Oct. 5, 1974: Key & Cleary

 

Meet a pair of entrepreneurs who were determined to lift Buffalo up through art as well as industry. 

Oct. 5, 1974

Key and Cleary – ‘Soulful Twine With Quiet Power’ 

“Somewhere to lay your head

Somewhere to lay your head” 

YOU MAY HAVE HEARD IT on the radio, the voices rising out of the grooves the way no voices have done since Johnny and Joe sang “Over the Mountain” back in 1956 – a soulful twine that’s natural, not machine-finished, a quiet power that moves you the way no loud power ever could.

          “We had the opportunity to record our record in New York City or Cleveland,” says Jesse Key, half of the partnership of Key & Cleary that wrote the song and sang it, “but we thought what better place to do it than right here in Buffalo.

          “Rich McCarthy over at Studio 9 on Bailey, he was so excited about it he held his hands up like this and said: ‘It’s got to go!’

* * *

“WE RECORDED that song at 5 o’clock in the morning. You can feel the whole quietness of the hour in it. When we were finished, we walked out into the brightest day we’ve ever seen in Buffalo.

          “The song is all about the good people in the city,” he explains. “They want things to go. They want to smile. That’s why the song has got to go so far. It does so many things for so many people.” 

“Not like the bristle of cold

Not like wet ran and snow

But like the sun that shines

Through a sparkling glass of wine

Somewhere to lay your head

Somewhere to lay your head” 

          From the street, the compound where Jesse Key and Sylvester Cleary live on Buffalo’s East Side looks simply like a couple abandoned, boarded-up houses with a garage door in between.

* * *

INSIDE THERE’S a paved courtyard between the houses. It’s surrounded by a concrete wall. On top of the wall is a fence and covering the house is canvas.

          Actually, there isn’t that much to see. A couple statues sit in corners. Bold signboards cover the walls. One says: “You Are Important. Buffalo’s Wealth Is Her People.”

          The ultra-security is to ward off random jealousy at their optimism and success.

          It dates from the shots that were fired at them and the fire bombing that came on the eve of the biggest contract that their construction company ever had. It knocked them out of business.

          Key shushes the dog. “Since the firebombing, we didn’t want anybody to know what’s going on back here,” he says. “Nobody can see anything. We’re completely isolated.” 

“Not with those who hold out their hands

And with a smile take everything from you they can

But with those whose warmth you can feel

And flows that friendship that is natural and real

Somewhere to lay your head

Somewhere to lay your head” 

          Key’s symbolic paintings, which he puts on plywood, are all over the compound. One of this is about growing up in Mississippi. The cotton gin is in it. So is the cabin he lived in.

* * *

“YEAH, I picked cotton and chopped corn stalks and all that,” he says. He learned guitar from a guy who used to play around the cotton gin.

          He learned carpentry from his father, wood grains and nail sizes, studs and joists. He used it to earn his way through high school and college, where he majored in art.

          Sylvester Cleary is Buffalo born and raised. When he first met Key at a party, he was just back from Vietnam, where he’d done time as a “tunnel rat,” exploring treacherous guerrilla underground passageways.

          He was taking psychology at UB. Key was teaching art a Clinton Junior High. It was a high-powered friendship right from the start, as if the two had been waiting all their lives to get together.

          “We decided we wanted to change the physical appearance, the atmosphere of Jefferson Avenue,” Key says. “So it was let’s go into business. We had just $2.50 apiece and the belief we could do it.”

* * *

THEY STARTED by knocking on doors and asking to do home repairs. Then they had a crew of three, then seven, then 17.

          In 1972, they were considered the biggest minority-owned construction business in the city.

          “Our point was that if you’re willing to work for something and pay the cost for something and treat people right, you’ll make it,” Key says.

          “We did an entrance for a church daycare center at East Ferry and Michigan with two raised relief sculpture pieces on each side,” Cleary says. “They weren’t even in the contract. We gave everything we had for that job.

          “We wanted the preacher to know someone out there was doin’ something for the betterment of the community. He told us: ‘You people have more faith than a lotta preachers.’ We told him it was in us.” 

“You see, mankind has lived for many a day

Sometimes we don’t know if he’s done it the right way

Loving each other and trying to give the most

Centuries of caring is where love has led

That’s the only real place one can find to lay his head

Somewhere to lay your head

Somewhere to lay your head” 

          Key & Cleary’s office is fairly bare these days. No more secretary. Just a big pool table, a few paintings and inspirations, a tape recorder, a few couches and chairs.

* * *

KEY SHOWS the dream he and Cleary designed. He shows their file full of ideas for future projects, the cassette tapes of the intense conversations and reaffirmations the two have regularly, the collection of 250-odd writings they call “Poems of a Black Business.”

          “Lay Your Head” is one of those poems. After it was recorded, they took it to Transcontinent Records head Lenny Silver, who put it on his Amherst label.

          Now, finding that radio stations prefer a slicker production, he’s flying them to Los Angeles to re-record it.

          “We honestly believe this is it,” Cleary says. “In the past we’ve been shot down, but like we had to reach this point in life to realize what that means.

          “Our whole essence is to make people realize who they are and how much they have to give. In the worst places, you find your best people.”

* * * * *

IN THE PHOTO: Sylvester Cleary, left, and Jesse Key.

* * * * *

FOOTNOTE: Key and Cleary followed their venture in the construction business with a health food store and produced a candy bar, “The Buffalo Treat,” that they sold locally.

          “Lay Your Head” wasn’t their only recording. They kept going until personal differences split them up in the mid 1980s. By then, they had started their own label, Buffalo’s Reflection. Among its releases was their best-known song, “What It Takes to Live,” which has been anthologized and is considered a classic of Northern Soul.

Buffalo News critic Jeff Miers, writing in 2019, reported that Key & Cleary were rediscovered around 2000 by David Griffiths, a New York deejay, producer and A&R man who found one of their singles among old stuff in a record shop. He turned West Coast hip-hop producer Eothen “Egon” Alapatt on to them.

Miers said that Griffiths and Alapatt, who had a little reissue label and an appreciative ear for Black music from the ‘70s, dug up all the Key & Cleary stuff they could find and went looking for Jesse and Sylvester to get permission to re-release it. Griffiths tracked down Cleary in Forestville, where he has lived for 40 years. Key, who’s still in Buffalo, turned down an opportunity to be involved in the project. There was enough of their music to fill a double album, “Love Is the Way,” which came out in 2019.

          “Spiritually,” Griffiths told Miers, “Key & Cleary have a lot in common with hip-hop. They come from the same place – the idea of making something from whatever they had on hand and at the same time, exploring sounds from different places. They were outside the mainstream, they were determined to make something original, they were proud, they were brave and they were having fun.”

Cleary went on to become a banker and managed Fleet Bank branches in Erie and Chautauqua counties. Now retired, he is a member of the Forestville School Board and the Erie 2 Chautauqua-Cattaraugus BOCES Board of Education and president of the Chautauqua County School Boards Association.  Earlier this year, he became president of the New York Caucus of Black School Board Members. He wrote a song, “Stand Up for Public Education,” that was played at the National School Boards Association’s convention in 2016. He also hosts an independent radio program sponsored by the New York State Lottery.

Key continued his career in the classroom, earning a master’s degree in education from SUNY Buffalo State and teaching in the Buffalo schools for more than 25 years. These days he’s a motivational speaker, encouraging young people to be more culturally aware. A look at his artwork and links to him performing songs from his 2019 album, entitled “What It Takes to Live,” can be found on his Facebook page.