Blattner, in front on guitar
Sunday afternoon, dozens of friends, family members, high school classmates, and former bandmates gathered inside the Casa Loma Ballroom, taking time to reminisce about the life of Jules Blattner, who passed away at age 78 on June 7, after a several-years-long battle with ALS. Onstage, a colorful statement confirmed the passing in lights, noting his name and the simple phrase “The Gig Is Over.”
The guitarist and bandleader was a staple on the teen town scene of the late '50 and early '60s, before house band roles at the Butterscotch Lounge and Whiskey a Go Go, a pair of venues in the vaunted Gaslight Square. In addition to playing in St. Louis proper, his bands, the Teen Tones and the later Twist Tones, were regulars in the nightclub circuits of southwestern Illinois, a status they’d enjoy until his departure from the area in 1968, at which point he’d signed on for USO tours of Asia.
Although St. Louisans of a certain vintage will remember this time of Blattner’s career, he’d continue touring throughout the '70s and early '80s, with a group called the Warren Groovy All Star Band. They secured a winter home in Florida and a summer residence in the northern Midwest, with a strong presence in states like Wisconsin and Minnesota, as well as pockets of support in Canada. In 1984, he returned to St. Louis and a revived version of the Teen Tones was back in action a year later. Various local and national labels released music by the group, though they were never quite able to break into sustained, national airplay (but not for lack of trying).
In 2003, Blattner retired from music, suddenly and permanently, in order to care for his ailing mother, who’d live another four years. Her passing wouldn’t change his status, though; he’d put his guitar away and would never pick it up again, with no reunion shows or special gigs strong enough to tempt him out of his self-imposed retirement.
Blattner and his wife, Georgean Goewert, were a couple for 30 years and they’d known each other for double that time. But they would’ve celebrated their first anniversary of marriage only last Friday.
She said that through that half-century-plus, “he was the same guy. He never changed. He always had the same personality, happy-go-lucky all the time. And he didn’t let the disease get him down. Even with the disease, he had a sense of humor. I was in the room with him when his ex-wife came in and asked how he was. ‘I’m dying. How the hell do you think I’m doing?’ He was fine with how everything had gone for him.”
Echoing the comments of others, Goewert notes that when Blattner made the decision to lock away his guitar, he was comfortable with the choice. And his career prior to that was one big period of contentment as well, whether that was playing in a rural Midwest biker bar or backing Don Ho at hotels in Hawaii.
“He enjoyed it all,” she said. “It didn’t make a difference to him. He enjoyed every band job.”
Blattner’s son Merrill shared a unique bond with his dad. At the memorial, held on Father’s Day no less, he noted that, “I just remember everybody loving him. And it was kinda hard growing up like that. He was always traveling. Whenever we got together, it was a blessing. I remember the '70s and '80s, seeing him and being introduced by him to rock-n-roll, which I still love. I remember taking teenaged trips to spring break in Daytona, which was a blast for a 13-year-old to attend. I missed my dad a lot, didn’t see him a lot. So he was sometimes more of an idol than a father, but he was still a good father. I knew he loved and cared for me.”
On Sunday, he said “the weirdest thing is to hear all the stories these people have. They’re true, in a lot of cases. And it’s still fun to hear them all. People loved him so much. He was just personable.”
Merrill Blattner adds that “it’s not just because he’s my dad, but he’s one of the best guitar players I’ve ever heard, an accomplished musician. A perfectionist. And he gave the people what they wanted. But he could put together an 18-minute compilation of songs from Jesus Christ Superstar and he’d have people watching with their jaws open, just sitting there listening, instead of dancing and drinking.”
Blattner's career began in 1956. And in 1958, he would ring up a young sax player named Harry Simon. The latter would play with Blattner for a few years, then would hook up with Billy Peek’s band, finally landing with the Bob Kuban Band in time for the recording of The Cheater. His next gig with was a four-year run with Uncle Sam during the Vietnam War, but he’d return to the States—and St. Louis’ musical scene—in 1970.
One of Blattner’s oldest and best friends, Simon said that in their first stint together, “we played teen towns, private parties, fairs. We played a lot of fairs in Illinois and Jules may’ve been more popular there than in St. Louis.”
Asked what Blattner meant to him, Simon responds, “everything. Truly everything. Jules Blattner gave me my start in professional playing. There weren’t a whole lot of professional sax players (in rock bands) in those days, and he certainly gave me my start. I owe him, I owe him, I owe him.”
As noted, the pair had a second run at it, after Simon’s stint in the military, then his own run as a bandleader and Blattner’s time away on the road.
By the time Blattner was ready to revive the Teen Tones in 1985, “his mother and my mother were very good friends. They wanted their boys back together; you know how old ladies are. I started my own band in 1970 and had it for 15 years, though I never really loved it. Jules had been on the road for about 20 years and we’d kept in contact and all the rest. Finally, he says, ‘I’m going to start the band back up. The Reunion Teen Tones,’ or something like that. Well, we did it. And this was just about the time when our generation had moved into their 40s. The kids were grown up, there were a lot of divorces.”
In effect, people were ready to party again and, according to Simon, “bam! It all came back. And I was with him again until from 1985 to 1991.”
Simon, more than most, has stories. Of late nights and fast cars and memorable shows. Including one, at the Casa Loma, of all places, where the star of the show emerged just before midnight at a New Year’s Eve gig in a red sash and diaper.
“And the place went crazy,” Simon said. “He was the most-charismatic guy. He could get away with that. Eleven-hundred people, the place was completely full. If I’d done it, they’d have booed. But Jules could. Only Jules.”
This story might have, under normal circumstances, closed out a piece about Blattner. But Jules Blattner’s career was far from normal.
This writer, after visiting with Blattner’s friends and family at the Casa Loma, headed across the street to the jazz-and-pizza club Yaqui’s, to type and wrap a story on the afternoon’s gathering. In walked legendary roots guitarist Tom Hall, who immediately began to riff on a long-ago night when his own Geyer Street Sheiks had finished a gig. Rolling to the eastside well after midnight, he recalled that the door of one particular club was locked tight, but a peephole opened up and the group was deemed safe enough to let inside.
The club was called Froggy’s then, inside a longtime, after-hours roadhouse in the shadow of East St. Louis’ bridges and highways, built of cinder block and strange intentions. As Hall’s party entered, a gent who’d just been thrown out approached the same door. This time, a shotgun peeked through the sliding hatch and buckshot rained through the club, hitting patrons and the sound man among others. As Hall recalled “it was Jules Blattner playing and the band never stopped. He just stayed up there wailing.”
The gig may be over, but the stories will remain. Maybe even growing in time.
