Jan. 15, 1972: Ramsdell Whitney

 

A band from the deep South Towns that’s pretty much been lost in the mists of time, with the exception of one member. See the Footnote:

Jan. 15, 1972 

Majority Vote Rules Their Music 

        The Friday night crowd is still out on the other side of Colden Valley, squeezing the last precious crystal of fun out of those twin ski slopes before the night lights go out.

        “They usually don’t start coming in until about 11,” says Ramsdell Whitney’s drummer and leader John Germain while the owner of the Red Barn Lodge on Holland-Glenwood Road throws some more cartons into a reluctant fire to drive off the chill.

* * *

“BY MIDNIGHT,” John continues, “the place is packed. If they went back to Buffalo, they wouldn’t get to a club until 1 a.m. or so. Here it’s close and they can come as they are.”

* * *

AFTER NEXT week, when they do a Saturday night high school dance in Franklinville, Ramsdell Whitney will be the season ticket at Red Barn Lodge. Every Thursday, Friday and Saturday night until spring.

        Around Springville, the group’s home base, the nine of them are still known as “the old Abbey Road.”

        Even though they shed that name last summer. Even though only five of them are front that old group.

        Rangy bass guitarist Dan Saunders, one of the five, obviously has heard enough of it. “I don’t want to talk about the old group,” he says. “Let’s talk about this one.”

        It’s a different band than it must have been six months ago (“The guy who was our lead singer couldn’t do Janis Joplin like Holly can,” one says) and there’s no doubt that there’s a lot of talent unfolding in Ramsdell Whitney.

        At one time, they did a whole side straight through from the Chicago II album, but now they spread their 50-song repertoire from James Brown’s “Poppa’s Got a Brand New Bag” to “Heaven’s On My Mind” to “Jesus Christ Superstar” (with singer Holly Whitehill on electric violin).

* * *

IN FACT, some of their most satisfying tunes this uneven Friday night – like “Color My World” and “Smiling Faces Sometimes” – are the ones where they escape from those fast chunking rhythms punctuated by the three horns.

        “One of the compliments we get,” singer Mike Brown says, “is that we fill the place up with sound, but we don’t blast people out.”

* * *

HOLLY’S COLD keeps her from showing what she could really do with Janis’ “Move Over” and there are times when her energetic manner overwhelms Mike, her lead singing partner.

        Saxophonist Mary Koningisor and electric pianist Barb Hoch are admirable and both get up regularly to throw on tight harmonies. Almost everybody plays two instruments or more.

        When he isn’t playing rhythm, guitarist Denny Carnahan throws out a couple fluid single-line solos. And trumpet player Paul Seymour, the group’s musical arranger, snaps the horns through their precision paces like a prodigy conductor.

        “I’d like more horn players, more strings,” he says.

        “He’d like to have a 40-piece band,” Denny remarks.

        “I’d like to have as many people in this band as we could,” Paul replies, “but we can’t make enough money as it is.”

* * *

OF MORE importance is working up new songs, a problem now that a third of the band is away at college. Holly wants more Carole King and Janis. Denny wants old Beatles. Mike wants “Big Brother.” Paul wants Lighthouse.

        What they play (like everything else) comes down to a majority vote and Paul works up horn and guitar parts for them whether he likes them or not.

        “If I don’t like a song,” he says, “I arrange it so I do like it.”

* * *

A FAR CRY from the original five-piece band which debuted at a Springville CYO dance two summers ago.

        They were a seven-piece group with horns when they made their second appearance – the first Springville Dance Marathon. It was their first break.

        They caught the attention of booking agent Mrs. Connie Stypowany, who’s kept them playing clubs and schools in Southern Erie, Cattaraugus and Chautauqua counties since then. And it got them invited back to the marathon last month.

        “We were the first band called,” Paul says. “It was my idea to have us play first and last.”

* * *

THEY ALSO got to play in the middle. On the second night, when a scheduled band didn’t show up, marathon chairman Joan Fiedler spotted Ramsdell Whitney on the sidelines and asked them to fill in.

        It was a good set. So good the dancers voted them the best group of the three-day affair. The reward was a free two-hour recording session at Buffalo’s Sound & Stage Studios.

        Their ambition now is to get into Buffalo clubs. The first try was a disaster.

* * *

THEY PLAYED a West Side club after a two-week layoff last fall to audition for another agent and ran into rusty playing and an unsympathetic crowd. Beyond Buffalo, nobody knows.

        “Everything’s so uncertain,” Paul says. “You never know where somebody’s going to school or about the draft.”

        “But we’re all having a lot of fun now,” John says, “and that’s what counts.” 

The box/sidebar: 

In the Summer of ‘70 

Pertinent information about Ramsdell Whitney:

        Holly Whitehill, 18, vocals and electric violin, Hamburg High School, gas company clerk, single.

        Mike Brown, 23, vocals and keyboards, Pine Valley High (South Dayton), Programming & Systems Institute graduate, married, one son.

        Barbara Hoch, 18, backup vocals and keyboards, senior at Griffith Institute High School (Springville), single.

        Denny Carnahan, 20, electric and bass guitar, Griffith Institute, single.

        Dan Saunders, 18, bass guitar, trumpet and guitar, Griffith Institute, freshman at Alfred University, single.

        Paul Seymour, 19, trumpet and backup vocals, Griffith Institute, freshman music major at Fredonia State, single.

        Mary Koningisor, 18, saxophone, clarinet and backup vocals, Griffith Institute, freshman music major at Fredonia State, single.

        Vinny Mecca, 22, trombone, North Collins High, Buffalo State graduate, single.

        John Germain, 18, drums and backup vocals, St. Francis High (Athol Springs), sophomore at Hilbert College, drum teacher at Hamburg music store, single.

* * *

DENNY, DAN, MARY, Paul and Barbara are veterans of the original band, which began as Abbey’s Road in the summer of 1970.

        When drummer Ferris (Abbey) Abdo went into the Seabees last summer, the group advertised for a singer and a drummer. Mike answered the ad and brought Holly, whom he’s sung with in Wailing Beamish, an underground Hamburg group.

        John, who played with Formulation Blues Band and Pleasant Avenue, a commercial group, was a friend of someone’s friend.

* * *

VINNY, who replaced a girl who went to college in Oswego, played with Opus One. He and John teach the Lake View Shoreliners Junior Drum Corps.

        When Abbey went, the name had to go also, but the new one has the same kind of personal associations. Ramsdell is Paul’s middle name. Whitney is Dan’s.

        Like everyone in the band whose protests get overruled by the majority, they’ve learned to live with it.

* * * * *

PHOTO CAPTIONS: Bottom photo – Ramsdell Whitney, from left front, trombonist Vinny Mecca, drummer John Germain, vocalist Holly Whitehill, pianist Barbara Hoch, saxophonist Mary Koningiser and bass guitarist Dan Saunders. Rear, guitarist Denny Carnahan, vocalist Mike Brown and trumpeter Paul Seymour. Top photo – singers Holly Whitehill and Mike Brown.

* * * * *

FOOTNOTE: Drummer John Germain turns up in a Buffalo News Death Notice from 2017, which is accompanied by a picture of him sitting in the middle of his drum kit. It notes that he toured with a group called Fancy Colors, then began a 30-year career in the Marine Corps, playing in bands wherever he was stationed. Also a runner, he competed in 110 full marathons. He was living in Jacksonville, Fla., and playing with a party band called Freeway.

Not much else about the rest of Ramsdell Whitney on Google, though, aside from a notation in the pages of the Burdick Genealogy saying that on March 31, 1972, Mary Eleanore Koningiser married Daniel Whitney Saunders and they had a son in September.