Music Preview: Painter and banjoist John Reynolds captures the ‘30s era with his musical trio
Tin Pan Alley tradition-bearer John Reynolds has an unusually deep Southern California cultural pedigree. An amiable eccentric, with a boundless passion and enthusiasm for his twin avocations — painting and music — Reynolds, despite a dapper, grandfatherly image, is a character of great salty humor with a penchant for wildly colorful vulgarisms. When he takes the stage at Viva Cantina on Monday evening, expect an entertaining saunter back in time, old-school Hollywood style.
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“On my dad’s side, we were fourth-generation Pasadena residents, with a family crypt at the Hillside Memorial Park. My great-grandfather was the first licensed mortician in California,” Reynolds said. “My grandmother was [actress] Zasu Pitts — her parents kicked her out of the house when she was a teenager so she came to Hollywood. She wasn’t exactly a great beauty but she was talented and would get work in the studios because she’d always bring treats to give the crew members, so they always made sure she’d get inside.”
Pitts, who distinguished herself via memorable screen alliances with everyone from Erich Von Stroheim to W.C. Fields, provided Reynolds with a memorable childhood.
“Zasu had a private booth reserved for us at the Los Angeles Tennis Club over there by Rossmore and we always used to go there — the booth right next to her was shared by Groucho Marx and William Powell. Can you imagine? My Goodness, talk about heroes!”
His family became avid enablers for the youth’s creative pursuits.
“As a kid, when I told my dad I was interested in banjo, within half an hour we were at the music store and I had my banjo and was signed up to take lessons,” Reynolds said. “We went to the Huntington to see famous paintings like Gainsborough’s ‘Blue Boy’ and ‘Sarah Siddons as the Tragic Muse’ by Sir Joshua Reynolds. My mom told me that we were related to that painter, which was absolutely B.S., but I got very excited about painting. And she and Zasu encouraged me — we got all the supplies and canvases so soon I was painting all the time.”
Reynolds specializes in his own singular painting style — narrative surrealism — a whimsical, deftly rendered graphic approach that emphasizes the architecture and long-gone characters of 20th-century Los Angeles.
“Grant Wood was my idol, and those paintings are narrative, they all tell a story,” Reynolds said. “And I loved illustrators like Arthur Rackham, where all the trees look like they are about to eat you up. And I love old houses -- they just sing out to me. My family knew this so they’d take me to Bunker Hill and the all bizarre old mansions along Orange Grove Avenue built for the East Coasters who came here for the weather. They were all beautiful. In the old days, Pasadena looked like Oz, a crazy quilt of orange groves and mansions . . so all this became the inspiration for my own ‘narrative surrealism.’”
But music has always played an even greater role in Reynold’s artistic life.
“My brother and I had a Dixieland band and later a jug band. We’d play at Disneyland. I played banjo there from 1974 to ’79 and my brother stills works there. Then around 1980 I had a little trio, Mood Indigo, of ukulele, string bass and guitar. We’d play in these very posh restaurants. Since it was strictly acoustic we could stand right next to a table and the diners would still be able to carry on a conversation, and we were very successful — at that time everyone still had the long hair but we all looked as if we’d just stepped out of 1935, so it was very novel — people ‘listened with their eyes.’ And then I was in another group, the Palms Springs Yacht Club, we were on the road with the Smothers Brothers. We opened for Andy Williams, it was wonderful.”
Reynolds doesn’t merely fixate on 1930s American music — he actively sought out its practitioners. “I got to sit down and talk with Cab Calloway once. It was amazing. He was performing at Disneyland and on a break we hung out together: He was talking about how it was before theaters had a public address system — those didn’t come in until 1932 and you really had to project,” Reynolds said. “And I saw Louis Armstrong perform in 1967. The place was absolutely packed — it felt like witnessing the Sermon on the Mount or something. I was about 13 years old and I remember telling myself, ‘Do not forget this!’”
“I had some great teachers, too, I was very lucky to study for about six months with a man named George Smith,” Reynolds said. “He’d joined the Paramount studio orchestra in 1929 — he was a terrific guy and taught me quite a few things also. He used to pinch hit for one of my musical idols, [guitarist] Eddie Lang, I loved Eddie Lang and Django Reinhardt. They were just amazing and still are. That fire will never go out.”
The oft self-deprecating Reynolds, nicknamed “the Wizard” due to his stellar virtuosity, regularly stokes the blaze with performances at Los Angeles’ Cicada Club and in various collaborative permutations on the retro swing circuit. “I’d like to call myself a jazz musician, but I only have about five licks that I repeat over and over,” he said. “I specialize in pop music from the years between World War I and World War II. That’s my bag, performed with the older touch.”
“Really, I am still not sure what I am artistically. I am still excited by music and still excited that I can eke a living doing it. I love a certain era, it was so classy, a different world. But it just doesn’t exist anymore — it’s all gone. It’s not the same.”
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Who: The John Reynolds Trio, Troy Walker, the Honey Lulus
Where: Viva Cantina, 900 W. Riverside Dr., Burbank
When: Monday, May 9, 7:30 p.m.
Cost: Free
More info: (818) 845-2425, vivacantina.com
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JONNY WHITESIDE is a veteran music journalist based in Burbank and author of “Ramblin’ Rose: the Life & Career of Rose Maddox” and “Cry: the Johnnie Ray Story.”