not heard of anybody who does the same kind of thing.”

He and another ’68 graduate, Tom McMurray, have the distinction of serving on the school board for the district they attended when Peters still was pretty much of a farming community.

“When you see people actually care enough to come back after 50 years, I believe that really demonstrates to the students the connection we had with the district when we were going there,” Merrell said.

As chairman of this year’s reunion committee, this marks the 11th time he has been part of or headed the efforts to bring classmates back for a trip down memory lane. Also invited this year were Richard St. Clair, who served as high school principal in the late 1960s, and four teachers who were there at the same time.

A U.S. Air Force veteran, Merrell made sure to acknowledge the eight members of his class who also served in the armed forces and the nine in the Class of 2018 who are joining the military.

“We point everybody out when they do well on the SAT or ACT,” he said about achievement tests, “and when they score a touchdown, we point out the athletes. But those who are giving a commitment to serve their nation, we just don’t pay attention to, and I think maybe we ought to change that a tad.”

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