BAAHA Links: Robert Schmertz
by John Warren
This article is the second in a series spotlighting websites which focus on local history, and thus might be interesting to readers of this newsletter.
Try to imagine this scene from many years ago. It’s a cool and quiet Sunday evening in Ben Avon. At 6941 Perrysville Avenue, two school-age children – a girl and a boy – have completed their after-dinner chores. Somewhat reluctantly, they head upstairs to get ready for bed. It’s a school night, after all.
As they reach the top of the stairs, however, the doorbell rings. The children turn around and peer down to the front door, as their parents open it and greet the visitors. Two men step into the hall, each carrying an instrument case. Recognizing the visitors, the children race to their rooms, jump into their pajamas, and hustle down to sit on the first floor landing. Maybe it is a school night, but this is a special occasion!
By that time, their mom has brought out refreshments and their dad has fetched his violin. One visitor lifts an accordion out of its case, and the other begins to tune a banjo. Soon the house is filled with music.
About 80 years have passed, but for Marjorie Todd Simonds, a lifelong resident of this community, the memories of evenings like that remain vivid. Her eyes sparkle as she describes how the two men made a point of visiting with her and her brother Jack, telling them stories and singing songs just for them.
The man with the accordion was Charles M. Stotz (1898 – 1985), an architect and historian whose impact on historical sites in Western Pennsylvania will be described in a future article. This time around, however, he appears in association with the man with the banjo, who was Robert W. Schmertz (1898 – 1975).
John and Marguerite Todd got to know Bob Schmertz through their good friend, Charlie Stotz. Todd and Stotz were active members of the local Cornell University alumni organization.
Schmertz taught for 35 years in the School of Architecture at Carnegie Tech (now CMU) and also maintained a substantial private practice. Folks who are familiar with the Ligonier area have probably seen a church that he designed – St. Michael’s of the Valley, Rector, PA.
Within architectural circles, and well beyond, he was known for composing and playing songs, many of them associated with Pittsburgh. But many years passed before he could be persuaded to record any of his music, and that only happened when three dozen of his friends passed the hat to cover the cost of a recording session and the pressing of 300 copies of a 78 rpm album.
The year was 1949, and a nationwide revival of folk music was underway, led by Pete Seeger and his fellow Weavers. When nationally known folk singers came through Pittsburgh, they would visit with local friends and get to know Bob Schmertz, either in person or through the album. Soon they were including his songs in their concert performances.
Burl Ives recorded Noah Found Grace in the Eyes of the Lord. So did Tennessee Ernie Ford and (many years later) the Statler Brothers. Ives, who recorded several albums of children’s songs, included Angus MacFergus MacTavish Dundee on one of them.
Most significantly, Pete Seeger recorded Monongahela Sal and sang it and other Schmertz songs all across the country, identifying the songwriter when he introduced each song.
One memorable concert took place in the early Sixties, when Seeger appeared with the American Wind Symphony, performing from their floating stage, tied up along the Allegheny River side of Point State Park. The highlight of the evening came when Seeger asked Schmertz to join him on the stage to sing Monongahela Sal and several other songs.
The widespread interest in his music led Schmertz to assemble several friends and two of his children to record albums in 1955, 1959, and 1960. The 1959 album is a collection of the songs that Schmertz wrote to celebrate Pittsburgh’s 200th birthday. They feature such people as George Washington, Christopher Gist, General Forbes, and Queen Alliquippa. This album has now been reissued as a CD by Smithsonian Folkways.
To learn more about the albums, and the man who wrote the songs, you can visit the following website that is a tribute to Robert Schmertz. The creator was Ann Shear, whose father was the head of the School of Architecture at Carnegie Tech in the early Fifties. If you read her introduction to the site, you will be struck by the similarity of her memories to those of Marjorie Simonds.
Photo courtesy of www.robertschmertz.com
The music of Bob Schmertz can still be heard in the Pittsburgh area. Larry Berger includes Schmertz songs on his ‘Saturday Light Brigade’ program, www.slbradio.org, which is broadcast from a studio in the Children’s Museum.
A group of local musicians, The Newlanders, hopes to soon issue a CD of the Schmertz songs that they perform in concerts. You will find details on that project on the ‘News’ page at their website www.newlanders.com.
Ann Shear’s tribute website includes the lyrics of 21 of the songs, some with notes by Charlie Stotz on how they came to be written. On the site’s ‘Miscellany’ page is a collection of articles about Bob Schmertz and some of his friends and collaborators. One highlight from that page is ‘The Biggest Living Room in Town’ by Gretchen Haller, which describes Schmertz’s final concert in April 1975, a few weeks before his death. From the concluding paragraph of Gretchen’s article:
Since I grew up with Bob Schmertz’s music, I hope you’ll pardon my prejudice. He and his banjo have been frequent visitors to my father’s house and I feel I should thank him for many things. It is through him that I discovered folk music, a bit of architecture and local history, and the artistry of grand old men.
It is clear that Gretchen Haller, like Ann Shear and Marjorie Simonds, had special memories to treasure. And, one suspects there are many, many more.
As you may know, each issue of the newsletter is posted and available to you at http://www.benavon.com/BAAHA/ our BAAHA website. Thanks to Jeff Cieslak (our webmaster), you can read the newsletter online as an HTML page or display it as a PDF file. The PDF version of the newsletter can also be printed or downloaded. Share it with family and friends, and convince them to join in supporting BAAHA!
For these ‘BAAHA Links’ articles, the plan is to collect them on a separate page of the website. Within each article, the links (like the one in the preceding paragraph) will be clickable, so that you can read the text and then visit the website it describes.